Generally. I shower when I notice I start to smell. I live in a subtropical climate in summer (40 degrees and above, 90% humidity), so daily showers in summer are a must.
Having grown up in the UK where I suspect showering when needed, and not as a daily rituaual. I believe this is common. I recall a study that mentioned Europeans in moderate or cold climates only shower a few times a week, I suspect this is the same in the UK... though of course after sports I definitely always shower, no one wants a sweaty rugby boy rolling around in bed covered in other people's grime.
I shower in Winter, Spring and Autumn when, well. When my underarms and crotch are... Clammy. There's really no way to put that delicately.
The number of people in Australia who religiously shower every day, shampoo every day, even when their body doesn't need it. I find quite strange.
As another comment added, I will never put my self in a position where anyone can smell my body odour but why shower so frequently if your body isn't telling you, "it's a bit dirty over here, I could do with a rinse?".
I briefly dated some one who was diagnosed with OCD. Things didn't work out for us because amongst other things her idea of cleanliness was a whole bunch of topical treatments for her face and body over the course of 30 minutes before bed. She'd apply this 'skin oil' that made her face glisten. And would later complain that her skin was breaking out in spots because 'something isn't working with her skin care'.
The idea that your skin can and will look after it's self without us interrupting it's balance, was foreign to her. To this day I still just clean my intimate parts and arm pits when I shower. And clean the other parts of my body when there's physical dirt there. Her situation just made me sad. Her fears and obsessive compulsions about what 'health and hygiene' should be, were targeted my unscrupulous companies deliberately selling products that she absolutely did not need.
While I do mostly agree with you, and think that there's generally no need to bathe on mostly-sedentary days in a mild climate, there is certainly an actual answer to your maybe-hypothetical question: "... I will never put my self in a position where anyone can smell my body odour but why shower so frequently if your body isn't telling you, "it's a bit dirty over here, I could do with a rinse?".
I can certainly attest that I've known lots of people who seem to be unaware that anyone can smell their body odour, and presumably can't smell it themselves. The keenness of the sense of smell seems to vary a lot more among people than other senses (except perhaps sight, but we use technology to normalize that).
So having known many people who are unaware that they smell, I certainly worry the same could be true of me - I have a decent sense of smell, but probably there are many people who would notice my body odor before I did.
Sedentary is relative. If it's nice out, I could spend hours outside working on my plants, and really only need to wash off my arms at the end. I'm up and moving, but it's not enough to make me sweaty and gross. I would still refer to it as sedentary, because I didn't leave the house, and didn't engage in rigorous physical exercise, but it's not like I sat on the couch and ate chips all day.
The thing is with smell is, it's basically a highly complex, involved diff tool. If you're surrounded by the same smells constantly, you won't pick up the smells. The body odour you express becomes the status quo.
For me to be able to smell my own body odour, they'd have to be a point in time where I didn't have body odour. And if my BO is so wretched I don't need to put my nose into my arm pit to smell it (I challenge anyone to disagree with me that they don't do an arm pit sniff test to gauge their cleanliness) well, throw me into a fucking lake.
Of course, some people may have more delicate smells than most. Or not at all. I don't know where I sit. But I've got a 100% success rate in never being told 'my dude, you smell like an over ripe peach', so I think I'm doing OK. Or my friends are part of a dasteredly ruse to forever keep me single.
I don't sniff my armpits because they've never smelled in my life.
I have a genetic defect where I don't produce apocrine sweat (the kind that causes bacteria to produce odor) but still maintain the eccrine sweat that cools me down.
This trait is associated with dry earwax.
I've worn a shirt for a week straight and had a relative with a sensitive nose smell it and another shirt that had not been worn a day. They incorrectly guessed which shirt I had worn and which one I hadn't.
> As another comment added, I will never put my self in a position where anyone can smell my body odour but why shower so frequently if your body isn't telling you, "it's a bit dirty over here, I could do with a rinse?".
There is so much of our culture ingrained in this sentence that any conclusions we draw from it risk being warped. I don't know what's really going on but I put forward this theory:
1. We are probably supposed to put ourselves in positions where someone else can smell us. It's very, very, common in the animal kingdom.
2. Given 1 your body is probably not asking for a rinse. The message that your body is trying to convey might not be intended for you all.
3. Humans are intelligent enough to realize this and have the capability to alter the way they smell. This has led to an elaborate competition for social status based upon artificial fragrances.
4. Humans are intelligent enough to realize even this so from there it might very well be the case that your body is asking you for a rinse. But it's all meta at this point. ;-)
1) We adapt quickly to odours around us, you will always smell a whole lot worse to other people than you do to yourself. So maybe a ritual is better than a faulty detector.
2) The 'natural skin' thing is partly a myth. While a lot of products are snake oil, many are not. Women past a certain age (I suppose men as well) generally do not get 'amazing skin' without some kind of regime. Water, moisturizer and UV blockers are the base, but there is rationality to it all.
I made the move towards not so much shower reduction(a few times a week still, and stick deodorant) as soap reduction, because I realized that what is true of most surfaces is true of my skin and hair: it's not the soap that gets it clean but the scrubbing, and a little bit of scrub with a washcloth is going to be enough to get most of the actual gunk while preserving the microbiome. Soap is for when you actually need a harsher cleaning agent than water, which is going to happen only occasionally. Exposure to sunlight also does some natural cleansing, though not everyone is in a position to sunbathe.
And yes, for the first few weeks this did make things a little more smelly. Deodorant suffices to cover it.
I feel like I shower much more when I am not in the hot, humid, sweaty tropics. You're just gonna be covered in sweat again five minutes after going outside, why bother? Everyone smells a little sweaty. In colder places, nobody has any natural scent, and you stick out if you do.
I've always had a sensitive sense of smell, and I'd much prefer to smell sweat and body odor than the synthetic goop that people cover themselves with.
I notice this most frequently while hiking and passing other people on the trail. A good deal of people have this synthetic aroma that hovers over them everywhere they go. One whiff and you have to spend the next half-mile forcibly exhaling to get that junk out of your airway.
My sniffer detects: perfume, sunscreen, bug spray, hair product, hand sanitizer, scented lotion, and probably a special blend of essential oils applied from head to toe to help deter moose or something.
I think it's truly disgusting, but that's just me. Generally speaking, I like humans who smell like humans. One thing I've come to believe: eating right, staying fit, and sleeping well makes one smell good.
This times 100. I often jokingly quip that Assad has nothing on US fragrance companies when it comes to chemical warfare, but when I walk into a room with a wall mounted airwick it becomes less of a joke.
While I mostly agree with you, some people can truly smell foul, to the point where I gag. But I suspect that's mostly a case of them not washing at all.
Right, I have dry earwax and have never worn deodorant. I shower once or twice a week, but I never start to stink. My clothes don't even stink if I get them all sweaty every day without changing them.
I red this years ago and for the past 5 or 6 years haven't use any kind of soap or shampoo except for my hands.
I shower every day (sometimes multiple times a day if it is hot) but I only use clean water and fresh towel to scrub oils from skin and hair.
Once body adjusts it is possible to go longer time without shower with no problems. I did couple experiments but in the end I just like to feel fresh before bedtime so I stopped.
I can say it takes time for body to adjust oil production but now my hair is healthier than ever and I generally feel better.
The one place I would highly recommend using soap is your anus. Although culturally there seems to be an uncomfortably high number of people who don't realise it's a good idea to wash there.
I think showering has more benefits than just cleansing aspect. A shower with good pressure can be like a massage. A soaking bath is very primal and reminiscent of pre birth amniotic fluid. Water is healing.
All soap is made from lye. Any cleansing product should be bio degradable, safe for marine life and shouldn’t be laden with chemicals. Bathing can be great without the toxic soups we create in plastic containers that clog the landfill.
I love talking to older people and I am fond of taking notes of their grooming habits. That’s why some of my farm products focus on cosmetics that are also edible.
They used ground grains and nut shells for exfoliant. Herbs and oils. Plant dyes and natural fragrances. Milk and cream and yogurt. Honey. Turmeric and saffron and rose water. Corn cobs and luffa to scrub down. It’s not much diff from what we do except we have to wrap everything in plastic and use preservatives for shelf life.
Also..another thing I learnt about skin and hair care is that the inside matters. Make up and cosmetics may fix things from outside, but skin and hair are markers of diet and good health. Also circulation. Perhaps there was something to brushing yourself hair 100 times before going to bed. I also found that the women I spoke to always had grooming habits that they indulged in as a group. It was not a solitary activity. I found the whole thing fascinating.
I will second this - I haven't used soap or shampoo for 3 years except for hands. I use a stick deodorant.
It all started when my favorite hair conditioner was discontinued! I spent unhappy months trying to find a replacement. That got me to thinking, and wondering why I was spending so much money on product, killing my skin biome, and sending all that product down the drain.
At first I had to get used to my skin feeling a little stickier than I liked. Now I don't notice at all. When I don't regularly work out and work up a sweat, my hair and ears will tend to get a bit greasy. I also find I keep my hair a bit shorter. Showers are much faster.
My closest companion doesn't complain about any smell, but she also doesn't tell me anymore that my hair smells good.
I was just going to try it out for a while, but now I am sure it's permanent.
I tried this 7 years ago and I got way too greasy all over, so much acne, so much time trying to get clean in the shower. Hair like the fonz. And I’m old. Gave it up after about 2 weeks. Should I have stuck it out?
I shower everyday but use shampoo maybe once a week and soap after my gym sessions or particularly warm days. My girlfriends never complained, they often told me I smelled good and I have no reasons to doubt them. I think it really does depend on the person. I lived in a lot of shared flats, I could smell some roommates' body odor across the room 1 hour after they showered, some other roommates seemed to never have any body odor, even after going for a run.
The type of clothes you wear also has a huge influence. Some fabrics are naturally anti fungal/bacterial, some other will smell like death after even the lightest efforts.
Yeah, but that’s the annoying catch 22... you very well could have dandruff only because you’re drying the skin on your head out too much. Just like the oils and nastiness on the rest of your skin, after a sufficient period your body could adjust and equalize and be fine.
I used to have terrible dandruff. Purely anecdotal, but I stopped using shampoo in my hair, and the problem mostly went away. I still wash it throughly, using only water, scrubbing hard with a towel when I dry off. My hair is noticeably less oily after washing, but it's no longer frizzy and stays in place better when I comb it. I have short hair.
I used to be the same way. While I generally scoff at "natural"-sounding cures, tea tree oil (sometimes called melaleuca oil) shampoos have literally cured my problem. I don't know the mechanics of it, but it works extremely well. If you feel like trying it, make sure you get one that is really strong smelling (not a bad thing, the smell is pleasant). I use Paul Mitchell, but others have worked for me too...just not the really cheap ones that barely smell like it.
My grand grandfather was saying that he only bathed once, when he was baptised.
He lived for 107 years, a happy and mindfulness life. He ate meat once per year, at easter and he drunk one bottle of koniak per week, along with one packet of cigarettes per day.
But the most important thing, i believe, was that he had two ears, anything that went into one ear was going out of the other. He never bothered about anything, he lived 3 wars, buried 5 children but he never got sad or sorry.
But, who knows, maybe it was the distance from the shower. And, by the way, he didn't smell bad.
For me I like the feeling of cleanliness and freshness after having a shower in the morning before I start work. Clearly I'm not dirty or smelly after a hard day's work behind a hot Das Keyboard but l suppose it has become routine for me and unfortunately I can't abide the way I feel if I haven't showered for longer than a day.
A shame really because my inner hippy wants me to not be so reliant on showering and go for days if not weeks without bathing.
Sure clickbait title. Still I don't understand. For almost all of human existence we've somehow survived without showering. You obviosly don't ever need to shower.
But also, nearly as far back as history goes, we've been cleaning, coiffing, and perfuming ourselves. Attracting mates and reproducing is overwhelming instinct that still drives most human behavior.
>For almost all of human existence we've somehow survived without showering
for almost all of our biological history we didn't wear clothes and hang out in the open, not dressed in a shirt in a office building with 20 other people in the same room or a packed subway station.
On demand! Furthermore not showering doesn't necessarily imply no washing at all. Like with a sponge, washingcloth in maybe 4 minutes, like eyes, face, neck, armpits, crotch, feet?
> I’d wager that those who shower often get laid less.
A really interesting wager. I'd take you up on it if I could.
There has been a big trend over the last 10-20 years to add stronger artificial scents to cleaning products. People couldn't tell much difference between how well a product cleaned so manufacturers found that smell also played a vital role in our perception of cleanliness.
Since shower gels and soaps clearly overpower natural pheromones, in a side by side mate picking, I'd wager the one wearing the most fragrant scent would get laid more.
Fun fact: truffles..the most expensive fungi in the world..is often sniffed out by male pigs because it smells like female pigs in heat. The French have trained dogs to sniff out The elusive and rare and expensive truffles because the damn pigs will scarf down thousands of dollars worth of truffles(1200-1500 quid/kg for black truffles and upwards of $4000/kg for Italian white alba truffles)once they dig them out.
The most expensive fungus in the world makes pig horny. Food for thought. Just sayin’
When I was in London, I ate at McDonalds for a month so I can buy a little knob of alba truffle to shave over a bowl of buttered noodles. And.It.Was.Worth.It.
I once hired a contractor that showered once a week. He didn't tell me, it was apparent by his body odor that he bathed on Thursdays.
So, while it might be true that medically we don't need to shower so often, socially it is a necessity if we want people around us to be comfortable in close quarters.
I'll stick to my two daily showers with baby soap, thankyouverymuch. Thankfully I live in a place where water is abundant.
I’m a twice a day person. When I was in Germany I told my host that I would be showering twice a day and she was aghast — she said that it was unhealthy for the skin and that there was a cost to the environment in terms of water usage and chemicals down the drain.
I hear that, but to me showering goes beyond cleanliness. I do it for the mental health benefits. It’s my time to unplug from the stresses of the day, to think quietly to myself (bathroom ideas are a real thing), and to feel squeaky clean before the day starts and before I go to bed (the mental health benefits of a good nights sleep is significant).
Showering is as psychological as it is physical.
I once went on a camping trip where I couldn’t shower for 3 days. My body felt like it was overheating and I was irritable the whole time.
I used to shower once in the morning, then married a once in the evening person. Now I'm happily in the twice a day crowd. Mornings I wash my hair, evening just to rinse off.
I shower every morning with the purpose of washing my hair, looks ridiculous and feels nasty if I don't. Perhaps it's conditioned to 'expect' it, but frankly I'd rather do it than stop for a period to find out.
I shower up to twice a day on the regular. I’d rather have dry skin than smell of BO. But even though I regularly shower twice a day, I only get dry skin in the dead of winter when ambient outdoor temps are sometimes as low as -25F.
I'm curious where you live where "water is abundant". Water that comes out of your shower is the same stuff that comes out of your faucet. It's been carefully purified and disinfected, which costs a lot of energy. Even if you live somewhere (as I do) where water falls from the sky all the time, the water for showers is still not "abundant".
Generally in the U.S. and Canada, freshwater is abundant in the Great Lakes regions, so much so that this area is considered a strategic location in a climate crisis.
The cost of residential municipal water in Chicago is US$1.08/m3 [1]. In Toronto, another Great Lakes City, it's US$3.04/m3, ratcheting down to US$2.13/m3 after 5000 m3 [2].
Water in Berlin costs US$1.98/m3 [4] (€1.7/m3).
In comparison, Danish water cost US$6.70/m3 in 2016 [3].
Where I live, the water utility sells water for about $5.00/thousand gallons (or about $1.30/thousand liters, if you prefer).
Given that the utility stays in business, that is enough to cover the costs of the well, the pumps, the water treatment, and the vast network of pipes required to get it to my house.
The water that comes out of my tap comes straight out of the ground, without any filters or purification steps. It tastes great, although it does have a moderate iron content. I live in the Great Lakes watershed, where water really is abundant.
Having grown up in the UK where I suspect showering when needed, and not as a daily rituaual. I believe this is common. I recall a study that mentioned Europeans in moderate or cold climates only shower a few times a week, I suspect this is the same in the UK... though of course after sports I definitely always shower, no one wants a sweaty rugby boy rolling around in bed covered in other people's grime.
I shower in Winter, Spring and Autumn when, well. When my underarms and crotch are... Clammy. There's really no way to put that delicately.
The number of people in Australia who religiously shower every day, shampoo every day, even when their body doesn't need it. I find quite strange.
As another comment added, I will never put my self in a position where anyone can smell my body odour but why shower so frequently if your body isn't telling you, "it's a bit dirty over here, I could do with a rinse?".
I briefly dated some one who was diagnosed with OCD. Things didn't work out for us because amongst other things her idea of cleanliness was a whole bunch of topical treatments for her face and body over the course of 30 minutes before bed. She'd apply this 'skin oil' that made her face glisten. And would later complain that her skin was breaking out in spots because 'something isn't working with her skin care'.
The idea that your skin can and will look after it's self without us interrupting it's balance, was foreign to her. To this day I still just clean my intimate parts and arm pits when I shower. And clean the other parts of my body when there's physical dirt there. Her situation just made me sad. Her fears and obsessive compulsions about what 'health and hygiene' should be, were targeted my unscrupulous companies deliberately selling products that she absolutely did not need.