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I stopped washing with soap 6 years ago and never looked back. For the first month, my skin was so greasy all the time that it felt like I'd been wearing the s
by kstenerud 7y ago
I stopped washing with soap 6 years ago and never looked back.
For the first month, my skin was so greasy all the time that it felt like I'd been wearing the same clothes for a week, just an hour after putting them on, but then my skin finally adjusted to the new normal.
My skin is soft - much too soft for a man of my age, according to my wife. I have no body odor, even after a heavy workout where I'm still covered in sweat. I can (and have) gone for week long hikes and come back not smelling bad. Contrast this to before where an hour after a shower I'd smell terrible if I didn't put on that nasty underarm deodorant (I don't use that stuff anymore, either).
My father was skeptical when I told him, but eventually I won him over and he experienced something similar when he stopped using soap to wash.
Soap is only for things you can't remove any other way (like motor oil), or for when you need antiseptic conditions.
- mlevental 7y agothe 65 million dollar question: do you only wash your butthole with water as well
- willio58 7y agoShit to shower sans soap? No-go in my book.
- freejak 7y agothis is why i visit hacker news edit: i'll also add that i too use soap minimally when showering (nether regions). i'm asian so BO has never really been an issue but i did notice that my athlete's foot has not reappeared since i stopped washing my feet with soap for a few years.
- PakG1 7y agoNo kidding? Did you do anything else to treat it? I thought diligently cleaning my feet with soap would be helpful. I think it has been, but it's recently started coming back a little bit, so I'm not sure. I've tried a whole bunch of other things too, but didn't do anything other than constantly soap for a while because it didn't come back for so long. And now it's coming back....
- Renaud 7y agoI started using boric acid about 6-7 years ago. I’m nit talking about those ineffective foot powders, just straight pure boric acid (looks like powdered sugar), about a teaspoon every 2/3 days in my shoes. Basically stopped all smells, no fungal infection of any kind for years, and at the end of the day, my socks still smell of fabric softener. Doesn’t prevent sweat but the boric acid completely blocks the proliferation of bacteria, so no smells and no fungus can grow. It’s more effective if you start using it on new shoes as they will never be contaminated by bacteria. Truly amazing how effective it has been. Just give it a few weeks.
- twic 7y agoWhen i was younger, i didn't wash my feet. Then i started getting athlete's foot a lot. Now i wash them with soap. I get athlete's foot occasionally, but not a lot.
- kstenerud 7y agoNot since moving to Germany. They don't have bidets here, and the toilets are mounted to the wall, so you don't have access to the water intake line to install one, nor can you install washlets :/
- lozf 7y agoYou might like these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/items/?_nkw=bidet+bottle&_sacat=&_ex_kw=&_mPrRngCbx=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_sop=12&_fpos=&_fspt=1&_sadis=&LH_CAds= https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/items/?_nkw=bidet+bottle&_sacat=&... or even a basic jug like the most basic of Indian bathrooms, which takes a little more practice.
- stronglikedan 7y agoI've tried this, and it's like getting peanut butter out of a dog's fur.
- NhanH 7y agoDo you mean you are just using water nowadays, or did you switch to using detergent or otherkind of cleaning formula?
- kstenerud 7y agoJust water. My hair is short so I can get away with washing my hair water-only as well, but it becomes a pain for people with long hair (it can become quite unmanageable).
- jbuckner 7y agoI have long, curly hair and stopped using shampoo and conditioner many years ago. Similar to your experience of adjusting to no soap over the first month or so, I went through that with my hair. Eventually my hair oils normalized and now I only use shampoo/conditioner if I get grease in it or something else that water alone can't handle. The natural oils do a great job on their own controlling frizz.
- jfengel 7y agoAs I understand it, it's the opposite. I recently grew out my hair, and all the women insist that I've been doing horrible things by shampooing every day. Washing out the oils that protect my hair and keep it from drying out. I've been washing my hair with just water, and it works better than I expected. In the past, if I didn't wash my scalp before bed I'd feel itchy and sleep badly, but water seems to do a sufficient job of convincing my brain that I'm clean. When I feel sufficiently gross I use shampoo anyway. Conditioner is required to get a brush through it; my hair is very curly and will form knots if not brushed. I am not planning on ceasing to use body soap.
- Vrondi 7y agoThis completely depend on your hair type and skin type. Some of us end up with limp oily clumps of hair if we don't wash it every 1-2 days.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
- oska 7y agoI've gone 30 years without using soap (or anything else) on my body with similar results and experience to you. Also no problems with body odour; instead quite the opposite, being complimented on how I smell (by intimate partners). I still use it to wash my hands however.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stinos 7y agoHeh just typed a similar reply to the doctor in another comment. I experience the same. To the point I'm starting to wonder if those millions of liters of soaps and gels used do actually have any positive effects at all. Surely there are people with certain skin conditions etc, and yes you better make sure your hands are clean before cooking food especially in less developed countries, but for the rest?
- icebraining 7y ago> For the first month, my skin was so greasy all the time (...), but then my skin finally adjusted to the new normal. Do we know the scientific explanation for this? What makes the skin change its oil production levels?
- kstenerud 7y agoMy guess would be that my skin was used to having all its natural oils washed off regularly, and had compensated by overproducing oil. Once I stopped washing the natural oils off, it took awhile for it to readjust.
- icebraining 7y agoThat makes sense, but I'm wondering how it does that.
- natex 7y agoHow would skin know that it should overproduce oil? Does skin know if it's not oily enough?
- stronglikedan 7y agoIt's an organ, so, like other organs, it probably knows what it has to do to do its organly work.
- novok 7y agoSkin notices it feels dry due to oil being stripped by soap, creates more oil to compensate.
- seattle_spring 7y agoI hope you either still use soap when washing your hands, or work from home and don't go out to eat. I work with a bunch of nastyass people that take huge noisy dumps and then just walk right out of the bathroom without washing. No wonder I get sick several times a year now.
- merpnderp 7y agoYeah, I don't understand this at all. We went like 200,000 years without soap, and as soon as we discovered soap, we were like where have you been all my life!? And now people think they don't need soap, and I wonder if they really don't smell, or if like our ancestors, learned to tune out the reek?
- Frondo 7y agoI'm kind of glad someone brought this up. I've known a handful of people who went soap-free (I used to live in a much more granola part of the country) and they insisted they had no odor. That was actually true for one of them. The other four or five (including a significant other, who I eventually split up from for a variety of reasons, and this was a small one) definitely had a musky odor that would grow increasingly strong throughout the day. They all insisted there was no odor, but...well...there was. It was never terrible, but I think there's a reason we've really all moved to soap as a people. Sorry, friends and coworkers.
- ivanhoe 7y agoHow we smell depends a lot on our activities. It's really the bacteria that cause sweat to smell bad, so it depends a lot on a physical activity and how long it's been sitting on the body. When a person sweats a lot, like during sports, sweat contains much more water and less food for bacterias, so the smell is less intensive. In high-school I used to spend whole summer on the beach playing sports, sweating like a pig, but also going in and out of water every few hours, and never smelled sweaty although I often would shower just once a day, before going to bed, and often with no soap at all. On the contrary nowadays after a day of 10h sitting in front of the screen I smell horrible even 10 minutes after just having a bath with soap and douche gels and everything.
- jdlyga 7y agoFor anyone reading this, please don't try this without honest friends or an honest spouse who will give you feedback. It works for people with specific genetics, but not for the majority.
- Loughla 7y agoAlso your honest person needs to be just far enough away from you to avoid being noseblind to you. Spouse is maybe not the best choice here.
- swasheck 7y agoreceptor-mediated endocytosis (https://biologywise.com/mechanism-of-receptor-mediated-endocytosis-explained https://biologywise.com/mechanism-of-receptor-mediated-endoc...) is the process by which the body begins to ignore a persistent stimulus (notably, smell). i'm not sure if there's a long-term version of this, though.
- goostavos 7y agoThey're have to have crazy specific genetics, I'd wager. I've worked with a no-soap no-deodorant guy before.. You could literally detect where he'd previously been by smell alone. We had to keep doors open even in large conference rooms. It'd hit you like a wall.
- Aloha 7y agoHow does someone like this get allowed to persist in a workplace?
- kstenerud 7y agoYour gut biome also has an effect. I couldn't tell which made more difference because I did both at the same time, moving away from processed foods, removing sugar wherever I could, and cooking from primary ingredients. For some, reducing meat also has an effect. Also, you may need to control the bacteria on your skin with salt based products like Crystal deodorant.
- 7y ago
- projektfu 7y agoAccording to Burkhart, 20/20 patients in their pilot study answered affirmatively that eliminating soap bathing helped their atopic dermatitis (eczema). They mention that this is already a routine recommendation in some countries such as China. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18986472 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18986472
- ptx 7y agoAll kinds of absurd medical beliefs are common in China, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that.
- ASalazarMX 7y agoOh, I also stopped brushing my teeth, I just wash them with water. The first month I had halitosis, but it gradually went away. I'm also more productive than ever because my coworkers have started to send me emails instead of having meetings!
- Pimpus 7y agoWe are descended from at least 7000 generations of man, and 99.9% of these ancestors had never even heard of toothpaste.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoHow were their teeth at 40, if they even lived that long?
- pessimizer 7y agoInstead of just assuming, you can see that a lot of fossil teeth tend to look shockingly good. How are anybody's teeth at 40 if they haven't visited a dentist? Brushing is a cause of receding gums, gum infection, tooth loss, and deep pockets around the gums. Modern sticky flours and sugars also do a number on your teeth, giving bacteria a wonderful place to live. That being said, if you don't brush your teeth, food will find places in your mouth to sit and rot. Brush your teeth for everyone around you, not for your teeth.
- robin_reala 7y ago…or refined sugar, or living past 40.
- pessimizer 7y agoPlenty of people lived past 40, people always include infant mortality in life expectancy statistics and it skews people's image of how long people who became adults lived.
- ben_w 7y ago
- mixmastamyk 7y agoUnderarm "body odor" is caused by a bacterial infection. Sweat itself is mostly salt water and has no strong odor. It is possible to wipe it out permanently, though difficult, as it has to be done on everything that might touch the area, i.e. clothes, new deodorant, etc, to prevent reinfection.
- VoiceOfWisdom 7y agoI shave my armpits and intently wash them about once a month. Really helps cut down on the post gym smell.
- Dig1t 7y ago"I don't smell" is the classic response of someone who smells bad. No offense, it's just that every time in my life where I've encountered someone who has said things like this, they have been someone who smells bad but people around them just weren't letting them know.
- projektfu 7y agoThere's also the probability that you have met numerous people who rarely/never use soap on their bodies and had no idea. Meanwhile, there's someone who smells bad despite daily soap showers and you complain about them.
- mprev 7y agoEven your backside? I mean, even if you wipe very well then surely without soap you’re never actually clean.