Rethinking the Science of Skin
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Disorders such as celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, rosacea, and eczema—all of which involve the skin, the immune system, and the gut—reveal just how intertwined these systems are.
As I noted a couple of days back, the so-called "immune system" is not a distinct, identifiable, separate set of organs and the skin's job of keeping out invaders makes it part of the immune system.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24015957
I will add that skin and gut tissue are both the exact same class of tissue: They are both epithelial tissue. So it should hardly be shocking that when one of your epithelial tissues has an issue, so does another.
By contrast, what I eat and drink has has a huge effect on my skin, and the only time I've actually looked 100% "normal" was when I was drinking an enormous regular dose of Chinese herbal medicine. But later I used a topical antibiotic, and that more or less fixed it: not as thoroughly as the Chinese medicine, but close enough (and it's way less hassle).
What is the moral of this story? I guess that no one I've ever spoken to has the remotest clue how the skin works.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246891221...
^ it works well for me, a male with an average head of hair. Results may vary.
I met up with one of my friends and his girlfriend who had been Wwoofing for a few months and camping/backpacking. Probably 2 weeks since they last bathed. I was amazed how they both just smelled kind of earthy, not at all like B.O. or funky just sort of like the earth. Maybe so much time in the dirt had built up a really healthy balance of bacteria on their skin.
* Keep dirty/wet stuff and clean stuff separate. Suck it up and put the dirty stuff on when you know it's gonna be nasty. Wear the clean stuff only at camp. Keep a clean pair of socks exclusively to sleep in.
* Air out/wash your body whenever it doesn't put you at risk of hypothermia. Keep shoes off at camp, etc.
* Dry stuff in the sun on the outside of your pack when you can.
* Fingerless gloves help regulate your core temperature and don't get dirty as fast as full fingered gloves.
And of course, good gear selection.
The harshest sustained conditions I've ever faced was a winter on the Appalachian Trail. Near-constant rain/snow, 10-40°F most of the time. Cold enough to kill but not cold enough to freeze and keep things dry. Most backpacking is not nearly that difficult.
So in other words, whatever the dietary fad of the day happens to be.
Meanwhile, there are probably plenty of folks, like myself, who shower quite rarely and happen to typically avoid smelling for days.
As someone who uses little in the way of soap, shampoo, etc.* I can smell the detergents, shampoos and what not on other people from sometimes a few feet away (and I don't have a great sense of smell). I just don't say anything, not out of politeness, but because I know that they have consensus on their side, so I'm the weirdo and they will automatically win that argument.
(I sometimes wish I could say something. Some people really stink to high heaven of perfumes in the various things they use and I have chemical sensitivities, so this sometimes really bothers me in a medical kind of way.)
While homeless for a few years (and mostly camping in the woods, basically), eventually animals would walk up to me surprisingly closely. I think I stopped stinking to high heaven of "city human" and smelled more like nature and they stopped giving me a really wide berth, like they normally do to humans, probably because many animals rely pretty heavily on their sense of smell to navigate their environment.
Meanwhile, humans routinely mistook me for a tourist because of my casual attire. They had to see me repeatedly to ID me as "homeless" based on my habits because my appearance (and smell) failed to register on most people as "Well, obviously, she's homeless!"
* in the shower. I wash hands with soap a zillion times a day. Germ control is my life.
We're all just tossing around anecdotes at this point but -
This is not at all my experience.
There are always some people at the gym who smell horrible, and I'd wager nearly all of them are not using an aluminum-based antiperspirant.
Edit, to add: the people who I work with tell me how I dress like shit regularly... I’m certain they’d tell me if I smelled as well.
I've gone years without using soap to wash my face and it worked fairly well. I don't know if I'd try it with the rest of my body though. BO is a funny thing. It varies with climate, clothing, hormones, diet, etc. It isn't just one smell. I have no doubt that you can avoid many components of BO by showering only with water every day, but I don't know if you can avoid all BO that way.
I have medium length hair and everytime I try to stop using shampoo/just use water my hair gets sticky and oily.
Before the switch I felt shampoo immediately left my hair too dry, then after a few days it would be too oily. I tried other remedies that all worked to some degree: wash with cold water, use conditioner, only shampoo at your scalp, use less shampoo and don't let it sit very long. Using less shampoo and using it less frequently had the best results and I just continued that way until I wasn't shampooing at all.
From what others have said, it may take a little time for the oil levels to subside if you stop soaping -- apparently there's a bit of homeostasis going on.
I think these make a lot of difference.
For me, I don't use soap, but I do use a neutral body wash such as QV or Cetaphil.
Works well.
I stopped using body soap in the shower about a year ago and I can't recall a time my skin has ever been healthier or cleaner.
Instead of soap, I use a wet washcloth and scrape my skin with it, similar to using a loofah or pumice stone or (as I infer from the article) wet sand. The dead skin, sweat, and accumulated dirt gets pulled right off even more effectively than with soap -- I never get that gross "skin pilling" thing anymore. I get zits way, way less often.
The washcloth obviously gets dirtier, even being thoroughly rinsed and wrung out several times, so I swap it out more often than I used to. The soap in the washing machine cleans it just fine.
I sometimes still end up with a mild musky armpit scent either way -- I find that scent pleasant on people, and think it's just how people are supposed to smell. Whenever it gets strong enough that I think others might be offended, I'll dash on a bit of baking soda, which kills the scent instantly (and I think resets the microbiome a bit).
(For reference: Male, European descent.)
There's a class of bacteria that are quite important to preventing bad smells, Nitrifying Bacteria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrifying_bacteria
They're quite sensitive, and is easily killed off by soap. You'd usually acquire them from contact with soil, but most of us aren't in daily contact with soil.
I've tried to breed the bacteria myself. I found a recipe for a medium for growing nitrifying bacteria, and just used some soil from the garden to start it. Sprayed the resulting water on one armpit and not the other. Asked my wife to smell both armpits after 3 days or so, and she found that the one I had sprayed smelled much better (I didn't tell her which was which)
There's a company that sells a spray with this kind of bacteria: https://motherdirt.com/
I've tried it and also found it has a similar effect. Can't say for sure that it increased the health of my skin much, I don't have many problems with my skin these days anyway (I use body wash, but only gentle and perfume free ones and not much/often)
I'd probably buy a spray with bacteria and use it daily if it was cheaper and I could buy it locally. I think in the future, probiotics for the skin will be as common as probiotics in food. It just makes sense.
I think it should be possible to make a simple procedure from making a probiotic treatment from soil that anyone could follow, similar to how people make sour-bread now a days. The procedure I used was way too complicated, but if you have access to clean soil, should be possible to just use a sieve to clean it up, mix in a thing or two that helps the nice bacteria multiply, leave it for a while and then apply it somehow.
1. Showering every day with shampoo makes you cleaner and more approachable (at least shower every other day). Even if it’s theoretically healthier to shower/shampoo less, you will appear less cleanly and people won’t trust your hygiene as much. They just won’t say anything... This is problematic. The same goes for deodorant. It is a must. If you are worried about chemicals, avoid anti-perspirants. They usually last longer than traditional deodorants but may contain aluminum shavings. Even then, many physicians and researchers agree that aluminum shavings aren’t bad for your health.
2. Moisturizing is often helpful. This is because there are a number of things that dry your skin, including: showering, AC, dry climates, and retinol. People who wear makeup or have oily skin might use cleansers, which dry the skin even further. Moisturizer is the remedy. It doesn’t have to be the fancy stuff. There’s almost no correlation between price and quality. At the very least, moisturizing increases comfort and aesthetic appeal. It can also improve skin health when your skin is excessively dry.
3. Sunscreen is critical. It prevents UV damage, reduces cancer risk, and slows aging. I understand that the article didn’t target sunscreen, but it vaguely casts doubt over “all those chemicals” used in skincare and downplays the benefits of pretty much any additive. I recommend daily use of a facial sunscreen that is SPF 30+, UVA/UVB, and zinc-based. Reapply after every 2 hours of continuous sun exposure. Even if you never use moisturizer but you regularly use a cheap SPF30 sunscreen, you will look better in old age than someone who uses expensive skincare products but never uses sunscreen. Both moisturizer and sunscreen may require experimenting with different brands to find one that suits your skin type (some are oilier than others). Note: Don’t use combination moisturizer/sunscreens, they have enough moisturizer but not enough sunscreen. The proper amount of sunscreen varies by face size, Google it.
4. Retinol has empirically proven anti-aging benefits. There are many pricey BS products that contain an ineffectual amount of retinol. Just ask your doctor for prescription retinol. Apply every night (not in the morning because it makes you sensitive to the sun) along with moisturizer. Your skin will visibly improve over the next 3-6 months, though it might look worse for the first month as your skin adjusts and you find the right routine. Retinol will also make your skin look better into old age. Lastly, it can be extremely effective against acne if that is an issue with you.
Sure, collagen creams are a scam. Sure, most skincare products over $10-$20 have no marginal benefits and exist to make you feel luxurious. I just don’t want people reading the article and then some of the minimalist Thoreau-esque comments here before coming to the conclusion that they should shower less and use almost no skincare products. Some skincare products are great, most suck. Keep it simple and stick to the recommendations embedded in points 1-4 above. If you use resources like Reddit to research specific skincare products, just be wary of their obsession with exfoliating acids (AHA, BHA, lactic acid...). They add complexity and cost for little marginal benefit unless you have acne.
The preponderance of unsolicited advice is to lay off the product, when that is the worst advice for the people who need the most advice.
I don't know about you specifically, but I've met a few people who tell me they've been on a no soap/low shower experiment for a while. In every case, I've been wanting to say "I know" but settle for a "huh, really?"
Almost nobody is really aware of their smell unless it suddenly hits them, like taking their sweat-soaked shoes off after a long day. My parents wouldn't hesitate to tell me that I stunk as a kid when I was completely unaware. I think people just don't mention it to other adults.
Since the coronavirus measures have been in place, I've been showering daily and mostly only 'shampoo'ing using conditioner in place of shampoo + conditioner and shampoo about once or twice a week. Like the post it was greasy at first then pretty normal with or without shampoo. Hair seems just as clean and much healthier.
> deodorant
Need varies. "Several years ago, scientists discovered a gene that was dubbed “ABCC11”. The team who discovered the gene found that it was a key determinant in whether a person will produce dry or wet earwax. Since then, it has also been discovered that people who produce “wet” ear wax also produce chemicals in their armpits that cause underarm odor when metabolized by bacteria. Those who produce dry ear wax lack these chemicals."
Last year I was at a week-long outdoors-event with lots of moving in the summer where we only washed off every other day in a lake and for various reasons didn't manage to get a shower before traveling back to a large city. I didn't smell myself at that point but was quite self-conscious that I probably reeked.
Apologized profusely to my friend I met up with there and they didn't know what I was talking about, even after asking them to awkwardly confirm up close. This is a friend that would be bluntly honest if I did indeed smell.
I do think there is something to that reducing soap/deo/shampoo use can be beneficial in reducing overall BO. But diet is certainly a factor here too - I never had as healthy-looking skin as when I gave up alcohol for an extended time. Also stress.
I'm back to daily showers since, but only shampoo once a week now.
I perspire, particularly under my arms. I have been using deodorant to mask the odour, or anti-perspirant to stop the sweating. I figured that, as it's the bacteria that live in armpit that cause the unpleasant smell, maybe low-perfume, alcohol-based hand sanitiser might be the answer. It has worked, there is no perspiration smell! So far - two weeks and counting - it has turned out to be a cheap, effective answer to my body odour problem.
FDA has issued a warning about hand sanitisers: The FDA’s ongoing testing has found methanol contamination in hand sanitizer products ...
The FDA first warned about some of the methanol-containing hand sanitizers being sold in retail stores and online in June. The agency issued a further warning earlier this month about an increasing number of adverse events, including blindness, cardiac effects, effects on the central nervous system, and hospitalizations and death, primarily reported to poison control centers and state departments of health. The agency continues to see these figures rise.
In most cases, methanol does not appear on the product label. However, methanol is not an acceptable ingredient in any drug, including hand sanitizer, even if methanol is listed as an ingredient on the product label. The FDA’s ongoing testing has found methanol contamination in hand sanitizer products ranging from 1% to 80%.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi... [Includes links to list of specific products.]
The US Food and Drug Administration has been repeatedly warning about methanol in some hand sanitizers distributed in the United States. Unlike ethanol -- the alcohol usually used to make hand sanitizer -- methanol is toxic and can even poison people through their skin. The FDA has warned against more than 100 hand sanitizer products.
In July, the FDA continued to warn consumers and health care workers not to use hand sanitizers containing methanol or wood alcohol (aka denatured alcohol).
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/health/hand-sanitizer-cdc...
Then a hairdresser advised me to stop using shampoo every day so I tried and the result was amazing. Some people were even asking what kind of shampoo I had started using .. But I did notice that never using shampoo makes my hair too greasy in the long term even though I wash it with water every day. So now I'm using shampoo only once per week and I'm very happy with the result.
Water good, use plenty, daily. Soap not so much, use small targeted doses. Natural oils good, use after soap. Shampoo bad, but maybe necessary; minimize use. Other "skin care" products mostly harmful. Avoid.
Now for the details and my experience. First of all, I live in the humid tropics, on a farm with animals, so the environment is on the extreme side in terms of demands on physical hygiene. Secondly, this is Brazil, and Brazilians are if anything even more averse to any trace of "BO" than North Americans, and they are more likely to tell you if they think you stink, so there's that. And thirdly my wife has as sensitive a nose as anyone I've ever known, and she has an allergic reaction to a lot of strong odours.
I believe, and it is consistent with my experience, experimentation and research in this regard, that when healthy skin is clean, slightly oily, and protected by a healthy "microbiome", it almost never has a strong "BO" smell. What people call BO is actually mostly the smell of certain opportunistic bacteria overgrowing when there aren't others to keep them in check... the more you eliminate it with soap and "personal hygiene products", the more of it you have soon after the slightest bit of physical activity.
However, note that I said "clean" skin. If your skin is dirty, depending on the nature of that dirt it can serve as food for all sorts of other bacteria and/or have its own smell.
So how do you keep your skin clean while keeping its microbiome intact and healthY? With water. Just water, but plenty of it; we never shower less than once a day, and often several times. Preferably not chlorinated water... this may be a key factor that's often overlooked in this conversation, and may limit the extend to which other people can follow my personal regime with the same results... Chlorinated water may disrupt your skin's microbiome even without soap, I really don't know. We use water from our own well (it's all we have anyway). But if you do have pure water, you don't need much else for skin hygiene.
When I do use soap, normally only on my hands and privates, I always spread a bit of natural oil afterward. I use coconut oil; just a few drops on the hands which I then spread on my still wet skin wherever I used soap. This compensates for the oils the soap removed; think of of the process as an oil-change, remove dirty oil, replace with clean oil. The quantity is small enough that it is mostly absorbed by the skin right away, and the skin never feels oily, but rather silky smooth and cleaner than without the oil, and it stays that way throughout the day. This is particularly helpful on the privates... once you make this a regular practice, you'll never want to go without.
Soap is certainly a powerful and useful tool for cleanliness... we know that it is potent at disrupting bacterial biofilms and even destroys viruses, so soap is a good thing in its own right. After handling animals or sticking my hands in the soil I wash my hands with soap. But overusing soap on the whole body is very harmful. Using a lot of soap strips your skin of both the oils on the cell membranes that are part of every cell's normal functioning and barrier to the outside, as well as the functioning bacterial communities that exist in an equilibrium that normally prevents the overgrowth of any specific (smelly or harmful) bacteria. So if you use soap at all, use it only on those parts that are most exposed to "foreign" bacteria which don't belong on your skin, and always follow up by replacing the oils the soap strips off.
The soap I use is the simplest soap I can find, just soap. When I lived in the US I used Dr. Bronner's. Here in Brazil I use diluted liquid coconut soap. In general, I much prefer liquid soap, as I find it easier to use in targeted way and I find it rinses off easier. Avoid any artificial scents and additives... they don't help anything and some of them may even be dangerous; none of this crap is regulated, and we really don't know much about what most of these chemicals do to organisms.
As for shampoo, it's a bit more difficult. Generally most people can get away with shampooing a lot less, and after an adjustment period the hair will get a lot less oily. But hair does accumulate crap that just water won't remove so easily and you will need some way to get it really clean now and then. Heavily diluted soap works in place of shampoo, but I for one use shampoo once every couple of weeks or so, and when I do I have to use conditioner as well or I won't be able to pass a brush through my hair afterwards. Some people just use diluted soap and follow with oil on the hair as well. YMMV.
I don't use any other "personal care products"... as far as I'm concerned that whole industry is 99% marketing; billions of dollars worth of crap that does more harm than good. When I travel to colder or drier climates, I bring my coconut oil and use a bit more of it on the whole body and that's all the moisturizer I need.
Now as for the people in this thread who seemed sceptical... I assure you, I'm at least as clean and probably smell better than you, and the people around me are not just "being polite".
Edit: Got one! https://outline.com/HX3MA7