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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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.

There'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.

Oh, 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!

We are descended from at least 7000 generations of man, and 99.9% of these ancestors had never even heard of toothpaste.

How were their teeth at 40, if they even lived that long?

Instead 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.

…or refined sugar, or living past 40.

Plenty 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.

Relatedly, I’ve had six teeth removed because my mouth is too small.

For me they made an excellent necklace (and an amusing way to disturb my sister), but in bygone generations they with the emergency backup replacement teeth because so many of your teeth fell out.

...and simple dental work dates back to before recorded history, suggesting that cavities have always been a problem, even if they were probably much rarer before the mass use of refined sugar.

Cavities are also found in other mammals; they're not even just a human problem. Something like 5% of dogs get cavities. If you have an older dog and get their teeth cleaned, some might need to be pulled.

I even saw something about cavities in dolphins... and, if I remember right, the thing about humans not getting cavities before the advent of the modern diet stems from a dentist who had some unorthodox theories about dental care that were unsupported by systematic research.

Oh, it's the Weston Price foundation people who make that claim...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sbm-weston-prices-appalling...

Dogs are a bad example to use to support your argument as they are domesticated animals who are fed processed dog food.

We are descended from at least 100000 generations of sapiens and 99.9% of these ancestors had never even heard of cooking.

I'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.

Heh 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?

According 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

All kinds of absurd medical beliefs are common in China, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that.

I 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.

Yeah, 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?

I'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.

How 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.

Indeed, I remember hearing about a product being researched which was a spray made from a certain kind of soil that promoted a different bacterial population on the skin to reduce malodor. Unfortunately I can't find any references now. Still, it actually works pretty well to go to the beach for a while and then you will smell better for days, so I think there's something going on there, whether it's the ocean water or the sand.

There's AOBiome, which makes Mother Dirt, which I use. Anecdotally it works to reduce my smells and need for deodorant and soap/shampoo for body/hair washing & hygiene.

Always wash your hands with soap and water.

Just if you try it, or something like it, do not get excited and jump in head-first like us humans are wont to. And like this[1]. A month is not enough... Like, slow roll 6 months or a year.

Some people are like, "Oh, cool. Stop bathing. That's easy." No. Actually it's more like slowly cut back on detergents. Then slowly cut back on showers. Always be increasing the time and effort used to check if you're a presentable human for society today.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-sh...

Along those lines, I've found that I'm much more distinctly odor-free for a few days, after I spend a day at the russian bathhouse. Something about sitting in hot tubs, steam rooms, cold showers (I've never done the arctic pool! haha), saunas and banyas, rotating throughout the different conditions somehow cleanses off ALL of the bacteria, to where if I didn't have any deodorant on the next day it wouldn't be a thing.

It's pretty physically taxing to make a whole day of it, especially when you're splitting a bottle of vodka at the same time, but nothing leaves me feeling cleaner.

Correct. 200,000 years dying at an early age from easily-preventable infections, among them cholera and dysentery which are easily spread from --yep, you guessed it-- not washing after using the toilet.

And people wonder why I refuse to take part in "potluck" lunches, or eat others' foods. I need to save the URL to this discussion.

I, too, cannot believe someone who does not use soap does not smell like a wild animal. It is surely a case of adaptation. Hoarders who live with hundreds of animals and urine/feces littering the floor claim they cannot smell the ammonia. They have adapted.

People of hackernews, wash your filthy hands with hot water and soap. (that's not an insult, it's an trivially-proven factual assertion: unwashed hands are filthy.)

Oof, do you also wear gloves 24/7 to protect yourself from the dirty world out there too?

Unless your immunocomprimised or old, your body's immune system can handle the everyday bacteria that is everywhere in the world.

Or unless you inherited those beliefs from your parents, who kept you oversanitary as a child. Then the world really is very dangerous for you; childhood is the best time to get exposed to stuff.

No, you'll be fine and you'll quickly gain missing immunities, if you have any. A good chunk of the behaviors might even be counterproductive.

I hope so, I've heard otherwise. I was personally a filthy kid, so I'm not talking about me.

My wife was a severely germ-sheltered child like that. She has overcome it, and she does not get sick any more than I, a pretty grimy/dirty/often-filthy farm kid, do.

The hardest thing about that upbringing for her is that her instincts toward our children are very much geared toward avoiding germs at all costs. Because that was how she was raised, that's the only way she really knows how to raise our kids. Fortunately, I'm there to get them really, really dirty.

There's a reason that food safety protocols in the restaurant biz are pretty strict: you don't get a biological adaptation to eating feces by eating a little feces here and there. There's a reason (well, really, several) humanity switched to processing food and water with heat (cooking meat, drinking coffee and tea) when we were coming down out of the trees.

Trying to make fun of someone who's being careful about what they eat is pretty insulting.

The hypochondriac / overactive purity instinct / easy to insult temperament hurts their life and the life of people around them by making them annoying and unpleasant to be around. Also by keeping things super 'clean', they increase the likelihood of their children to develop lifelong allergies. They deserve to be mocked.

Food processing laws are there because certain bad things do happen at scale in factories & restaurants that don't happen in home kitchens and when they are personally eating things in the world around them. The laws have to protect the very young, sick and the very old with their compromised immune systems. So there are different standards for different circumstances.

There is also a matter of degree. A commercial food chef needs to wash their hands, a healthy adult person eating prepared meals by other people doesn't need to wear gloves everywhere to be safe.

Also a lot of restaurants and farms are pretty gross places, go work at a fast food place, butcher, meat processing factory and cow farm to see how gross it gets, even with food safety laws & inspections.

Handwashing and bathing are very different things. Frequent bathing with soap is a new phenomenon in many cultures. Weekly baths were more common than daily baths in the US 50 years ago, and I have heard that many people bathed once or twice a year. Daily or twice-daily showering is extremely recent in almost all cultures, although many cultures had the equivalent of a sponge bath once or twice a day in antiquity.

I think in the past we not only were more comfortable with odor, we also used it to recognize people. And some people suffered from malodor and were rejected by society while others were blessed with good fragrance and benefited.

I quit soap (except on my hands) and it has helped my eczema tremendously. In my experience, I have been able to wash off excessive odor without soap if I feel like I smell, but my normal odor is inoffensive. I wear undershirts to wick the sweat away and clothing (cotton, nylon) that has better properties for keeping odor at a minimum. Polyester clothing (Under Armour) gets that "gym" smell and it's hard to get rid of. The polyester fabric promotes bacteria that create foul odors.

When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands I always have an urge to say something but never do.

The bad thing is that they leave before me as I wash my hands, but then like a minute later I need to use the same door they used to enter our office. :(

I always grab a paper towel on the way out to open doors with.

We had the "Toepener"[1] installed on the bathroom doors of my last office. A bit tricky to use in heels but otherwise it got nothing but positive feedback.

[1] https://www.thetoepener.com

>When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands

Perhaps they have mastered the art of pissing without pissing on their hands...

Or you could wash your hands anyways, since it's a good opportunity to wash your hands? Regardless of how clean you think your body is?

That would weaken the immune system...

So you're cool with folks touching their genitals and then touching you?

Totally, especially if it involves sex.

So you're fine with them touching their sweaty junk and then handing you a donut with the same hands?

Totally! It even adds a pleasant salty taste to the donut!

If only that was the only problem.

Hi, I don't want to shake hands with your genitals thank you.

I've have a weakened immune system and am also a wedding photographer, so staying healthy is important. If I can use a bathroom with touching anything but myself (#1), I'm going to do it. If everything is motion activated I'll wash my hands, otherwise I'll just use hand sanitizer at the next opportunity just to be sure.

the 65 million dollar question: do you only wash your butthole with water as well

Shit to shower sans soap? No-go in my book.

this 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.

No 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....

I 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.

That's interesting. I presume it needs to spread evenly over the entire insole?

Just shake the shoe to spread the powdered boric acid. Doesn’t need to be precise, over time it will spread everywhere.

When 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.

Not 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 :/

You might like these: 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.

I've tried this, and it's like getting peanut butter out of a dog's fur.

For 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.

Also 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.

receptor-mediated endocytosis (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.

They'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.

How does someone like this get allowed to persist in a workplace?

Your 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.

My hunch it has as much to do with your diet as genetics, for example if you tend to eat a lot of strongly spiced food or garlic/onions.

There's a very persuasive argument that humans exhibit aposematism; in particular, that we evolved a very strong scent as a warning to potential predators. Objectively speaking, most humans have extremely strong scents relative to other animals (especially non-aposematic animals), regardless of whether we personally find it strong or offensive. This is somewhat blunted for populations at cold, northern latitudes (e.g. East Asians) that evolved fewer sweat glands, so notwithstanding our origins there are now clearly significant phenotypic variations.

A slightly more radical theory is that we also evolved the ability to dance and chant in unison for similar reasons--to intimate predators. That we evolved to wear clothing (in particular, colorful costumes and displays) would presumably be related, if true.

Do you mean you are just using water nowadays, or did you switch to using detergent or otherkind of cleaning formula?

Just 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).

I 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.

As 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.

This 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.

Oily skin gentleman here. I could not wash my hair with only water, after a week it would smell like a wet dog in the sun. On the other hand, it's never going to suffer for lack of natural oils.

Some of it could be you're oily because you don't want to be oily.

You wash your hair and get rid of all the oil on the scalp protecting your skin. So your scalp makes as much as it can to replenish. Lather rinse repeat and now you've trained it to always go ham.

I've been washing my hair with just water for a year or so. I'm still oily, but much less so. When I have shorter hair it's on the high side of acceptable. When I have longer hair it's fine - just needs to get pulled down the hairs away from the scalp so it can do its full job.

> I've been washing my hair with just water for a year or so. I'm still oily, but much less so.

Maybe you just got used to it? I shaved my head for a couple of years and it was still oily, just easier to clean. Shampoo, gel or soap don't seem to make a difference, and I'd rather not wash oily skin with just water.

No. I had hair below my chest for 3 years without using shampoo or conditioner and it worked out great. Brushing was way easier and I always got compliments by my lady friends for how great my hair looked. There is also an entire subreddit dedicated to this: /r/nopoo

> 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?

My 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.

That makes sense, but I'm wondering how it does that.

How would skin know that it should overproduce oil? Does skin know if it's not oily enough?

It's an organ, so, like other organs, it probably knows what it has to do to do its organly work.

Skin notices it feels dry due to oil being stripped by soap, creates more oil to compensate.

Underarm "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.

I shave my armpits and intently wash them about once a month. Really helps cut down on the post gym smell.

Even your backside? I mean, even if you wipe very well then surely without soap you’re never actually clean.

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