How often should you wash your sports bra? Experts reveal the answer..and it’s more often than you think

Imagine the scenario: you’ve just finished a relatively uneventful workout and take off your gym clothes.

Is your sports bra going in the laundry basket? If the answer is no, you are not alone.

According to a recent survey of 2,000 regular exercisers, only half of people wash their sports bra after a workout.

A fifth even say they wear the same clothes three times before washing them. And one in ten say they rewear it up to six times.

But how dirty is this really?

Bad news for laundromats: If you don’t wash a sports bra and other underwear you wear while exercising right afterward, experts say you risk irritated skin and nasty infections.

‘If you reuse them [gym clothes]Not only will it probably smell like sweat, but it will also trap bacteria and the like, dirt, sebum and oil,’ Dr. Anthony Rossia professor of dermatology at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York told DailyMail.com.

Bacteria love water and heat — and both get trapped under sweaty gym clothes, Dr. Rossi explained.

Warm sweat causes the bacteria, fungi, and yeast on your skin to multiply, which can cause them to enter the hair follicles and cause unsightly bumps or acne.

Besides the bacteria that naturally live on your skin, there are many more bugs you can come into contact with at the gym, Rossi said.

A 2020 study of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center researchers found evidence of two types of drug-resistant bacteria and the flu virus on 25 percent of all gym surfaces they analyzed.

Those researchers identified a particularly scary drug-resistant bacterium, called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), that lives on exercise equipment for hours, days or weeks, according to to the CDC.

According to the CDC, drug-resistant bacteria can live on exercise equipment for weeks

MRSA, a drug-resistant bacteria, under the microscope. Although skin infections with this bacteria are often treatable, if it enters your bloodstream it can cause a septic infection and death.

If MRSA gets into a cut or scrape, you can get large, red boils on your skin that fill with pus, according to Dr. Mark Fisher, a plastic surgeon at Johns Hopkins.

Usually, these skin infections are treatable, Fisher said University questions and answers. But in rare cases, if you don’t seek help for the condition, it’s possible for the bacteria to enter your bloodstream, which can cause serious illness. according to the NIH.

‘If you spend time in locker rooms, schools, gyms or even prisons, be very careful to avoid cuts and scrapes, and if you suffer a skin injury in any of these environments, wash it thoroughly,’ Dr Fisher said.

Despite this stark reality, only 46 percent of people were surveyed by the British company Live football tickets reported being concerned about the presence of germs when considering washing their underwear after the gym.

Instead, 55 percent said they just pay attention to the smell and have their clothes recycled until they stink.

If for some reason you can’t fully wash your gym clothes, Rossi has some tips.

If you’re traveling, you can at least run your sweaty clothes under hot water at the hotel, bubble them out, and then hang them up to dry. He tells his patients that this can help because “the water can at least evaporate,” which can at least partially hinder bacterial growth.

Rossi also said that some fabrics are more susceptible to harboring bacteria than others.

For example, natural materials such as cotton may have a looser knit that allows better air passage than synthetic fibers.