If you’re bearded: You’re a disgusting person and should probably adhere to everyone else’s standards of personal appearance, so says a few experts (sort of).

If you’re bearded you’re a disgusting person and should probably adhere to everyone else’s standards of personal appearance, so says a few experts (sort of).

Early last month, Carol Walker, a consultant trichologist (doctor of hair and scalp health) from the Birmingham Trichology Centre, spoke with Daily Mail about her findings of how disgustingly contagious hirsute men (and likely one or two women in the world) are in regards to the recent explosion of the trend.

She basically tells everyone what we already know. Things get dirty, and to keep them from being a problem, there should be a solid hygienic ritual.

Walker claims: Because of its shape, beard hair tends to trap funk, grime and peewy-icky things more so than normal hair. And because of its closeness to places like the mouth and nose, it’s more prone to harbor the gross.

Over-handling of the beard — as is what should be done to any furry cohort, living or neigh — is also a great cause for the prevalence of germs. The little buggers we receive on our hands from daily interactions are transported directly to the face-muff during solid bouts of mustache twirling or groping the shrub due to excessive thinking.

Professor Anthony Hilton, head of biological and biomedical sciences at Aston University, also spoke with Daily Mail. He sites various studies that find similar results — bearded men are just nasty dudes if they don't care for themselves properly.

“What they found was that men with beards do harbor a significant number of bacteria, more than non-bearded men and women,” he says. But he adds that while the evidence stacks up against bearded individuals, there isn’t any direct evidence it leads to debilitating heath problems.

“It’s not uncommon to find 20,000 bacteria on the skin, and this isn’t harmful,” he says.

So while the expert community will undoubtedly continue its back and forth on a topic reserved mostly for slow work days — and the media sphere will still seek to find ways to poke fun of hipsters even though it’s 2015 — we’re going out on a limb here to say that you’re within your right to wear on your face whatever it is you want to wear on your face.

The beard may be gross, the beard may not be gross. We can’t imagine we would have survived some tens of thousands of years before the razor was invented if it’s even that big of an issue to begin with. Amiright?