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I'm extremely disappointed by the number of highly upvoted responses in this thread that seem to come from a gut-level "Ewww... gross!" response, instead of a r

I'm extremely disappointed by the number of highly upvoted responses in this thread that seem to come from a gut-level "Ewww... gross!" response, instead of a rational examination of the science. Recent medical and biological studies are showing that we are, in fact, evolved to live with an entire symbiotic ecosystem of fungus and bacteria. And the total war we have waged on all things microbial in the last century may have been to our detriment. I would expect a rational discussion of exactly what the science has an has not revealed along these lines from HN. Instead, what I'm reading is a lot of posts along the lines of "Smelly dirty hippies" or "Oh my god, dangerous microbes! Unclean people!" Come on HN. We're better than this.

adunaway 12y ago
It seems like the loudest outcries are people afraid of others not washing their hands after using the toilet. The article doesn't explicitly say anything about it, but I didn't get the impression that any of those people (even the ones that haven't showered in years) weren't washing their hands after going to the bathroom.
- pbnjay 12y ago
  There's a blog post with more quotes: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-going-suds-free-for-28-days/ http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-... Specifically, she did wash her hands with soap: > Every time I touched my hair, I had to wash my hands (I did wash my hands with soap).
- graeme 12y ago
  I stopped using soap in the shower, and shampoo in my hair. My hair is much nicer, and my BO disappeared entirely (women have confirmed this). No one noticed I stopped using either. I can only speak for myself, but I still use soap after using the washroom and when handling food. There's pretty clear scientific evidence for the use of hand-washing in specific cases. I think most of the people trying the no-soap, no-shampoo thing are actually rather empirical and respectful of science. I used to work on repairing old newspapers in an archives. I saw the old ad campaigns for soap. We originally started using soap due to marketing, not due to scientific studies. At the time, people didn't bathe that much. Ads recommended bathing regularly with soap. This improved odour. People fell for a correlation and thought it was soap that was the cause. This knowledge "wash yourself with soap!" was handed down through successive generations. This belief was strengthened due to a TEMPORARY increase in BO if you stop using soap, once started. Takes about 1-4 weeks before the body adjusts and you become LESS smelly than you were before. Few people would have tried going without soap that long, so naive empiricism backed up marketing and tradition. In other words, our current "soap everywhere, every day!" habits were not formed due to empirical inquiry and scientific study. Here's one of the soap ads. These ran between 1920-1950: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1yyuz0p6ybhby3/Soap%20Ad.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1yyuz0p6ybhby3/Soap%20Ad.jpg
  - RexRollman 12y ago
    I think I've read about people doing this before, perhaps on Boing Boing. If I was going to do this, I think I would just use plain water and a un-soaped wash cloth. Are what about anti-perperents or deodorants? Are you using them or skipping them as well?
    - graeme 12y ago
      I use those crystal deodorant stones. My usage of those goes way back, regular deodorants gave me allergic reactions. Water + occasional baking soda and apple cider vinegar for my hair is what I use.
      - mistermann 12y ago
        I also use one of those and never smell at all, but I also wash with soap. Perhaps it's the crystal, not the lack of soap that does the trick?
        graeme 12y ago
        I've used the crystal for about ten years. Stopped soap three years ago. My smell improved after stopping soap.
      - foxylad 12y ago
        I swear by the crystal deodorant, but it was completely ineffective on my son. This may be due biome differences between the young and middle aged. EDIT: I use normal soap and shampoo.
    - hudibras 12y ago
      This boingboing article from 2009 is what got me to quit using soap. http://boingboing.net/2009/12/31/body-washing-with-wa.html http://boingboing.net/2009/12/31/body-washing-with-wa.html And some guy wrote a follow-up a year later. http://boingboing.net/2011/01/04/i-havent-used-soap-i.html http://boingboing.net/2011/01/04/i-havent-used-soap-i.html
  - 12y ago
- electromagnetic 12y ago
  Northern Europeans didn't bathe regularly, it was seen as sinful. However there's records in medieval England that people washed their hands before and after meals back to the (iirc) 10th century. Washroom hygiene is different than if you wash between your toes or not. No one on earth has died from Cholera of the pinky toe gap.
- glormph 12y ago
  Even though bacteria that grow on skin may be beneficial, I assume hands need washing since they are more prone to act as interfaces for pathogens. E.g. handshaking, food handling is usually not done with other body parts, and may spread disease. When talking about skin, you pick up pathogens with your hands, and you pass them on. Not with your armpit, back, etc.
- headShrinker 12y ago
  I think it's important to point out that 30% of men do not only not use soap, they don't wash at all. And with that, the point about people not using soap in the bathroom is lost. If people are that concerned, they should be and should have been concern about the epidemic amount of people simply not doing any form of cleansing, which is a completely different and much worse problem than simply not using soap.
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    Source? (I don't disbelieve you, I ask for putting it on Facebook. Friday. :-) ) Edit: Ah of course, the subject was washing hands after the toilet -- not "haven't showered in years" :-)
    - headShrinker 12y ago
      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14hands.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14hands.html
  - jtheory 12y ago
    This is why the rule of "wash your hands before you eat" is more crucial than "wash your hands after using the toilet" -- adhering to both rules is preferable, but only the first protects you from the people who don't follow them.
Theodores 12y ago
My favourite 'did you know' factoid: 'there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells...' http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-humans-carry-more-bacterial-cells-than-human-ones/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-h... (Article explains: bacteria have smaller cells than our own and that they would fit inside a 1/2 gallon jug. Note to those outside of the U.S.A., Burma and Liberia: 1/2 Gallon = just under two litres).
- pooper 12y ago
  I didn't know about Burma and its problems with metric system. Apparently[Burma], they started the process in late 2013. Given that the US started this in 1975 and still hasn't made much headway, I am not too optimistic about it. [Burma] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_units_of_measurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_units_of_measurement
aaron-lebo 12y ago
You aren't being very fair to people. There is a scientific reason for the gut-level responses - human beings evolved or have been socialized to associate certain senses of grime or uncleanliness with something that could hurt them. Maybe it goes too far at times, but it has worked remarkably well. Part of the scientific process is not just a hard question about whether it works or whether it doesn't, but is instead a psychological evaluation of how do we as people adjust to that if it is the case. When you start saying you are disappointed in others and that we're better than this, you are getting on an intellectual/moral high horse which stifles discussion.
- jljljl 12y ago
  >> human beings evolved to associate certain senses of grime or uncleanliness with something that could hurt them. Given that bathing habits and frequency have varied widely by time period and region, I doubt this gut level response is the result of some biological evolutionary process. It seems much more likely that the response is cultural in nature.
  - aaron-lebo 12y ago
    You are right, I edited to my comment to fit that. That being said, being socialized to believe something starting at a very young age and continuing throughout your life creates a gut level response in the same way physical evolution would. People aren't going to just dismiss that gut level response, the reasons behind those feelings have to be discussed to break through them.
    - sanoli 12y ago
      Well, that's what he was calling for, for people on HN to be more rational and critical about their gut response.
zapt02 12y ago
There's a great book written about exactly this that I highly recommend: http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-Allergies-Autoimmune-ebook/dp/B0061P2L5U/ http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-Allergi...
frozenport 12y ago
We have evolved while living in fear of the leopard that stalks the night. What is the meaning of evolutionary history? We have seen life expectancy go up with good sanitation.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  But is bathing with soap "good sanitation" or are we doing more harm than good, harm that happens to be masked by improvements in e.g. good sanitation?
- dagw 12y ago
  We have seen life expectancy go up with good sanitation. Sure, but to what extent is it causation and what extent simply correlation. Also "sanitation" covers a huge range of improvements and activities, and just because some can directly be linked to life expectancy, doesn't mean that they all can.
asperous 12y ago
> Recent medical and biological studies are showing that we are, in fact, evolved to live with an entire symbiotic ecosystem of fungus and bacteria. And the total war we have waged on all things microbial in the last century may have been to our detriment. Aren't we living much longer then before though?
- 4t4g24h3 12y ago
  Aren't decreasing infant and child mortality rates making it falsely appear so to some extent?
  - derleth 12y ago
    Infectious disease was a huge killer of children.
  - atomicUpdate 12y ago
    Your question is a bit confusing... If a baby/child doesn't die, then the only logical conclusion is that it is (and by extension "us" are) living longer...which validates his statement.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Yeah, but decreasing only this infant mortality does not make the individuals live longer. It's just that we have been efficient at removing one cause of death at one end of the spectrum, but not at the other end so much. So as long as you are born and alive, your life expectancy is not really increasing versus people who were alive 50 years ago, after the discovery of penicillin let's say.
      - NegativeK 12y ago
        Infant and child mortality is down _and_ we're living longer.
        ekianjo 12y ago
ekianjo 12y ago
> Recent medical and biological studies are showing that we are, in fact, evolved to live with an entire symbiotic ecosystem of fungus and bacteria. And the total war we have waged on all things microbial in the last century may have been to our detriment. Antibiotics, maybe. Probably. As for soap usage on skin, the question is definitely more difficult to answer and certainly not as simple as you want to put it. There are tons of people out there who have no problem bathing every day and using soap very regularly. If it were really a direct cause of skin issues, you'd hear a lot more about it.
kamaal 12y ago
>>Recent medical and biological studies are showing that we are, in fact, evolved to live with an entire symbiotic ecosystem of fungus and bacteria. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it common in the days of the past to see frequent outbreaks of contagious diseases? Agreed that part of it is due to bad sanitation. But then one could argue that was a part of the symbiotic ecosystem too. Perhaps we are meant to just die if get diseases until we evolve to tackle them. But then most people won't agree with you on that. Especially those who are dying due to those diseases.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Well many of the diseases we had are relatively recent on an evolutionary timeline, coming from our domestication of animals. Concentrated populations of humans living in cities is also relatively new. Diseases wouldn't spread as easily before that.
  - kamaal 12y ago
    >>Well many of the diseases we had are relatively recent on an evolutionary timeline Many of the diseases have diagnosis and classifications only in the recent times. Before that it was just that a person would fall ill, and then die. Now we have the most detailed and granular classification, hence we feel the diseases are appearing now. But I think most diseases existed back then too.
    - Houshalter 12y ago
      I'm talking about thousands of years ago. The reason native Americans didn't spread epidemics to Europeans, rather than the other way around, is because Europeans had domesticated animals. The diseases of animals jumped to humans after so much exposure. Cholera and HIV also evolved recently and thrive because of denser populations. The statistics also show infectious diseases declining a lot over the last hundred years so I you're theory can't be correct.
      - king_jester 12y ago
chongli 12y ago
I've got an open mind to all this; I'm just skeptical of some things. The article made mention of greasy hair but offered no solutions whatsoever. Another big thing that was overlooked is menstrual blood. Are we supposed to believe women are going to be happy with not using any hygiene products during their period?
- ghshephard 12y ago
  The article was not about not following basic hygiene, but was about allowing certain very specific epidermal bacterial cultures to survive. And I have zero idea how you made the leap to menstrual hygiene, which is a completely unrelated topic.
  - chongli 12y ago
    The article said "a bathroom devoid of hygiene products". I took that literally.

adunaway 12y ago

It seems like the loudest outcries are people afraid of others not washing their hands after using the toilet. The article doesn't explicitly say anything about it, but I didn't get the impression that any of those people (even the ones that haven't showered in years) weren't washing their hands after going to the bathroom.

pbnjay 12y ago
There's a blog post with more quotes: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-going-suds-free-for-28-days/ http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-... Specifically, she did wash her hands with soap: > Every time I touched my hair, I had to wash my hands (I did wash my hands with soap).
graeme 12y ago
I stopped using soap in the shower, and shampoo in my hair. My hair is much nicer, and my BO disappeared entirely (women have confirmed this). No one noticed I stopped using either. I can only speak for myself, but I still use soap after using the washroom and when handling food. There's pretty clear scientific evidence for the use of hand-washing in specific cases. I think most of the people trying the no-soap, no-shampoo thing are actually rather empirical and respectful of science. I used to work on repairing old newspapers in an archives. I saw the old ad campaigns for soap. We originally started using soap due to marketing, not due to scientific studies. At the time, people didn't bathe that much. Ads recommended bathing regularly with soap. This improved odour. People fell for a correlation and thought it was soap that was the cause. This knowledge "wash yourself with soap!" was handed down through successive generations. This belief was strengthened due to a TEMPORARY increase in BO if you stop using soap, once started. Takes about 1-4 weeks before the body adjusts and you become LESS smelly than you were before. Few people would have tried going without soap that long, so naive empiricism backed up marketing and tradition. In other words, our current "soap everywhere, every day!" habits were not formed due to empirical inquiry and scientific study. Here's one of the soap ads. These ran between 1920-1950: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1yyuz0p6ybhby3/Soap%20Ad.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1yyuz0p6ybhby3/Soap%20Ad.jpg
- RexRollman 12y ago
  I think I've read about people doing this before, perhaps on Boing Boing. If I was going to do this, I think I would just use plain water and a un-soaped wash cloth. Are what about anti-perperents or deodorants? Are you using them or skipping them as well?
  - graeme 12y ago
    I use those crystal deodorant stones. My usage of those goes way back, regular deodorants gave me allergic reactions. Water + occasional baking soda and apple cider vinegar for my hair is what I use.
    - mistermann 12y ago
      I also use one of those and never smell at all, but I also wash with soap. Perhaps it's the crystal, not the lack of soap that does the trick?
      - graeme 12y ago
        I've used the crystal for about ten years. Stopped soap three years ago. My smell improved after stopping soap.
    - foxylad 12y ago
      I swear by the crystal deodorant, but it was completely ineffective on my son. This may be due biome differences between the young and middle aged. EDIT: I use normal soap and shampoo.
  - hudibras 12y ago
    This boingboing article from 2009 is what got me to quit using soap. http://boingboing.net/2009/12/31/body-washing-with-wa.html http://boingboing.net/2009/12/31/body-washing-with-wa.html And some guy wrote a follow-up a year later. http://boingboing.net/2011/01/04/i-havent-used-soap-i.html http://boingboing.net/2011/01/04/i-havent-used-soap-i.html
- 12y ago
electromagnetic 12y ago
Northern Europeans didn't bathe regularly, it was seen as sinful. However there's records in medieval England that people washed their hands before and after meals back to the (iirc) 10th century. Washroom hygiene is different than if you wash between your toes or not. No one on earth has died from Cholera of the pinky toe gap.
glormph 12y ago
Even though bacteria that grow on skin may be beneficial, I assume hands need washing since they are more prone to act as interfaces for pathogens. E.g. handshaking, food handling is usually not done with other body parts, and may spread disease. When talking about skin, you pick up pathogens with your hands, and you pass them on. Not with your armpit, back, etc.
headShrinker 12y ago
I think it's important to point out that 30% of men do not only not use soap, they don't wash at all. And with that, the point about people not using soap in the bathroom is lost. If people are that concerned, they should be and should have been concern about the epidemic amount of people simply not doing any form of cleansing, which is a completely different and much worse problem than simply not using soap.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  Source? (I don't disbelieve you, I ask for putting it on Facebook. Friday. :-) ) Edit: Ah of course, the subject was washing hands after the toilet -- not "haven't showered in years" :-)
  - headShrinker 12y ago
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14hands.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14hands.html
- jtheory 12y ago
  This is why the rule of "wash your hands before you eat" is more crucial than "wash your hands after using the toilet" -- adhering to both rules is preferable, but only the first protects you from the people who don't follow them.

Theodores 12y ago

My favourite 'did you know' factoid: 'there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells...' http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-humans-carry-more-bacterial-cells-than-human-ones/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-h... (Article explains: bacteria have smaller cells than our own and that they would fit inside a 1/2 gallon jug. Note to those outside of the U.S.A., Burma and Liberia: 1/2 Gallon = just under two litres).

pooper 12y ago
I didn't know about Burma and its problems with metric system. Apparently[Burma], they started the process in late 2013. Given that the US started this in 1975 and still hasn't made much headway, I am not too optimistic about it. [Burma] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_units_of_measurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_units_of_measurement

aaron-lebo 12y ago

You aren't being very fair to people. There is a scientific reason for the gut-level responses - human beings evolved or have been socialized to associate certain senses of grime or uncleanliness with something that could hurt them. Maybe it goes too far at times, but it has worked remarkably well. Part of the scientific process is not just a hard question about whether it works or whether it doesn't, but is instead a psychological evaluation of how do we as people adjust to that if it is the case. When you start saying you are disappointed in others and that we're better than this, you are getting on an intellectual/moral high horse which stifles discussion.

jljljl 12y ago
>> human beings evolved to associate certain senses of grime or uncleanliness with something that could hurt them. Given that bathing habits and frequency have varied widely by time period and region, I doubt this gut level response is the result of some biological evolutionary process. It seems much more likely that the response is cultural in nature.
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  You are right, I edited to my comment to fit that. That being said, being socialized to believe something starting at a very young age and continuing throughout your life creates a gut level response in the same way physical evolution would. People aren't going to just dismiss that gut level response, the reasons behind those feelings have to be discussed to break through them.
  - sanoli 12y ago
    Well, that's what he was calling for, for people on HN to be more rational and critical about their gut response.

zapt02 12y ago

There's a great book written about exactly this that I highly recommend: http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-Allergies-Autoimmune-ebook/dp/B0061P2L5U/ http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-Allergi...

frozenport 12y ago

We have evolved while living in fear of the leopard that stalks the night. What is the meaning of evolutionary history? We have seen life expectancy go up with good sanitation.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
But is bathing with soap "good sanitation" or are we doing more harm than good, harm that happens to be masked by improvements in e.g. good sanitation?
dagw 12y ago
We have seen life expectancy go up with good sanitation. Sure, but to what extent is it causation and what extent simply correlation. Also "sanitation" covers a huge range of improvements and activities, and just because some can directly be linked to life expectancy, doesn't mean that they all can.

asperous 12y ago

4t4g24h3 12y ago
Aren't decreasing infant and child mortality rates making it falsely appear so to some extent?
- derleth 12y ago
  Infectious disease was a huge killer of children.
- atomicUpdate 12y ago
  Your question is a bit confusing... If a baby/child doesn't die, then the only logical conclusion is that it is (and by extension "us" are) living longer...which validates his statement.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Yeah, but decreasing only this infant mortality does not make the individuals live longer. It's just that we have been efficient at removing one cause of death at one end of the spectrum, but not at the other end so much. So as long as you are born and alive, your life expectancy is not really increasing versus people who were alive 50 years ago, after the discovery of penicillin let's say.
    - NegativeK 12y ago
      Infant and child mortality is down _and_ we're living longer.
      - ekianjo 12y ago

ekianjo 12y ago

> Recent medical and biological studies are showing that we are, in fact, evolved to live with an entire symbiotic ecosystem of fungus and bacteria. And the total war we have waged on all things microbial in the last century may have been to our detriment. Antibiotics, maybe. Probably. As for soap usage on skin, the question is definitely more difficult to answer and certainly not as simple as you want to put it. There are tons of people out there who have no problem bathing every day and using soap very regularly. If it were really a direct cause of skin issues, you'd hear a lot more about it.

kamaal 12y ago

>>Recent medical and biological studies are showing that we are, in fact, evolved to live with an entire symbiotic ecosystem of fungus and bacteria. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it common in the days of the past to see frequent outbreaks of contagious diseases? Agreed that part of it is due to bad sanitation. But then one could argue that was a part of the symbiotic ecosystem too. Perhaps we are meant to just die if get diseases until we evolve to tackle them. But then most people won't agree with you on that. Especially those who are dying due to those diseases.

Houshalter 12y ago
Well many of the diseases we had are relatively recent on an evolutionary timeline, coming from our domestication of animals. Concentrated populations of humans living in cities is also relatively new. Diseases wouldn't spread as easily before that.
- kamaal 12y ago
  >>Well many of the diseases we had are relatively recent on an evolutionary timeline Many of the diseases have diagnosis and classifications only in the recent times. Before that it was just that a person would fall ill, and then die. Now we have the most detailed and granular classification, hence we feel the diseases are appearing now. But I think most diseases existed back then too.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    I'm talking about thousands of years ago. The reason native Americans didn't spread epidemics to Europeans, rather than the other way around, is because Europeans had domesticated animals. The diseases of animals jumped to humans after so much exposure. Cholera and HIV also evolved recently and thrive because of denser populations. The statistics also show infectious diseases declining a lot over the last hundred years so I you're theory can't be correct.
    - king_jester 12y ago

chongli 12y ago

I've got an open mind to all this; I'm just skeptical of some things. The article made mention of greasy hair but offered no solutions whatsoever. Another big thing that was overlooked is menstrual blood. Are we supposed to believe women are going to be happy with not using any hygiene products during their period?

ghshephard 12y ago
The article was not about not following basic hygiene, but was about allowing certain very specific epidermal bacterial cultures to survive. And I have zero idea how you made the leap to menstrual hygiene, which is a completely unrelated topic.
- chongli 12y ago
  The article said "a bathroom devoid of hygiene products". I took that literally.