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Comment by Fezzik | Hacker News Reader

I highly encourage everyone^ to at least try ditching the soaps, scrubs, and shampoos - unless you have a medical condition, your skin and hair will probably feel amazing. I haven’t used body soap or shampoo in well over 15 years. That said, I take 3 short showers everyday - after running in the morning, after swimming in the afternoon, and before bed. At 38 I get a lot of compliments about my skin and hair, and I think the trick is not wrecking them with chemicals that primarily remove all the natural oils that they need to be healthy. I do use Old Spice Deodorant (no antiperspirant) as I have not found a good replacement for classic DO. Minimalism FTW.

^ it works well for me, a male with an average head of hair. Results may vary.

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Every single person I have ever known who tries this just ends up stinking and greasy, and everyone else can detect that but they just don't say anything out of politeness.

I think you need a clean diet, exercise and outdoor time to go along with it.

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.

I've been on month+ hiking trips. I definitely don't think I smell good after 2 weeks in the woods. But hygiene becomes very important to long term success, especially in wet climates. If you know what you're doing, then you won't smell offensive either.

Can you share some info/hygiene tips for a situation like that?

I could write like a whole essay on it, but the main points are:

* 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.

It's the clothes that start to stink, especially the synthetics. If you were naked, you wouldn't smell much. Maybe a bit of oniony armpit smell, but not the rank gym locker smell.

Define "clean diet" in a non-pseudoscientific way.

I believe "clean" means they wash their vegetables thoroughly. I don't know if that's scientific enough.

Low carb probably helps. Also likely: Low in synthetic chemicals, low in heavily processed foods.

> Low carb probably helps

So in other words, whatever the dietary fad of the day happens to be.

And here I thought you were asking in good faith.

Confirmation bias. The ones who do this and stink are the ones you end up noticing and remembering. Doesn't take a lot of those to form a noticeable pattern.

Meanwhile, there are probably plenty of folks, like myself, who shower quite rarely and happen to typically avoid smelling for days.

Chiming in to agree with folks saying, more or less, "there are two sides to this story."

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.

In decades of going to gyms, I don't ever remember being offended by anyone's natural body odor, but my sense of smell would certainly find offense at someone who showed up on the gym floor over perfumed with deodorant or other commercialized scent.

> In decades of going to gyms, I don't ever remember being offended by anyone's natural body odor

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.

My opinion on this is a lot of the time it relates to how clean their gym clothes are. In Jiu-jitsu it's immediately obvious who the guys are that use their training gear for more than one session before washing it (and they are the people no one wants to roll with). If people have clean gear and are sweating profusely (it's a very close proximity sport) it's rarely an issue if their gear is clean. Edit: training gear definitely has a lifetime too in this respect, at some point stuff just has a permemenent low level bad smell and at that point it's past the point of needing to be thrown away unless you want people to start thinking of you as the smelly training partner.

I definitely see that being possible. I think it helps that I spend an hour everyday in a saltwater pool. I’m 99% sure I don’t stink at all: I’m in court sitting a few feet away from very frank attorneys almost every day. They’d tell me if it was otherwise.

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 don't know if I can smell folks who don't use soap, but I can tell which of my friends like to wear clothes multiple times before washing them. Body oils oxidize, and that makes them smell. It's not a typical 'BO' smell like onions or cumin. It's just a musty, off putting odor that doesn't smell clean.

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.

What's your ear wax like? If you have 'dry' skin, expecting your experiences to translate to people with 'oily' skin is an error.

https://www.self.com/story/types-of-earwax

I also encourage people to stop using shampoo. I stopped over ten years ago and love the results, it's such a nice change I feel strongly enough to encourage others to do the same. Quarantine is a good time to try something different.

What was your hair routine once you stopped using shampoo? How long is your hair?

I have medium length hair and everytime I try to stop using shampoo/just use water my hair gets sticky and oily.

I have medium length hair, not at my shoulders but over my ears. My routine is to shower as normal (a couple times a week, or as needed) and always scrub and rinse my hair as if I were using shampoo but just without. I like to massage/scratch my scalp with my fingers before getting in the shower, I think this cleans better than doing it wet. I also think brushing or combing helps it look nice.

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.

I tried this too but my hair became too greasy after 1 or 2 weeks. Now I'm using shampoo only once a week and that works great.

Yes! I end up soaping my hair about once or twice a year if there's a sudden spike in oiliness (I don't understand why this happens) but the vast majority of the time I just scrub with hot water.

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.

How much do you exercise? What do you eat and drink?

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.

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