
My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment - pavel_lishin
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-shampoo-bacteria-rich-hygiene-experiment.html
======
dbingham
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
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.

~~~
graeme
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)

~~~
tripzilch
How long is your hair? I have a LOT of shoulder-length hair and I'm just not
sure if I can clean that amount of hair with just water and no soap.

Also, you say "no one noticed I stopped using [soap]", but then you talk about
a temporary increase in BO which "takes 1-4 weeks before [..] you become less
smelly".

Which one is it?

Did you stay indoors for the first month? Or did people just not comment on it
maybe?

I tried the no shampoo thing some years ago (my hair was shorter), my then-
girlfriend _did_ in fact comment (after I tried it for at least a couple of
weeks) that my hair was more greasy (it was definitely not "much nicer"). Got
a bit of irritated scalp too. I didn't feel very clean either, as if I was
just smearing the hair-grease onto the rest of my body in the shower.

I felt a bit of resistance typing the above things. Are we sure it's not just
confirmation bias? Because I can imagine people this experiment, IF they have
success, they will report "my hair is so much nicer", but guess what, who is
going to report "Yeah so I stopped using soap and shampoo, and surprisingly,
my hair got greasier and dirtier, and you know the weirdest thing? I kept this
up for a period of time and it didn't get better!", because people will just
respond "um yeah, so take a shower already".

I have no problems with the idea, really. And I did try it, because I wanted
it to work (no soap? sure! saves me having to find one that smells okay),
several times even. But my experience just hasn't been very good. That's _my_
empirical inquiry.

Actually I still want it to work, so maybe you tell me what I did wrong?

~~~
graeme
When I say I had a temporary increase in BO, I mean I noticed mild BO after,
say, 6 hours during the transition period, and I showered again.

Before trying this, it would take 12 hours to get that level of BO.

And currently, I basically never notice that level of BO during a 24 hour
cycle. It just vanished.

Measurement was....smelling my armpit.

~~~
MichaelGG
>And currently, I basically never notice that level of BO during a 24 hour
cycle. It just vanished.

Are you sure you just didn't get used to it? I had a friend that got into this
and while he thought he smelled fine... no one else concurred except other
people also living the same way.

~~~
graeme
I had to keep repeating this in various posts in this thread, but: I've had
plenty of spontaneous comments from lovers, who didn't know I didn't use soap.

So yes, pretty sure. Especially since I DIDN'T get used to it before I stopped
using soap. I was familiar with the smell of BO. But now it just doesn't
arrive.

------
jqm
The unwashed hair seems it would be a problem. I have fairly oily skin and
hair and a few days without shampoo, (even if I rinse) and my hair becomes
extremely greasy and nasty looking. Maybe there are bacteria that would eat
this oil, I don't know. Anything this strong could probably also be used for
oil spill clean ups. (As long as it didn't get down into the salt-pit
strategic oil reserves I guess).

I do find the basic premiss of the article interesting and agree. We do use
too much cleaner and are probably doing ourselves a biological disservice.

~~~
ecdavis
>a few days without shampoo, (even if I rinse) and my hair becomes extremely
greasy and nasty looking

Ideally you need to go a week or two without shampooing to allow your hair to
adjust. The thinking on this (and I don't know if it's based in science) is
that your scalp is producing excess oil because you keep washing it away. When
you stop using shampoo your scalp will, over time, slow down its oil
production.

I have very dry skin, so I can't comment definitely on whether those theories
about oil production are based in truth. I can detail my own experience,
though.

I used to shampoo daily and had terrible issues with dandruff. A couple of
years ago I decided to stop using shampoo as an experiment. After about 3
weeks my dandruff cleared up completely. These days, the only time my hair
gets shampooed is when I get it cut - around once every 6-8 weeks. For a few
days afterwards my hair feels very limp and my scalp is very dry and flaky.

I do make sure to rinse thoroughly with warm water on a daily basis.

~~~
galvan
Yup, that's the trick. I stopped using shampoo last year - my hair was greasy
as all hell for around a month, then one day I noticed that it just stopped.
Now, I just go into the shower and scrub thoroughly with hot water instead of
shampoo. And it takes a couple days without showering for my hair to get oily
and smelly now, instead of just one.

Oddly enough, my dandruff has stayed completely unaffected (and possibly
gotten worse)...

Still use a plain bar soap on my body though, can't get past the self-stigma
of the thought of only rinsing down there...

~~~
graeme
"Down there" actually smells permanently better when you stop using soap. That
was my personal experience anyway, and others who have tried this have
reported the same.

You're actually not supposed to soap your genitals directly. Even those who
use soap don't recommend this. The bacterial balance of the glans penis and
the vulva is more delicate.

------
buckbova
> The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical
> engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years.

It's hard for me to imagine that these people don't stink and that after a
workout, run or hike they don't smell "strongly". I guess you can still rinse
off in the shower to get sweat and grime off, but not use any soap.

For the sake of my lady, I'd have to at least give the undercarriage a good
scrubbing.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The thesis is that the source of the 'stink' is Ammonia and the bacteria are
eating it and turning it into nitrides. The question is of course how quickly
they can do that.

Its a pretty interesting theory.

~~~
refurb
It's an odd theory. Humans have very little free ammonia in their bodies.
There are enzymes that quickly catabolize it to urea.

Second, nitrides seems like an odd product of ammonia metabolism. I've only
ever heard of metal nitrides, nothing organic.

It's pretty well understood that bacteria on the skin metabolize the fatty
acids in our sweat to short chain aliphatic acids (propionic acid, butyric
acid, etc). If you've ever smelled those chemicals you'd see the resemblance.

------
jrabone
So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your
personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you.

Soap and water have saved more lives than any medication, ever. I now have no
spleen (6 months ago I lost spleen, gallbladder and half my stomach as well as
sundry peritoneal membranes to cancer) and nearly died as a result of post-
operative infections. I take daily antibiotics, possibly forever. As a
society, we don't just cleanse ourselves for our own well-being, we wash for
others.

~~~
Steer
I am sorry that you got cancer and had to remove those parts of your body. I
am also happy that you now seem better (and I am guessing and being hopeful
here).

That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things
they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health.
If you had provided links to research that proved that soap and shampoo use in
the larger population made people with a defective immune system safer I would
not have a problem with your comments, but I am just not sure that is the
case.

If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to
peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite
this, allow peanuts in our society? It is not a necessity.

Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is
a completely different thing.

~~~
edoloughlin
_That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using
things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your
health_

There is a case to be made for it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity)

~~~
Terr_
No, Herd Immunity is for infection risks which are SHARED across the whole
herd. The point is to prevent the infection from reaching "critical mass".

What we're talking about here is different, it's a risk which applies to a
small minority of specific individuals.

------
fragsworth
Just to be contrarian...

What if our culture of daily washing with soap contributes to our health in
positive ways? If we make our bodies _generally_ inhospitable to bacteria, we
are probably inhospitable to many kinds of deadly bacteria as well.

It might be that if we all abandon soapy showers, we'll have a new era of
diseases on our hands.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
Washing with soap disrupts the endocrine function of the skin, which doesn't
fully recover for a couple days. It's not a matter of bad chemicals in the
soap; stripping away the natural oils messes up synthesis of things like
Vitamin D. The article didn't even touch on this and instead just talks about
bacteria.

Frequent use of soap is going to impair the skin's barrier function and leave
you more susceptible to infection. You should really only be soaping up as
needed.

Personally, once a week is fine for me. I'll just rinse off as needed the rest
of the week, which in winter might be once.

~~~
hatu
You sound stinky

~~~
leorocky
The ultra-health obsessed min-maxers I have met have been socially awkward to
say the least. People who are fanatical about anything to the point it causes
social conflicts strike me as compulsive. Some people just seem so obsessed
about a single issue that they are burden to interact with, regardless of what
the issue is.

There's nothing wrong with using soap every day, my grandparents have been
doing it all their lives and they're healthy at their old age (90's). Plus you
don't end up bothering others with your smell.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
I'm better groomed, dressed, and looking than you. I just don't gratuitously
soap up.

~~~
leorocky
The problem with all of your arguments, including claims to your superior
appearance, is that they're all entirely subjective. When is soap use
gratuitous?

When others can detect your smell that's an objective fact and if you still
use enough soap so that others can't smell your armpits when they're squeezed
in next to you on public transportation then I don't really have a problem
with what you're doing.

------
arbutus
I'm curious how this works for people with long hair. To a certain extent,
shampooing less can be great for your hair, for a lot of the reasons discussed
in the article about skin care. Sulphates strip out your natural hair oils and
do a bunch of bad things, so sulphate-free shampoos are a lot better.
Additionally, once you get your scalp accustomed to less frequent shampooing
and it stops producing tons of oil to compensate, life for your hair can be
pretty good.

That said, I can never seem to get onto a cycle of more than just a couple
days without shampooing before my hair is just too oily. Washing with just
water isn't super sufficient either when you have long, thick hair.

~~~
adunaway
It's not pleasant, but if you gradually wash your hair less and less
frequently the oils in your hair eventually find an equilibrium.

At least this is how it's turned out for me. I generally only wash my hair
about once a week or less. At first it was crazy oily and frustrating, but
gradually the amount of oil my head produced lessened.

~~~
mpg33
Same...I used to shampoo my hair EVERY time I showered (everyday) and was
confused why it was always so dry and frizzy. Now I just rinse it daily when
I'm in the shower and shampoo it once every 5 days or so and my hair is much
less frizzy.

------
SyncTheory13
If it really does work (sounds like it!), they'll just need to invent
something to help aid the transition, before it can be really find mass-
adoption.

From the way it sounds now, I'd make the switch only if I could find the time
to take a month away from life... Maybe a vacation where all I do is remodel
my house and have groceries delivered.

~~~
graeme
I did this. I just showered more frequently for a month. No one noticed.

After that time, my hair and body odour are permanently better. In fact, I
never have BO. (women have confirmed this).

I wash my hair with baking soda apple cider vinegar occasionally. If I eat
well and sleep, it never gets greasy. If I eat poorly, it will grease up a
bit.

------
whateveraccount
I probably use soap on my body 3 or 4 times a year (still wash hands
regularly), and shampoo once a week and notice no difference from how I smell
from when I am using both.

In terms of hair-greasiness, when I began my hair was much longer and did feel
greasier and appear more out of order, but with shorter hair there is not much
of an issue and the shampoo once a week can stave it off.

Anyways, it seems like he is greatly exaggerating how badly he smelled. I
smell no different, granted I apply deodorant to my underarms once a day but
probably would not have to. Nobody I know comments on any bad smells either.

~~~
ZoFreX
> I smell no different

> Nobody I know comments on any bad smells either

I'm not claiming you are wrong, but I don't believe these are strong arguments
in your favour. I can recall many instances of "the smelly kid" throughout my
life - people who appeared to be totally oblivious to the fact that they
stank, and very rarely did people around them ever mention it - to their face.

~~~
whateveraccount
That's the most common response I receive but I don't think it holds true in
my case. For example my current girlfriend was extremely surprised when I told
her I didn't use soap or anything about 6 months into our relationship. Same
sort of surprise amongst my housemates since I am pretty hygienic and well-
groomed.

~~~
ZoFreX
That is more convincing :)

------
DigitalSea
I don't understand why the general consensus seems to think this is gross. I
ran a similar experiment where I stopped washing my hair, after I detoxed from
shampoo/conditioner, my hair stopped smelling. It only smells for a few days
and then the natural oils take over and do their job.

My fiance who is currently becoming a registered nurse said her teacher ran an
experiment which concluded that if you wash your hands properly and long
enough (at least 30 seconds) using water, it does as good a job as
soap/antibacterial handwash. To prove this he swabbed students hands and also
ran them under a light to inspect for anything foreign. He of course also made
sure to mention that in a hospital using water would not fly, but I thought it
was an interesting result.

What did we use before shampoo, soap and conditioner? Nothing. Mankind has
lasted this long without buying antibacterial products, hasn't it? I think if
anything, antibacterial handwashes, shampoo and conditioner have contributed
to our unhealthy society, especially when put into combination with our zero
nutritional diets and pollution-led lifestyles. I think we all get so sick
because we don't expose ourselves enough to the common bacteria and germs that
lurk in our everyday lives. At the end of the day we as humans are nothing
more than bacteria. Look up a video of what happens inside of our bodies when
we digest food, we are bacteria ourselves.

------
pierrebai
IIUC, this firm would like to replace soap with a micro-biological mono-
culture mist. Given that our skin is in direct contact with a lot of external
bacteria and virus, this seems to be a biological disaster in the making if it
were to take off.

Haven't we learned that mono-culture is a bad idea yet?

------
tdaltonc
It's always seemed odd to me that most people douse their skin in antibiotics
every day. I'd love to see a study on flora, like this study on gut flora:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19018661](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19018661)

~~~
api
Antibacterial chemicals, not antibiotics. But you're right in general. It's
something that we do that we have no evidence is actually _good_ for us. We
live in symbiosis with bacteria. Sterilizing your gut would kill you.

~~~
npsimons
And if you look hard enough, you can find soap that doesn't have antibacterial
chemicals (no triclosan). I carry around a small squirt tube of liquid soap
for this reason, and also because most soap in public bathrooms is atrocious
in other ways (doesn't lather, dries the skin, etc).

~~~
neohaven
Soap, by virtue of being soap, has antibacterial properties because it
disrupts fat layers by making them dissolvable in water, iirc.

~~~
Fomite
This. Soap isn't an antibiotic as much as something that fatally disrupts the
lipid membranes of bacteria, as well as messing with other oils you happen to
have on you.

------
jsudhams
I am sure natural way is better in long run, than lab produced chemicals. I
use natural powder created from dry Acacia concinna[0] and Hibiscus rosa-
sinensis[0] and for the smell part in India every used to use coconut oil but
now a days youngster dont like though majority of school going children are
apply coconut oil to the hair after head-bath

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_concinna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_concinna)

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_rosa-
sinensis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_rosa-sinensis)

------
lightblade
I'm sold! How do I get a bottle?

------
jastanton
This is awesome to me mainly because I am just thinking of all the other
undiscovered ways we are destroying natures answer to many of our man made
solutions. My hope is that this type of science gets more attention every day.

------
headShrinker
If any one is interested in a sort of guide on why or how, and what to expect
when you stop using body soaps and shampoos...

It's also about all these products we buy because are told to, that are
completely unnecessary. It's as if no one questions it,which I think is Weird

[http://fritzw.com/2014/02/10/4-things-you-buy-that-are-
ruini...](http://fritzw.com/2014/02/10/4-things-you-buy-that-are-ruining-your-
skin/)

------
huehue
Well, it doesn't work for everybody.

I gave no-poo a go for four months. My hair started to shed, got dandruff
breakouts and going to the hairdresser was an embarrassment due to oily hair
(machine got stuck frequently).

Tried many tricks, vinegar+baking soda and all that, to no avail.

I finally stopped when hair loss started to be noticeable.

I’ve ditched commercial shampoos since, and found that using plain baby
shampoo everyday with ketoconazol every third day gives me the best results.

~~~
elementai
I have similar story, probably cultivating beneficial flora is the missing
part.

------
stretchwithme
My Dad always claimed that daily showering killed off all the bacteria. I
think we thought he was crazy.

------
ekianjo
It's funny that people who claim that you don't need soap to wash yourself
simply justify their action by "I smell good now" \- so what ? How does
smelling good mean anything about how healthy your skin actually is ? For all
we know it may be the exact opposite.

------
tokenadult
The author of the story kindly submitted here begins by writing, "I was
Subject 26 in testing a living bacterial skin tonic, developed by AOBiome, a
biotech start-up in Cambridge, Mass. The tonic looks, feels and tastes like
water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions
of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that
is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water. AOBiome scientists
hypothesize that it once lived happily on us too — before we started washing
it away with soap and shampoo." So what we are particularly talking about here
is an early-phase human trial of a cosmetic product (which is regulated in the
United States by the Food and Drug Administration under the Food, Drugs, and
Cosmetics Act) which may or may not have the benefits claimed by the
manufacturer. The trial is to find out if the new cosmetic does anything at
all beneficial, without too much harm. Getting news coverage like this is of
course public relations gold for the manufacturer.

I read most of the comments here before reading the article and then posting
my later comment. A lot of the comments revolve around the issue of the health
effects of "modern" human life. All epidemiological evidence to date suggests
that living like a middle-class or wealthier person from a developed country
is good for health. An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead
Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why."[1] refers to the
steady long-term upward trend in healthy lifespan in the United States.
Whatever we are doing about washing our bodies or our hair so far doesn't have
any harmful effect that isn't swamped by the generally helpful effect of all
the other changes of modern life. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at
even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the
world.[2] The overall trends are so favorable to further improvement to
general health that if the observed facts about people who are already born
and conservatively projected current trends continue, we can expect that girls
born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the
age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article
"The Biodemography of Human Ageing"[3] by James Vaupel, originally published
in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject.
Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to
adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are
living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income
countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the
mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is
increasing by an average of six hours a day."[4]

On evolutionary grounds, there is every reason to expect that human beings
have haphazard adaptations through natural selection to survive to
reproductive age despite a world full of microorganisms that were neither
created nor evolved to benefit human beings, but rather just to survive and
reproduce themselves. There is no evidence whatever that there are any large
number of bacterial species or other microorganisms that are actively
"beneficial" for human beings, rather than simply being well tolerated by
human hosts. To live to healthy old age and greater enjoyment of the natural
world and all its wonders, human beings may very well be better off continuing
the human way of shaping their environments and culturally transmitting
environmental interventions that lead to "unnaturally" good health and
longevity.

AFTER EDIT, TO RESPOND TO QUESTION BELOW: Yes, I am saying there is weak or no
evidence of "beneficial" bacteria for human beings. This is to be expected
from the consilient findings of evolutionary theory. (Human beings have had to
live in highly microbe-free environments, for various reasons.) I am
specifically asking for evidence, from medical review articles, that there are
well accepted "beneficial" skin microbes. Which are they? What is the evidence
that shows the benefit?

The author of the article seems somewhat convinced by her personally
experienced anecdote. It would of course take much more long-term study (not
to mention more double-blind study designs) before we will be sure what is
beneficial for human skin in particular and human health in general by way of
applying bacteria intentionally to our skins. Suffice it to say that I am not
afraid of washing my hands with soap nor afraid of washing my hair with
shampoo. The book _The Checklist Manifesto_ reports on an experimental study
in a poor country of promoting hand-washing with soap, and how that showed
evidence of improving health outcomes. Let's not throw out good hygiene with
the bath water until more research has been completed on this interesting
topic.

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html)

[2]
[http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html)

[3] [http://www.demographic-
challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...](http://www.demographic-
challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf)

[4]
[http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

~~~
graeme
I believe you're conflating two issues. Few people argue against hand-washing
with soap. The benefits are proven.

But where did you get the notion that washing the whole body with soap is
beneficial or even benign? You've cited many studies, but they all deal with
aging and not with skin flora.

Skin flora is complex. I know of no scientific study that has looked into
whether skin flora or hygiene is improved by full body soap washing.

Full body soap washing began in the early part of the 20th century, following
a steady marketing campaign with ads such as this:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1yyuz0p6ybhby3/Soap%20Ad.jpg](https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1yyuz0p6ybhby3/Soap%20Ad.jpg)

At the time, people bathed little. When they bath more frequently, with soap,
odour improved. Soap usage became widespread.

It seemed a reasonable inference that soap was the cause. Particularly since
if you stop using soap, you get smellier, even if you bathe.

I believe this inference is wrong. I stopped using soap in 2011. For the first
2-3 weeks, I smelled worse. Then I smelled better. I have had practically no
BO since, even in the most sensitive regions. Women have confirmed that I
smell good, spontaneously. If you saw me, you would never know I don't use
soap.

I'm using an N of 1, but it seemed like the bacterial balance of my skin
improved. It also became less oily. I can only speak to my own example, but I
have seen many reports from others who went through the same transition as me.

So I'll repeat: where is your evidence that _full-body_ soap washing offers
benefits? Are there any scientific studies that support your position?

My hypothesis is that full body soap makes us worse off and that we don't
realize this due to the transition period. Our habit was begun by marketing
and cemented by tradition. (our parents washed us when we were young)

Edit: I just noticed this sentence:

"There is no evidence whatever that there are any large number of bacterial
species or other microorganisms that are actively "beneficial" for human
beings"

This seems rather unsupported. Are you saying we do not require intestinal or
skin flora?

Second edit: In response to your edit, I found this article:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2008....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2008.08437.x/abstract;jsessionid=F3E7464CCB88D8682050D6229DB3B69E.f02t01)

It has been cited 182 according to Google Scholar. I can't access the full
text, but it claims that many skin flora are mutalistic.

~~~
GuiA
_" I stopped using soap in 2011. For the first 2-3 weeks, I smelled worse.
Then I smelled better. I have had practically no BO since, even in the most
sensitive regions. Women have confirmed that I smell good, spontaneously. If
you saw me, you would never know I don't use soap."_

Do you still wash your hair? Do you still shower (i.e. rinse) once a day? How
do you wash after when you're especially dirty? (e.g. dirt, grease, etc.)

I'd be curious to hear about your hygiene routine in a little more details.

~~~
graeme
I shower every day. Sometimes twice if I've done something that made me sweat
or it's a warm day and I want a cold shower.

I occasionally wash my hair with baking soda then apple cider vinegar. It was
what other people doing the same thing use. Hair is very clean and soft after
that.

The frequency of the hair wash depends on how my hair is. If I eat, sleep and
rest well, it stays clean for a week or more. If I eat poorly it gets greasy
faster and I wash it more.

I use soap to wash my hands after using the washroom and during food
preparation, or when something major has dirtied my hands.

Otherwise, no soap on my body. Subjectively, odour improved in all the
sensitive areas. I used to notice BO in my armpits and a few areas I won't
name. Now I don't.

As I said, this improvement has been confirmed by spontaneous compliments.

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omilu
Homeless people smell and overall look grundgy. According to this article they
ought to smell fine, have beautiful hair, and skin.

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ashutoshm
don’t apply something on your skin which you theoretically can’t eat.
[http://easyayurveda.com/2012/05/16/are-soaps-and-shampoos-
re...](http://easyayurveda.com/2012/05/16/are-soaps-and-shampoos-really-
needed-a-readers-words-of-experience/)

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trhway
one can easily see importance of decreasing bacteria load for existence of a
species in big colonies/cities on the example of ants vs. other insects - the
ants are the only insects having glands producing antibiotic

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andor
What about chlorinated water? Would these bacteria survive swimming in a pool?

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avb
Something like this might be a great product for camping and backpacking.

~~~
pling
2 weeks in the Lake district camping. Walked just over 80 miles and slept
rough. Picked up food at local shops.

Didn't wash once. Stops bothering you after a couple of days.

Haven't used soap since this trip 11 years ago and all skin problems I had
(bad Eczema) went away literally within a week.

~~~
johndevor
How do you wash your hair? Do you wash your hair? Do you scrub with a non-
soapy cloth on your body? Sorry for the intrusion, just very curious.

~~~
pling
Just water. And I only do that once a week. I use my hands to wash myself,
nothing else.

I went through a phase of bad Eczema where my hands would bleed. This put an
end to it.

I use shampoo soap bars from Lush to wash my hands before eating - that is it.

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thret
I can see how this could be useful on a cross-country trek, on the ISS, or in
areas where clean water in short supply.

For the rest of us though, showers and baths are too much fun to give up. I'd
still shower every day if it were bad for my hygiene.

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danielweber
I did not realize my teenage son could be used as a science experiment.

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DanBC
And this thread is why I never shake hands with people.

