I’m a doctor and here’s the grim truth about not washing your belly button properly

BELLY buttons are weird things and whether you’ve got a wormhole or a hole, it’s important to keep it clean.

The clothes we wear and the lifestyle we have can both mean sweat and dirt build up in our body navel.

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If you have white, brown, or yellow discharge from your belly button, you may have an infection.

But if you constantly skip your belly button while in the shower, you could end up with gems above your navel.

Sign up TikTokDr. Karan Rajan explains that your body can make its own natural jewelry.

He was responding to a user who said her partner recently confessed that he never cleaned his navel.

The woman explained that she had decided to clean his navel, as he said it had hurt.

She explained that she kept ‘digging and digging and finding more’, until she actually found something and pulled it out.

Dr. Rajan says that this is known as a navel stone.

“All flesh holes can build up due to sweat, dead skin cells, oils, clothing fabrics, bacteria and banned cheeses,” he explains.

“If not cleaned regularly, this material can build up and harden into omphalolith – a rock in the navel.

“The belly button stone has many colors, it is usually black but can be light brown.”

Most people won’t know they have a navy stone and may only recognize it if a scratch or infection draws attention to that area.

They often form in people with poor hygiene, very deep navel, overweight and people with a lot of pubic hair.

WASH IT OUT

Experts have previously found that thousands of bacteria live in your navel.

A study looking at the contents of 60 navels found a total of 2,368 species of bacteria.

Some species of bacteria are even said to be completely new to science.

The cleaner navel has about 29 species but others have as many as 107 species.

The number of the most common types of bacteria is about 67.

One of the volunteers was found to be the pet of a bacteria that was previously only found in soil in Japan.

What made that even more unusual was that he had never been to this country.

Another volunteer apparently hadn’t showered in several years and harbored bacteria in her navel, often living in extreme conditions like on ice caps.

Research carried out as part of Biodiversity Belly button plan.