My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it common in the days of the past to see frequent outbreaks of contagious diseases?
Agreed that part of it is due to bad sanitation. But then one could argue that was a part of the symbiotic ecosystem too.
Perhaps we are meant to just die if get diseases until we evolve to tackle them. But then most people won't agree with you on that. Especially those who are dying due to those diseases.
People died from starvation in the past. That doesn't mean that unlimited and unexamined calories are always good.
Similarly, treating serious bacterial infections with antibiotics is a good things. Sterile surgery is a good thing. Microbes don't know if that they are supposed to be symbiotic. Sometimes they can be both. They harmful in certain amounts or circumstances and helpful in others.
BTW, the idea that killing all microbes is bad is not really a controversial one. It's just the specifics that need to be worked out. For example, we know that sterilization an antibiotics raise the risk of harmful fungal infections (thrush, ringworm, etc). Wrestlers or other especially at risk of ringworm (for example) avoid anti-bacterial soap.
Many of the diseases have diagnosis and classifications only in the recent times. Before that it was just that a person would fall ill, and then die.
Now we have the most detailed and granular classification, hence we feel the diseases are appearing now.
But I think most diseases existed back then too.
Cholera and HIV also evolved recently and thrive because of denser populations.
The statistics also show infectious diseases declining a lot over the last hundred years so I you're theory can't be correct.
The reason was that European peoples had exposure to some kinds of disease that peoples in the Americas did not. Civilizations in the Americas had domesticated animals for quite some time, just different kinds of animals.
The Europeans had much more hard-core diseases because of a mix of factors (including animal domestication), but the chief one was population density.
European diseases evolved in tandem with the people themselves -- each time something swept through the population and crippled/scarred/killed large numbers of the people, the folks with some level of natural immunity would be favored. The diseases would evolve (at a rapid pace, due to reproducing at enormous scale...), as would the people (very painfully).
People in the Americas were mostly more widely spread out. A nasty variant on a disease that wipes out a village and stops there goes extinct.
There were some cities, trading between areas, etc., but not on a European scale.
(Source: "Guns, Germs and Steel", which went into this all in fascinating detail... though admittedly I read it years ago now).
The other factor that hasn't been mentioned is that a disease can be deadlier when the population density is higher. The disease can find another host to infect before the original dies and still stay active. Whereas in a situation with spread apart populations the deadlier variant would die out once the small local population was killed.
The European diseases carried this much deadlier profile and thus were more effective in killing native americans than native american diseases were in killing americans.
Basically, Europeans had domesticated animals on a much larger scale than a few llamas a few places on the continent. It was deeply integral to the old-world way of life in a way that Native American culture didn't even come close.
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.
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:
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?
> 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.
Most people find best results with still occasionally shampoo-ing, usually a couple of times a week. Doing daily shampoo will strip your hair of its own chemicals and oils which is damaging in the long run, but for a lot of folks not shampoo-ing at all can cause issues with dandruff or scalp irritation.
BTW this thread is starting to feel like a Reddit discussion :) [and I don't mean anything bad about Reddit that way btw, just that it's kind of unusual to talk about haircare on HN :)]
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.
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.
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.
"East Asians have fewer such glands than Europeans and people of Sub-Saharan African descent, which decreases their susceptibility to body odor.[28][30] Individuals of Sub-Saharan African ancestry have the largest and most active apocrine glands.[31] Racial differences also exist in the cerumen glands: apocrine sweat glands which produce earwax.[3] East Asians have predominantly dry earwax, as opposed to sticky; the gene encoding for this is strongly linked to reduced body odor, whereas those with wet, sticky earwax (Europeans and Africans) are prone to more body odor.[32]"
Why would your SO be frustrated by minimal BO on your part?
Jealousy !
Furthermore, to quote a microbiologist friend, an antibacterial soap that kill 99.9% of bacteria (assuming you take the percentage at face value) will just result in the remaining bacteria dividing until your skin has returned to stasis of the microorganisms living there in just a few hours.
Use a normal soap. Wash your hands. Don't freak out about it.
Are what about anti-perperents or deodorants? Are you using them or skipping them as well?
And some guy wrote a follow-up a year later. http://boingboing.net/2011/01/04/i-havent-used-soap-i.html
Water + occasional baking soda and apple cider vinegar for my hair is what I use.
EDIT: I use normal soap and shampoo.
I do still use deodorant.
if you are in direct contact with known deadly bacterial agents such as staph, trig, sal, anth, giardia etc use soap. As these bacterial agents are rare out side of their known sources of infection; uncooked meats, reptiles, hospitals, etc.
Washroom hygiene is different than if you wash between your toes or not. No one on earth has died from Cholera of the pinky toe gap.
(I don't disbelieve you, I ask for putting it on Facebook. Friday. :-) )
Edit: Ah of course, the subject was washing hands after the toilet -- not "haven't showered in years" :-)
'there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells...'
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-h...
(Article explains: bacteria have smaller cells than our own and that they would fit inside a 1/2 gallon jug. Note to those outside of the U.S.A., Burma and Liberia: 1/2 Gallon = just under two litres).
[Burma] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_units_of_measurement
And I have zero idea how you made the leap to menstrual hygiene, which is a completely unrelated topic.
Antibiotics, maybe. Probably. As for soap usage on skin, the question is definitely more difficult to answer and certainly not as simple as you want to put it. There are tons of people out there who have no problem bathing every day and using soap very regularly. If it were really a direct cause of skin issues, you'd hear a lot more about it.
Aren't we living much longer then before though?
The average media reporting and understanding of statistics makes it seem as if a 50 year old person in medieval times was a rare occurrence, which it was not.
(at least I think this is what you were saying?)
If a baby/child doesn't die, then the only logical conclusion is that it is (and by extension "us" are) living longer...which validates his statement.
This is mainly due to the improvement of hospital facilities and the end of life treatments. we are not living longer better - the older you get the more cripple you are likely to survive. What really matters in life expectancy is the ability to live longer in good health.
http://jfh.sagepub.com/content/14/3/195.abstract
Hospitals were death traps 200 years ago.
How much your armpits smell doesn't really have a lot to do with longevity...
http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-Allergi...
There is a scientific reason for the gut-level responses - human beings evolved or have been socialized to associate certain senses of grime or uncleanliness with something that could hurt them. Maybe it goes too far at times, but it has worked remarkably well.
Part of the scientific process is not just a hard question about whether it works or whether it doesn't, but is instead a psychological evaluation of how do we as people adjust to that if it is the case.
When you start saying you are disappointed in others and that we're better than this, you are getting on an intellectual/moral high horse which stifles discussion.
Given that bathing habits and frequency have varied widely by time period and region, I doubt this gut level response is the result of some biological evolutionary process. It seems much more likely that the response is cultural in nature.
That being said, being socialized to believe something starting at a very young age and continuing throughout your life creates a gut level response in the same way physical evolution would.
People aren't going to just dismiss that gut level response, the reasons behind those feelings have to be discussed to break through them.
Sure, but to what extent is it causation and what extent simply correlation. Also "sanitation" covers a huge range of improvements and activities, and just because some can directly be linked to life expectancy, doesn't mean that they all can.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I think a similar thing works with anti-perspirant. I switched to deodorant only and after a couple weeks I noticed I sweat less. I now only use deodorant, and my t-shirts and normal shirts last a lot longer before getting nasty looking under the arm pits.
Ideally you need to go a week or two without shampooing
to allow your hair to adjust.
The hard part is having a container convenient enough to house the baking soda and get it into my hair :)
* deodorizes my dog in between baths * i put some on my toothpaste and it gets my teeth extra clean * or use as mouth wash/gargle with a cup of water * i pour some on my rugs and then vacuum 30 minutes later to de-odorize * de-odorizes my fridge quite nicely * cleans my porcelain sinks * sprinkle some in my hamper to keep my dirty clothes from stinking up while they wait to be washed
if you google uses for baking soda there's about a million more potential uses but this is the stuff that i use it for regularly.
They're ¢99 at my grocery store and as long as they're made out of PET, they'll be resistent to baking soda.
Cost to me: about £3 / year.
Hair quality: great. I used to pretend I didn't care, but I do and this works and I'm never going back to shampoo.
The first week you will smelly a bit iffy (off). It's the transition period. Powered thru and was fine after a couple of weeks and smelled quite okay but my hair suddenly became this mop of oil,gooey gunk on week 4/5 and I couldn't get rid of wash it out. When hair gets that oily, all the dirt, dust and grime sticks to it and it's almost impossible to get rid of it. I tried baking soda, apple cide vinegar and few other things without much success. My hair had never been that oily. Off the NOPOO regiment I'd shampoo once a month and I'd be fine.
Even though my BO was quite good leading up to the sudden oily hair 'syndrome' it became very bad very quickly. It became bad because I couldn't really get clean because the oil from my hair would get onto my body and dirt would gradually layer from wash to wash. Try washing something oily with just water. Now I couldn't get my body clean effectively from the nowash protocol. So I gave up for the sake of my coworkers ( and my dating life).
Sadly the protocol doesn't seem to work for all skin and hair types out there.
It turns out that many male-grooming/hair care experts recommend you shampoo at most once or twice a week, and to not "lather" the shampoo, but instead rub it on top and downward to prevent breaking up the oils on your scalp & in your roots. The rest of the time you do the same procedure, but with just conditioner instead of shampoo.
Besides this method, I also use a kind of spray-on hair treatment and conditioner that's loaded with all kinds of healthy crap I don't understand, but basically keeps my hair healthy while also giving it weight so I can style it. By adding water I can comb out whatever dirt the conditioner+water loosens. So I don't need to wash my hair daily, and it doesn't get greasy.
I will say that without at least washing my hair it begins to itch after a week, especially if i've been exercising. So while this product is interesting, there's definitely some kind of cleaning that needs to be done on a regular basis.
In particular, for me it has a huge correlation with the "glycemic index": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index
Chocolate is the biggest scalp hair oil producer of all. For me it is incredible how fast it goes from my stomach to my hair, I feel my hair grease within hours!! of eating it. The same could be said about acme and skin pimples.
If instead of Chocolate I eat Apples or even sugar fruits like plums, I have no such a problem. It has to be something like the fiber controlling the sugar released on blood per second or something.
http://personalcaretruth.com/2010/05/a-closer-look-at-sodium...
They would rot in the bottle if there weren't some preservatives in there. After the soap gets diluted into water, the preservative isn't going to work anymore.
It was bad for about a week. After that, my hair has been more manageable and better looking than it ever has in my life before (I'm not quite 30). It takes a couple of days without cleaning for my hair to get as bad as it'd get after only hours in the past.
I still use body soap, but I don't do anything to my hair other than rinse thoroughly with water. It's been a seriously life-changing thing for me.
If you just leave it alone (assuming no other serious health problems) it should revert to a naturally attractive state.
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.
I think it takes someone from outside to really tell the difference. It's like going to Iceland and realising the water in the north has a smell of sulfur. After 2-3 days of showering in it / drinking it you don't notice anymore.
from far outside :) It is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't seen local young women there spraying "Vapona" insecticide ("dichlorvos" ("dichlophos" in Russian)) on their open legs - quick and convenient solution for wearing daisy dukes in a killer mosquito and flies area :) If you know what Vapona/Dichlophos is and how it smells and what it does to your brain ...
Its a pretty interesting theory.
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.
I've found it very noticeable how much I stink after stress, like public speaking. It's because cortisol and adrenaline ramp up inefficient anaerobic metabolism.
The point is to keep the smells in reasonable control to a point where its not overpowering. Like dogs do smell. After a month or so they get pretty filthy and stinky. However the fist week/2 they are perfectly fine.
I met these men. I got close enough to shake their
hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they
in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either
the visual or olfactory sense.
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 mention their recent breakup only because it made me believe him even more. He didn't have a vested interest in talking her up at that point!)
She was of European descent, by the way. I mention that because many Asians tend to have less body odor, for reasons that other responses have mentioned.
She was a vegetarian as well, though I'm not sure that's relevant.
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.
What a sadly unscientific and ignorant answer.
There are literally MILLIONS of types of bacteria. We REQUIRE millions of bacteria to simply exist and live as human beings.
Not all bacteria is evil and will kill you. Most won't! In fact, if you kill all of your personal awesome bacteria, the harmful stuff can move in because you don't have any anymore. (Well if you "killed all of your own bacteria", you'd very likely be dead as well...)
You get to fight my bacteria, and every humans bacteria, every day of your life. It's as normal as breathing air and eating food. Your mother colonizes you with bacteria at birth and through feeding. Our foods help us build immunities. Our friends and being outside and playing and working and everything we do exposes us to bacteria. Being exposed to bacteria isn't evil or wrong. Being weak to bacterial exposure is like being weak to sunlight-- it is going to dramatically change your life and make you very "abnormal" as a human. That's not our fault.
"Soap and water have saved more lives than any medication, ever."
Proper hygiene has saved those lives, of which soap and water played a role. You put the cart before the horse. HYGIENE saved lives -- soap and water was the mechanism used to achieve hygiene.
" I take daily antibiotics, possibly forever. As a society, we don't just cleanse ourselves for our own well-being, we wash for others."
This article isn't about giving yourself leprosy and then infecting immunocompromised people.
For you to conflate "bad" bacteria with "good" bacteria is ignorant and massively hurtful to the cause of human health.
If you had read the article, you would know that they're supplementing personal flora with Nitrosomonas eutropha.
If Nitrosomonas eutropha can hurt you, you need to be in a bubble and NEVER exposed to any air, or the outside, or dirt, or any other humans.
Herd immunity won't save you from something so common, normal and helpful to humanity. And hurting all of us just to help you, denying us the necessary and amazing flora that makes our lives possible, is selfish and Darwinian in it's own way.
PLEASE respect that bacteria is ESSENTIAL to human life, and managing our own flora is ESSENTIAL to health and thriving. Just because someone wants to be healthy doesn't mean you have a right to accuse them of attacking you. If you're that sensitive, you need to protect yourself with heavy isolation. We're humans, not hermetically sealed robots. We are alive because of bacteria. Period.
Why do you think we wash our hands after toilet usage?
It's not because touching your own genitals, urine or even faecal matter will make YOU ill. You are most probably clean to yourself. We promote the habit because if we all do it, we are much less likely to make each other ill.
Same goes for infectious diseases. You wash your hands because even though you might have a healthy immune system (as do I), some of my colleagues might not. Or my grandma. Or in fact some random person I shake hands with.
The concept of herd immunity doesn't just apply to vaccinations. We do keep clean for others.
There's a naturalistic fallacy heavily at play here, because humans have never before lived in such close proximity in such high density dwellings as they do today. The idea that this doesn't merit some forward thinking on how we manage personal hygiene standards is ridiculous.
Do you know of any studies that show that frequent washing with soap decreases pathogens and promotes beneficial skin flora?
The anecdotal experience of people like me who stop washing with soap is that we smell better. This suggests that soap was disturbing our skin flora.
I'm willing to be proven wrong on that point, but you need actual evidence. Calling something "a naturalistic fallacy" without evidence of your own is a perfect example of a fallacy fallacy.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not just saying I smell good. Women spontaneously tell me "you smell good!" without knowing about my non-soap habit.
I'd think carefully about your anecdotal evidence. The social contract is we don't comment on matters of hygiene directly, and I know I couldn't smell how bad me and my schoolmates smelt after a couple of days field-trip out camping. That didn't mean we didn't.
And I thing hand-washing is good. We have clear evidence it works.
But is there any evidence that washing the whole body with soap on a daily basis is beneficial? The counter-evidence you speak of refers only to hand-washing.
As Wikipedia (and, apparently, G. E. Moore) would have us believe, the "naturalistic fallacy" is believing that you can reduce good/bad to natural states, and seems more closely related to Hume's "is-ought problem" than to the "appeal to nature". I actually think this comes down to disagreement about what is meant by "good/bad" more than substance, though.
Clearly, some do use "naturalistic fallacy" to mean "appeal to nature", and I'm not certain the original use of the term is worth preserving as distinct from Hume, but I'd encourage "appeal to nature" for clarity since that seems to have no ambiguity.
Not to a significant extent. In cases where people are exposed to other people's bacteria in quantity, they generally become (mildy) ill quite quickly while developing immunity - see fresher's flu etc.
If you had read the article, you would know that they're supplementing personal flora with Nitrosomonas eutropha.
And HOPING that N.Eutropha will out-compete their dangerous-to-others bacteria.
And hurting all of us just to help you, denying us the necessary and amazing flora that makes our lives possible, is selfish and Darwinian in it's own way.
I'm not suggesting you shower in bleach, just that you wash yourself with something more effective than fairy dust.
Again with the ignorance and nonscientific answer.
Fresher's flu is what happens when LARGE GROUPS of people from GEOGRAPHICALLY DISPARATE areas come together. All kinds of new bacteria are introduced. And again-- this is normal. This is humanity. This is us, there is no other way to handle the complexity that arises from our biological systems. That's the facts. Fresher flu isn't curable, it's the integration of bacterial culture. It's natural, and its inevitable. To use it as a negative is ignorance: it's a byproduct of our nature and evolution itself.
Even so, it is in no way equatable to you meeting ONE person or normal meeting of people from similar areas. Not on any level. Also your "not to any significant extent", I reject that. I'm sorry but you're wrong about that too.
"I'm not suggesting you shower in bleach, just that you wash yourself with something more effective than fairy dust."
This is simple: There is one human being alive responsible for your safety. You'll find him in a mirror. I, and every other living being is absolved of responsibility for your health.
I'm sorry, but if your personal defects make it dangerous for you to be near humans in a normal social setting, I suggest protecting yourself instead of a) blaming others or b) suggesting others protect you on your behalf.
You might find this weird but attempting to enforce a monoculture of hygiene because you think it's right is draconian, impossible, and naive to me.
Prefixing "I'm sorry, but" to an otherwise cold-hearted statement doesn't make it better.
You do realize there are literally trillions of bacteria in and on you right at this very minute, don't you?
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.
The fine article details a practice wherein rather than apply a scorched-earth policy to all microbes, known good species are intentionally cultivated to both deny a beachhead to invading pathogenic microbes, and for other benefits, such as removal of unpleasant body wastes.
Centuries of scientific inquiry has shown that there really is no such thing as a clean and sterile surface outside of certain specially-constructed rooms with carefully managed airflows. Soaps and shampoos simply favor species able to spread and multiply quickly. when used frequently enough, they also prevent humans from becoming a disease vector.
That frequency is a matter for investigation. It may be that only physicians, nurses, and hospital staff who always wash thoroughly before each and every patient contact are actually contributing to public health, and that people who wash every time they pass a sink during the day--maybe once per 3 hours--are simply breeding for triclosan resistance and favoring the tenacious and rapidly multiplying species.
Resistance to anything has an evolutionary cost - the most resistant species tend to breed slowest, the hardiest environmentals even slower.
Organisms which can live in volcanoes usually die when given mild conditions but competitor species instead.
Your statement also begs the question: given we're assuming you can reasonably disinfect yourself, why not simply re-innoculate with an optimum colony of bacterial species and short-circuit the negative effects?
An optimum colony of bacteria is hard to maintain and propagate outside the optimum environment--namely, on your skin. The colony also reacts negatively to being disinfected. The experiment is to establish such a microbiome and then leave it the hell alone.
There is a case to be made for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
What we're talking about here is different, it's a risk which applies to a small minority of specific individuals.
We are bacteria through and through! So much of our bodies and lives are dependent on bacteria.
You can't get herd immunity to a building block of our existence. You shouldn't want it.
Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health.
While I might disagree with the OP, the principle looks pretty similar.
Because, as has been posted above, one's personal biome is never going to be aided by herd immunity.
In short, if I have Polio, the chances of it spreading to a mostly vaccinated society is lessened because any immunized individual breaks the infection chain.
They're slightly similar in concept, but not really. Beyond that, the argument seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding that has persisted beyond its correction. Not washing skin and hair with soap and shampoo is a dramatically different matter than not washing one's hands with soap and water.
It's not just immuno-suppressed people, it's everyone, and a risk/benefit comparison with peanut allergies is spurious. If everyone smeared themselves in peanut butter before they left the house each morning, you'd have a closer comparison.
Plenty of studies at http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html - click on "Improved Health".
I am not convinced that an increased use of soap and shampoo would lead to a healthier society overall, much like an increased use of antibiotics does not seem to make a healthier society overall.
Food poisoning can be fatal and can have severe consequences.
Some food poisoning is a result of poor hand washing hygiene.
People washing their hands correctly would reduce the amount of problems of food poisoning.
The researchers in this article are definitely onto something - a better understanding of microorganisms' symbiosis with humans could have great benefits - but let's not forget that playing with this on a large scale is a massive experiment with potential negative consequences. The precautionary principle holds.
I wouldn't necessarily advocate for _increased_ use of soap and shampoo (and certainly not for antibiotics). I also believe there is an argument that partial disinfection is much worse than nothing, when viewed in terms of selection pressure on a microbial population, and I don't think daily use of antibiotic soap is a good idea (although Triclosan is actually pretty useless anyway).
However, I definitely don't think we should be encouraging _less_ hygiene, even though I'm obviously biased.
It didn't go into details; but, if the flora and fauna on our bodies actually protect us from the bacteria that is bad for us, then it is beneficial to have a layer of it. If instead, we're just carrying around animals that just happen to be there and don't do anything, then it may be a moot point. That said, if it is beneficial, then the population is actually less healthy for not having the layer; and if we had the layer, we'd get sick less often and be in less danger.
hygiene and rubbing chemicals all over yourself, while certainly related, aren't the same thing
For example the idea of bacteria protecting you is not so simple. They don't target "bad organisms" - there really aren't bad organisms. Monocultures are bad because they have no competitors. A mixed-ecology where you have several or many species which do compete usually inhibits the ability of any 1 type to take over successfully.
Of course, this is all happening on the surface of your skin, and how stable is that environment anyway? History says not very - and on top of that pretty much all of these things are really nasty if they successfully get under the skin.
One successful way to treat IBS-like symptoms for example is to take a course of antibiotics which are known to be mild - that is, they tend to have a balancing effect on the gut's fauna. I can personally attest this makes all the difference in the world.
Conversely, it's not at all clear that probiotics do anything - for reasons similar to the above. In a crowded environment, they can't easily take over, and bacteria are all about film-forming and quorum sensing and the like - isolated cells are much less active.
On top of those issues, there's a scale one. Humans basically regard about 150-500 people as being actual human beings like them (Dunbar's number). Historically we tribalized on that sort of scale but almost every culture started to use various scents or cleansing practices when they built larger and larger groupings. Sure, maybe we can get by with intact surface cultures, but can we get along? The human nose is important. Try being in a room with someone who has a bad smelling odour - the urge to simply leave is powerful. The urge to try and wash it off is powerful. Its not clear that we'd be at all tolerant of people who smelt sufficiently different - and I suspect that's why we standardized on a zero which we can all achieve.
Because the combination of decent emergency response and site-specific limitations on peanuts in places where there is a particular likelihood of them affecting someone who is hyper-allergic is currently viewed as an effective- enough mitigation to the hazard posed, not because people have an unrestrained entitlement to act as they want even when it is harmful to other's health.
Why is it so different? They both contribute to societal health, and personal hygiene is much less painful than getting your complete battery of vaccines.
Yes, and that is true ipso facto whether they are using soap or not. You will also be fighting the microbes of school aged children (a preschool is one hell of a petri dish), animals (domestic and wild), as well as the entire biosphere you inhabit in general.
If you have a compromised immune system, your neighbors decision to follow a soap-free cleansing regime (which is NOT appealing to me, btw) is the very least of your worries.
Assuming a basic level of sanitation, less faecal contamination (there is never zero) + less bacterial competition may be worse in practice than more faecal contamination + more bacterial competition.
The key advance in urban human sanitation, as I understand it, was not the use of surfectants so much as getting the open sewers off of the streets.
But I am not an expert on such things. I'd be grateful to be corrected by anyone who is.
When you take antibiotics it kills bacteria nonselectively, good and bad. This can lead to an overgrowth of harmful bacteria when you stop taking the antibiotics. Also good luck when the strain of bacteria you're fighting become resistant to the antibiotic you're taking... Maybe then you'll reconsider microbiomics.
The way I see it, both methods (using detergents or probiotics) are achieving the same effect: a decrease in harmful bacteria. The only difference is when probiotics are used, there is a lessened chance of a harmful microbe overgrowth.
It's still not a fun procedure, and the side effects are unpleasant. They're just less unpleasant than recurrent C. difficile.
What is your basis to say that the ones that cause odor are harmful ? It's a pure hypothesis.
Antibiotics do not and never have destroyed "all bacteria".
Taking an antibiotic does not kill ALL bacteria in a host, which is what you said before you edited your post. Nor can it be accurately said that antibiotics kill "nonselectively", whatever that means.
As a physician, when I've prescribed an antibiotic for your streptococcal infection or your pneumonia or whatever, you haven't been at any particular risk for "bacterial overgrowth" (whatever that means), "acne", or even "odor". But please feel free to link to some package inserts that list the relative risks and data for "bacterial overgrowth", "acne", and "odor" from popularly prescribed antibiotics.
And no, you're not at risk for "bacterial overgrowth" from washing with soap and water, of all things.
Antibiotics ARE overused. Antibiotic soaps are silly. Both help create antibiotic-resistant strains.
But scaring people who might benefit from antibiotics with misinformation about risks from "bacterial overgrowth" and simply washing with soap and water, while pushing "probiotics" puts people in about the same camp as the anti-vaccine anti-science crowd.
This entire N=1 post is laughable psuedo-science, which appears to have brought out the rest of the "reason from anecdote" crowd.
Here are a few good links to read up on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110419214734.ht... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora#Effects_of_antibiotic... http://www.naturalnews.com/042769_antibiotics_healthy_gut_fl...
The bacteria in the sorts of microbiomics discussed in this article are (usually) totally symbiotic. They aren't going to harm you, they are going to help you. They are going to be a secondary immune system and provide you a layer of protection. Removing them is actually more dangerous for you than encouraging them. In removing them, you create a vacuum that is easier for harmful and parasitic organisms to invade.
Edit: I haven't actually seen the research (and it might not have been done yet) on the specific species mentioned in the article. So I edited to speak more generally.
The idea many of us have been indoctrinated with that all microorganisms are potentially harmful invaders is not only completely false, that belief has lead us as a society to take action that was potentially very harmful to us. There's an entire ecosystem down there, and much of it evolved in symbiosis with us. We provide them a home, and in return they protect and clean us. They don't want to destroy their home, they would die, too.
We could learn a thing or two from them in that regard.
That said, it's unclear that regular washing with soap removes the kinds of bacteria that have the potential to be harmful -- I know for sure that skin is constantly covered with bacteria, with and without washing. So I don't know if GP's objection is realistic.
But you're right, I don't actually have the evidence to say whether the bacteria discussed with in the article are of the sort that are always harmless or of the sort that can be very harmful in the wrong circumstance. I'll edit the comment. I do think it is likely that they are largely harmless, because of the ammonia based metabolism. That would be pretty limiting. Also, their apparent fragility.
Sorry but that is absolute, unmitigated rubbish. I spent 2 weeks in intensive care, with a surgical scar from my sternum to my groin which de-hisced (burst open) because my own bacteria tried to kill me.
While they might be symbiotic in the right place (eg. the gut), they'll kill you pretty quickly if they get out.
But applying that emotional appeal to this argument is not valid. Yes, some bacteria are symbiotic in certain environments but extraordinarily dangerous if they escape into other parts of the body. There are particular gut bacteria that are especially notable in that regard. But there are thousands of species of bacteria that live in all parts of our body. The vast majority of these are harmless or even helpful, period. If they find themselves in an environment that isn't the specific niche they evolved for, they die.
While I haven't seen the research on the particular species discussed in the article, it is entirely possible (I would say likely) that it is one of those. Rather than one of the species that can wreck havoc if it escapes its proper environment.
Compare pathology of the bacterium under discussion (http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Nitrosomonas_eutroph...) with one that more clearly doesn't belong anywhere but the gut (http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Escherichia_coli).
The bacterial ecosystem of our guts is very poorly understood. However, we are starting to discover that some forms of obesity, irritable bowl and related disorders such as Crohn's Disease may be linked to an imbalance of gut bacteria. Possible culprits include overuse of antibiotics particularly in milk and meat; extreme cleanliness; and Cesarean sections as your gut bacteria is inherited from your mother during birth. We also know that there are some bacteria which have very positive effects, the so-called probiotics.
We need these things to survive properly and in a lot of cases it is more about having the right balance than getting rid of them.
I speak as a spouse of someone with Crohn's Disease who has been largely treated through diet and bacterial management. I don't have quite the grounding in the science as she does, but we have seen the effects.
In short, excessive cleanliness in our modern society may actually be making people ill. We need to find the right balance.
It's managed through diet and fauna control, but it sure as heck isn't caused by bacterial imbalance.
It's also worth noting that bacterial imbalance is usually treated with gut-balanciing antibiotics, which a single course of did wonders for me when I used to suffer severe gutache nearly daily.
Articles like the one here though sound far more ideological then scientific though.
EDIT: Also worth noting, there's scant scientific evidence that probiotics do anything. Near as anyone can tell the only effective things have been antibiotics, or faecal transplants.
I think you misunderstood the goal of the experiment and the method by which she did so. Culturing less-harmful bacteria which might crowd out more-harmful bacteria is actually a great thing.
The ultimate situation is where we're all covered in incredibly weaksauce bacteria that can be killed quite easily if need be, but in the meantime they out-compete all the truly nasty ones which are antibiotic-resistant. That way if someone gets an infection antibiotics (or scrubbing) will go a long way towards curing it in the rapidly-post-antibiotic era that some doctors think we are entering.
Specifically, she did wash her hands with soap:
> Every time I touched my hair, I had to wash my hands (I did wash my hands with soap).
Note how first Google can't find any results, then redirects you, and how none of the redirects I see are talking about any infection either.
I doubt an ammonia-eater is very long for the inside of our bodies, regardless of the status of the immune system.
The whole "life will find a way" concept is really a horrible way to understand bacteria. Bacteria are, in fact, incredibly fragile, almost incomprehensibly so. They gain strength both in their sheer numbers, which makes it hard to get all of them off or out of something, and the sheer diversity of the various species (and to a lesser extent, within species), which means that for any given condition, there's probably some species that can survive or thrive there. Bacteria in general are extraordinarily powerful and resilient... but those properties do not extend to bacteria in specific. In specific, I see no reason to suspect this species even shows on the threat meter, as compared to any ol' cold virus or conventional bacteria infection. I reserve the right to change that assessment if someone provides more evidence.
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.
Strongly disrupted ecosystem is probably more prone to invasive species. I'm quite surprised that we are getting away with daily washing let alone antibacterial soap. Burning meadow to the ground every few months would let only the most resilient weed to survive and flourish. I think we are just lucky that none of the bacteria that are less prone to washing away, that we allowed to flourish to unprecedented levels by washing away their competitors is not fatally harmful to us. I hope we will get to undestand this whole thing better before some of that resilient fairly harmless bacteria evolves flesh eating capabilities.
The only reason a bacteria will be less prone to washing away is if its useful for our skin in some way and has a symbiotic relationship with it. In which case its highly unlikely if it will turn out to be harmful in the long run.
In any case, is there any evidence that we do have some skin microbiota that sticks even after good soap wash?
Why do you think that ability to produce glue that's resistant to soapy water might only come from some form of symbiosis with the host?
> In any case, is there any evidence that we do have some skin microbiota that sticks even after good soap wash?
Do you think soap producers wouldn't claim that their soap removes 100% of bacteria instead of 99,99% if it wasn't provably false?
And what do you mean by good soap wash? Do you know how surgeons wash their hands? And yet they still cover those thoroughly washed hands with sterile gloves.
Infection rates double if there is a hole in a glove despite the thorough washing. I think you may consider it to be evidence.
http://www.quora.com/Surgery/Why-do-surgeons-wash-their-hand...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I found that Johnson's "No More Tears" baby shampoo is very effective and gentle and CHEAP. I don't have long hair but I just use that once or twice a week.
There are a lot of expensive shampoos that are equally gentle, but with those I think you're mostly paying for the brand name and the fragrances.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
My wife would certainly tell me if I ponged.
Usually, I just get "you smell buttery", and that does not seem from context to be any sort of objectionable smell.
But when it comes to smells, it would be better to rely on someone not already habituated. You almost have to walk up to a complete stranger and ask their opinion.
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.
Haven't we learned that mono-culture is a bad idea yet?
http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bronners-Magic-Soaps-Pure-Castile/d...
Only in the liquid soap. That's why I prefer solid soap bars.
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...
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.
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_...
[2] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...
[3] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...
[4] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....
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
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....
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.
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.
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.
... as does most adolescent acne.
I honestly think I won't use soap or shampoo for the rest of my life.
Look, I'm not saying you stink, but you need to smell hobo-levels for people to speak up about something like this; a smell level way beyond what would have negative social repercussions.
What I'm saying is: even if you smell a little, not enough to put people over that (huge) threshold to bring it up to you (note the recurring 'Ask Abby' topic of 'how do I tell my colleague/spouse/friend they smell'), you'll still be known as 'that smelly guy'.
(again, not saying you smell, just that 'nobody ever told me' is not enough to believe you don't, and being falsely informed of this topic will have real consequences for people).
I've basically had the same experience that graeme has wrote about in his comments earlier: people have actually complimented me on my smell without knowing that I don't use soap, and I've been in a long-term relationship (3+ years) without me telling my partner that I'm not soaping and them not saying anything to me.
I think it's also important to point out that I still shower or bathe every day (and additionally after I work out), so I'm still getting clean.* I just don't use soap, just lots of water and scrub the hell out of my skin with a washcloth.
*Yes, here we could parse out what I mean by "clean" but you'll just have to trust me on this one.
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.
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.
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.