I haven't used soap or shampoo in a year, and it's awesome

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/04/i-havent-used-soap-i.html

by georgecmu • 16 years ago

37 41 16 years ago

burgerbrain3• 16 years ago

Cool story bro, just stay away from me.

puredemo9• 16 years ago

Why is this upvoted? Almost everyone who has tried the no soap no shampoo thing says the same thing; that it works great. It's a little ridiculous that this trolling response is considered "contributing" to the site and has 17 upvotes.

burgerbrain3• 16 years ago

Troll? No, simply an expression of incredulity. Every time I've seen stories like these the one thing they always have in common is they reek of bad science. Confirmation bias, no control, no double-blind setup, non-empirical testing procedures, you name it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all I'm seeing here is one single piece of anecdotal evidence. If you want to convince me of the virtues of forgoing soap, then give me a peer reviewed paper in a major journal, not a blog about how your family and random strangers say that you don't smell terrible.

But hey, if anecdotal evidence is all we need today then let me add some of my own: I know two people who have admitted to trying this, and I really did like to be several feet away from both.

guylhem5• 16 years ago

I live in the FWI, in a tropical climate. Outside temperature is quite stable around 30 celcius in the daytime and a little less at night, say around 25. Here, avoiding BO requires a minimum of 2 showers a day. I tried this for a week and went back to soap and shampoo. Maybe in the canadian winter that's possible? Also, why is there all this hype for paleo stuff? Is this the new fad after environmentalist concerns?

mathgladiator• 16 years ago

I think the paleo stuff is a simple rechecking/rethinking assumptions.

For instance, after I went barefoot, I had significantly less back pain and have been able to triple my walking distance; furthermore, I'm able to run now.

What is going to happen, we are going to learn a few things, uncover old ways of doing things, adapt them to modern time, or toss them back into the trash.

civilian• 16 years ago

It takes longer than a week for your body to adapt to the new soap/shampooo regiment.

guylhem5• 16 years ago

I can't stay away from work more than a week. And I'm not sure I'd be welcome at work during a no-soap experiment..

Mz2• 16 years ago

I live in Georgia, which can be a 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day in the summer (high 30's Celsius) and below freezing (mostly at night) in the winter. I and my two sons no longer use soap or shampoo. I also don't use deodorant. I have made quite a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes to get well when doctors claim that isn't possible. Giving up soap/shampoo was a very late game change, after a whole lot of other stuff happened first.

My opinion: This isn't simple. The way you smell is due to a combination of chemical and bacterial/microbial influences and changing one of them can upset the balance, temporarily causing die-off, purging effects, etc. before some new balance is firmly established. For me, I first spent years getting myself healthier before it made sense to give up shampoo. Presumably, for those folks where this works, they don't have whatever chemical and/or microbial issue causes you to smell when you give it up. (My experience: The kind of stable temperature/climate you live in does a very poor job of killing off microbes. Drastic changes in temperature are hostile to microbes and make it harder for the same ones to be causing smelliness year round. Ridding your home of some microbe of that sort is quite challenging and you probably would not be willing to go to the lengths I have gone to in order to accomplish something like that.)

EDIT: I will add that I do put salt in my bath water. So it is not like I am using nothing to kill stuff.

guylhem5• 16 years ago

Thanks for the info. You had success in Georgia - wow. First report I saw of success in a warm climate. Maybe I could try your tricks if you are willing to share.

The only thing I just don't use is deodorant. It gives me real skin problems (rashes on dried skin), so I just use soap and water at various intervals during the day. It is so weird - tried various brands, same problems every time I use it again.

Honestly, that's why I thought it was worth trying in the first place: even if I never noted any side effect of using soap/shampoo, maybe I just don't notice them because that's what I consider to be normal.

Still, it really sounds like a fad, but if it is helpful, why not.

GrooveStomp• 16 years ago

I'm really interested in giving this a go. I think the secret is to keep showering. I've often given my hair a quick rinse when I haven't showered in days, and my hair looks and feels great for the rest of the day.

puredemo9• 16 years ago

Yeah, obviously you keep showering, that's not a secret. Just stop using soap and shampoo when you do.

dteoh• 16 years ago

Discussion from yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2069419

eof3• 16 years ago

I went for almost a year never using soap or shampoo. Shampoo I still rarely use. I rinse my hair with hot water and brush it sometimes. If you don't use product in your hair you only have the daily sweat, dirt, and sebum to get rid of. Brushing and rinsing is almost always enough.

As for soap I use it as I need to. Sometimes I can't get whatever is living in my pits to go away with any amount of hot soapy water and scrubbing. I posted on reddit about not using soap about 6 months into it and caught a lot of flack from people who just assumed I was a stinky hippy that didn't realize it.

A relatively healthy person with good hygiene can definitely get by without soap: sweat, rinse, dirt, rinse.. it's pretty easy to stay clean. I shaved (with a buzzer) my pits around when I started this and kept them short; this seemed to help a lot.

As to why people would do it; I was literally getting compliments on my skin. Your skin gets nice and soft after a while and then, when you use soap your skin isn't adjusted to it and it gets sucked dry.

That being said, I use soap regularly these days (just on pits/groin/ass).

guylhem5• 16 years ago

Where were you during that year? I mean, did it get hot?

eof3• 16 years ago

Vermont. It gets hot/humid in the summer here, but obviously this is not a hot climate.

coffeedrinker• 16 years ago

A lot of the body smells depends on diet. If a person eats foods that make them smell (and the foods can depend on the person) then you get smelly. If you know what those foods are and you avoid them, you decrease the smells your body produces.

This is true whether or not you shower :)

puredemo9• 16 years ago

I did the no soap thing for the last year as well, and also gradually switched from a vegan to paleo (mostly meat and sauteed veggies) diet during that time.

At least in my case, the dietary change didn't make any difference with body odor. The only difference was actually far less gas on paleo, from not eating soy apparently.

ciupicri• 16 years ago

Do you happen to have more details about this?

jessriedel• 16 years ago

>Sometime mid-summer I stopped by a barber and before I'd realized it he'd squirted a glob of shampoo onto my head. It was too late to protest, so I just sat through the scrubbing. For the following 2 weeks my hair was a mess: full of dandruff and totally uncontrollable.

I find this hard to believe. My money's on confirmation bias.

puredemo9• 16 years ago

Soap strips all the oil away, scalp dries out and flakes. I'm not sure why that would be hard to believe..

burgerbrain3• 16 years ago

Dandruff is primarily caused by bacteria on the scalp. The selenium ingredient (remember 'Evolution'?) in anti-dandruff shampoo acts as a anti-bacterial agent, not as a scalp-moistening agent...

eof3• 16 years ago

I wash my hair with shampoo only when I haven't been able to rinse it regularly and it accumulates gunk.

My blond, 3-4 inch long hair is shiny and lays on my head just fine. When I wash it.. its about two days before it goes back to being the same. Mostly it gets frizzy, but my scalp will also dry out to some degree, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone had increase dandruff.. though there is probably a bit of hyperbole going on here.

Ryan_IRL• 16 years ago

As uncomfortable as the thought is, I think I'd give this a shot. Regardless of the reliability of these claims, I respect people who question what's "normal" in society.

catshirt2• 16 years ago

I don't think there's a question of reliability... why would someone make it up?

ericb2• 16 years ago

It took me a long time to realize this, but you can find people who say/believe almost anything, even very earnestly, sometimes for the flimsiest of reasons.

People might try this out in the winter, and swear by it in online forums until summer comes, or a stressful interview comes up (stress sweat stinks more than normal), or until a coworker with super sense of smell says something.

It may work great, but healthy skepticism is just as important as a willingness to buck convention.

aufreak3• 16 years ago

Monasteries in India do this apparently.

narkee• 16 years ago

> Your body is designed to regulate itself. Smearing chemicals all over it wrecks its own built-in processes, and screws with naturally balanced pH levels. This made sense to me and I thought I'd give it a shot for a month.

These "naturalistic" or "pre-technology/paleo" arguments are bunk. Otherwise medicine would be unnecessary, as this argument leads to the conclusion that the body would regulate itself when presented with illness.

andrewvc• 16 years ago

The arguments may be bunk, but I do think we should challenge our base assumptions from time to time. From that perspective I find this sort of thing fun.

ElbertF• 16 years ago

I wonder if he stopped brushing his teeth as well.

wlievens• 16 years ago

Just because that's the case for illnesses (and brushing your teeth?) doesn't necessarily mean it's true for your hair.

lhnz• 16 years ago

I don't mean to be rude, but I often hear complaints from non-development departments at work of how bad some developers smell... While it might be possible with very regular washing and the right kind of body/environment for this to work, do you really want to risk the above?

What are you doing this for? Because you can? Because you have to spend less money on products? Because you disagree with using chemicals on your skin?

Most people will think you're disgusting if they find out. Entering into a psuedo-scientific debate with them will not work out in your favour. I don't think you should follow this just from a couple of people's anecdotes...

jonhendry• 16 years ago

I wonder how many of the no soap/no shampoo people neglect to mention the clouds of patchouli stink they walk around in.

I haven't used soap or shampoo in a year, and it's awesome

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