Here is the link
He claims that in six weeks the body regulates itself and that shampoo and soap disturb the body’s ph. Apparently, the body produces it’s own oils that keep it clean. Shampoo and soap dry these oils (or something). It’s all confusing.
What do you think? Pseudoscience or true?
Kind of true, and he says it in the blog. It works for some people and not for others. I know several people who do not use soap or shampoo and they are not dirty at all. In fact they are upstanding free-spirited members of society. They use other things, but not soap or shampoo. Many people only use organic materials because they do not like chemicals…I understand that and to some extent agree with it.
Soap led to modern-day sterilization, which is one of the reasons surgery is so much safer today than it was 100 years ago. I imagine you would want your doctor to scrub his hands and tools with soap or sterilizing agents prior to sticking them inside of you!
Our ancestors got along for a very long time without shampoos or soaps, and still found each other appealing enough to procreate with. So of course it’s possible to go without soap. Soap is not necessary as in, necessary for the survival of the human race. As long as everyone will not get seriously sick and die before managing to have children, even without soap, then it’s not “necessary.” But soap is a huge quality-of-life booster. It’s just a really handy thing to have around, and could have saved a whole lot of lives lost to preventable infections through the ages.
I don’t negatively judge people who choose not to use soap, though. It’s not a problem, as long as they have relatively sedentary jobs and don’t make their body odor anybody else’s problem. However, pretending disinfectants and soap aren’t awesome inventions that led to a lot of first-world advances nowadays is silly. It’s only through the discovery and invention of soaps and soap alternatives (and modern-day industrialization/air conditioned desk jobs) that our culture has developed the luxury to go without them sometimes.
I’m pretty sure the guy in question is still bathing with water, just not soaps. I’m not aware of any study that I can cite, but I don’t doubt what he says. I suppose the fact that people exist at all could be offered as proof; soap is pretty new in the grand scheme of history.
I think people consistently underestimate water’s potential as a cleaner all by itself, which is especially true when the body is constantly shedding old skin and hair. You don’t really have to dissolve anything.
It may be off topic a little bit… Back in my apartment manager days, I actually did some experiments with several of the cleaners we used. I found that water and elbow grease was often equally effective as cleaner and elbow grease. Many people do their household cleaning with water and baking soda (as a mild abrasive) or water and vinegar. Some of the cleaning products they’re selling out there are complete garbage.
I read on there that when you abstain form using soap and shampoo, skin problems and acne will disappear. Plus, body odor is more pleasant. I haven’t use soap for a week now and I stink. I know he mentions six weeks as the adjustment. Frustratingly, he doesn’t appear to back up his points with any real evidence. But, he makes a compelling argument nonetheless.
No link because this was back in the 1970s, however I still remember it.
Some university students in the UK decided to go a year without using soap or shampoo, just hot water. Within a couple of months, their hair and skin “normalized” and stayed very clean, no body odor, no skin problems.
I guess it all sounds good to me, and I can see trying it, however there are certain times, in my opinion, where I, as a female, feel I definitely need soap.
I met Richard at the Ancestral Health Symposium last week, in fact I actually sat next to him at one of the presentations.
His hair and skin looked completely normal and I didn’t notice any odor (despite the warm weather).
I’ll vouch for it.
A substantial amount of a person’s natural aroma is genetic, or so I have heard.
Anyway, though I was born with such annoyances such as the total lack of binocular vision and a certain degree of face blindness, I also seem to have received some nice features such as the ability to wiggle my ears and … to skip bathing for great lengths of time without smelling bad.
And I regularly run about 25mi/wk, coming home soaked in sweat several times a week.
My wife is simply amazed at how this seems to work, and she does a double take when I tell her I haven’t taken a shower for a week or two. She would be the first to let me know if there were an issue.
I can’t see how to avoid shampoo though. After four or five days hair gets unpleasant and I do a quick sink shampoo job.
I just got back from a four-day canoe trip in the Maine wilderness. Because people are now strongly discouraged or even prohibited from using any soaps or shampoos in water bodies (even biodegradable, phosphate-free types*), I went without bathing for the whole trip. I did swim in the lakes and rivers every day, though, and felt fine at the end of the trip.
*If you’re going to bathe in the wilderness, you’re now supposed to do it at least 200 feet away from a water body, using water you haul up yourself, which is far more trouble than it’s worth, IMHO.
Since February, I have gone mostly without soap or shampoo. I still take daily showers, but I don’t use soap; I just scrub my skin with hot water. I will occasionally use soap if I need to clean off something that doesn’t come off easily with water. I keep my hair cut pretty short (1-2"). When it gets longer, it starts to get unwieldy without shampoo, and I cut it off again.
I do still use soap to wash my hands regularly, and I use soap to clean cuts and scrapes. I do use deodorant. As far as I can tell, I smell fine. I’ve asked people I trust to give me the bad news and they agree that I smell fine.
My skin is the clearest its been in 15 years. The first couple weeks my face felt pretty oily, but the level of oil went back to what feels like normal levels after a bit.
In spite of the fact that I made soap for years and looove handcrafted soap–I don’t use it all that much. I don’t use soap at all on my face (or any other cleanser, unless it gets really dry and then I may use an oatmeal scrub.)
If I don’t have any handcrafted soap, I may use shower gel on my body, but that’s really only because I like the smell of the one I buy. Otherwise, I scrub with hot water (or again, oatmeal or salt scrub in the winter when my skin gets dry) and that’s it.
I make scrubs with oats or salt and whatever oil I have on hand…gets me clean and moisturizes. Soap, no matter what kind you use or what the manufacturer tells you, dries your skin–even the lovely handmade stuff I use to make myself.
What about radio?
I stopped using any soaps or detergents or cleansers of any kind (save water) on my face about 2 years ago, and that’s gone very well. During the recent heat wave, though, I did begin gentle washing with a detergent based cleanser (actually, the foaming “handsoap” in my dispenser, which is watered down shampoo) several times a day just to cool down and cut the grease - which, acclimated to no soaps or not, got much worse when the thermometer hit 100+. Now that it’s cooled off, I’m back to water only, without a period of adjustment needed.
Can’t do it on my head, though. Based on the advice that “all curly/wavy hair is secretly dry hair, and shampoo makes it frizz”, I lasted about 4 1/2 weeks of conditioner only washing before I broke down. It was just too itchy and oily and gross. Now I maintain that, book learnin’ aside, I *do *have oily wavy/curly hair and an oily scalp. Maybe if you’re a dry scalp/hair person it would work, but my scalp never seemed to get the memo. I doubt a week and a half more would have made a sudden dramatic difference, though I did notice a big improvement at the end of week one (just not enough of an improvement for me to live with). After that, no change.
I use shower gel because I like the smell of it. Can’t say I’ve noticed any real difference in body odor on those occasions (like camping) when I only shower with water.
But you can take my shampoo when you pry it from my greasy hands.
I don’t understand how it works. Of course your body produces natural oils that trap dirt. But the point of soap is that it binds the water to those oils, so you can wash them off, taking the dirt with you.
Perhaps the OP can clarify, but generally when the anti-soap/shampoo comes up, the hypothesis is that soaps and shampoos dry our skin out because they rinse away those oils, and then the body goes into overdrive and makes too many of them. This, they claim, leads to a circular problem as people turn to soap and shampoo to remove the oils again, leading to more excess oil production. The theory is that by not using soaps or detergents which strip away these oils, your skin’s oil production will stabilize, meaning your skin and scalp and hair won’t be greasy, but their natural state of perfection. Water alone (or oils or conditioner) is believed to remove the dirt and leave the oil, with soap/shampoo being unnecessary.
Back in the late 1990s the KILL-BO project found that armpit stench seemed to be caused by clothing that’s infected by bacteria. You can get away with no-soap showers, but only if you use sterile shirts. But wear a (laundered) non-sterile shirt and your stink returns within a couple of hours.
I messed with this and found that a third-cup of bleach in a laundry load would create the sterilization effect. With sterile shirts and antibacterial roll-on (Michum,) I could occasionally go without bathing for over a week! Then nine days later the armpit stench would suddenly ramp up full blast.
See: Wayback Machine
also:
Are towels supposed to bend?
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-24/
I just use hot water, except for my armpits, hair and sometimes my face. My skin issues make soap and most other cleansers off limits for me. However, I do use a prescription shampoo.
I do know someone who does not shampoo and she has thick, shiny hair that doesn’t look or smell bad. She rinses it in the shower and if she has a problem with her hair she might use a baking soda/water rinse. She says the baking soda does the job of getting the campfire smell off her hair.
I know some people who claim not to smell who actually do, so yeah, please ask someone beyond your SO if you smell, since your SO will find you far more pleasant than the general population will.
How effective this is will depend on the individual. When I’m in the field, not many of us were deodorant. All of us shower because we get quite dirty and I think most of of use soap to clean. Water usually isn’t enough to clean me when I’ve been in the field on a messy day. Some of us just smell strong, while others are rank. Some can go without shampoo, but others can’t. I have curly/wavy hair and, while dry towards the bottom, it is decidedly greasy towards the scalp. My no-poo experience ended dramatically bad.
So I’m giving this a go and I’m about a week in so far. Daily to every-other-day showers. No soap or shampoo, but I do use deodorant (not antiperspirant). No hair product, I haven’t shaved anything for many many years, and I don’t do make up.
I’m still in the apparent oily hair phase which is the only drawback for me, but it improved quite a bit after spending an hour on my bike getting sweaty the other day. It seemed to break up some of the excess oil. My face feels oilier than normal in the shower, but once dry, my face as well as the rest of my skin feels great.
Having opted out of most of the feminine hygiene rituals long ago, and since I tend to favor short, dykely hair-do’s and my hair is straight and fine and there is a lot of it, hair product has been the only area where I have a history of consistently been a definite product consumer. That and deoderant, of which I prefer ‘men’s’ fragrance options. I have often had issues with my scalp breaking out if I ever tried to go more than a day without a shower while using product, and since my hair just sort of hangs heavy and sits there straight when it is clean and product-free, I would turn to product often.
I definitely see potential for my hair being much more manageable and user friendly once I equalize a bit more, and I definitely agree with showers now being very relaxing compared to the bar/bottle agenda of tasks.