18 months without soap or shampoo: success!

18 months without soap or shampoo: success!

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This week Sean Bonner reported on his success in staying clean and odorless by showering with water and not using soap or shampoo. Sean was inspired by a blog post I linked to on a site called freetheanimal.com. It's run by a fellow named Richard Nikoley, who self-experiments with various types of diet, nutrition, exercise, fitness, and health regimens, based on his research in evolutionary biology.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is incredibly wild... if you follow the links on this page you will find very interesting information.

What I found most enlightening is that our ability to smell another's body odor is how we know what mate would be good... as far as health, genes etc.

Anyone who has ever had a loved one who died slowly knows the "smell of death"... and that is apparently only one of many pieces of information our odor communicates..

Here is an excerpt

For the most part of what i've read of these comments, it seems that no-one has yet addressed that a persons state of health and diet is the major contributer to body odours. You can be a person that bathes, shampoos and deodorises regularly but still stink offensively to high heaven from poor food choices, lack of fruit and veg, too much processed junk and the degenerative diseases developed. On the other hand, you can be a person who is physically active on a daily basis, eats only fresh food, lightly cooked meats and seafoods, avoids grain foods (because we are NOT birds) and smell perfectly fine from not using cosmetics and soaps, etc. To determine/decide if another potential mates' odour was offensive or not is one of many important evolutionary 'tools' to ensure that humans mated with other humans who were in good health with good genes. Cosmetics were originally developed to mask a persons poor health, rather than making the effort to improve their health (more like ignorance in the face of decadence).

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reply to post by HunkaHunka


Yeah.. I considered trying this. I have really naturally greasy hair though. I've heard your body starts to regulate after you have stopped for a long while, but those first weeks or months I would be downright nasty.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


do you listen to your body and notice all kinds of signals and changes in relation to what you do? if i eat anything that my body perceives unhealthy which is anything current medicine considers not that healthy for consumption (surprise) i get all kinds of changes to my body. first signal- my ears become very oily. normally they are dry. then gradually my hair becomes considerably greasy and later my face breaks out. chain reaction kicks in and everything goes downhill from there. soon as i correct my diet everything goes back to normal. if i smoke my body dries up and becomes increasingly oilier.

I actually do the same. I'll use soap only on my hair, armpits and private parts. I take a shower every day. Only water except that I use soap on the head , armpits and private parts.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


Yes, your right

Your hair begins to make a substance, so as soon as you put water in, all the fat will go away instantly.
We didn't have shampoos and stuff like that in the old times

Originally posted by Metallicafan
I actually do the same. I'll use soap only on my hair, armpits and private parts. I take a shower every day. Only water except that I use soap on the head , armpits and private parts.

I'm the same way.. but I'm going to try it without and see where that goes... of course I will need more direct water to certain areas... ;-)

When I was young, I used to use an antiperspirant. I was concerned that someone might be offended by my pits. Later, I decided that sweating was natural but that odor was not. So I stopped using the antiperspirant but continued to keep myself clean.

For the next year or so, I sweated like a pig. It took a long time for my body to once again regulate itself for the correct amount of sweat. I blame the antiperspirant for screwing up that part of my body.

Now, I'm much more careful about what I put into or on my body but I'm not giving up my shampoo or soap.

reply to post by ypperst


I don't know about your definition of old times but the Egyptians used soap and regularly bathed over 3000 years ago.

I wonder if there is a group of no toilet paper people yet. I can already see it now. "Its more natural"

I quit using antiperspirant/deodorant some time ago. I also quit using cologne as well. Your skin is your body's largest organ. Why bombard it with substances that it wasn't meant to deal with?

In regards to soap/shampoo, I find the term soap is typically used for what is nothing more than a bar of detergent...which is NOT the same as soap.

True soap is not difficult to make and I have no problems using soap on both my skin and my hair. While it's possible to find shampoo that isn't a chemical soup, I prefer to just keep a bar of real soap and use it alone.

I'm sure you can clean yourself with nothing but water if you never actually get dirty. Try working in a garden all day and just use water to clean yourself. Good luck with that and you'd better have a well considering the amount of water you'll require...before you realize it ain't happening.

I also make my own laundry soap as well as my own dishwasher mix (no soap in the dishwasher). They are both effective and quite cheap compared to the bottled detergents most purchase. They are also much more environmentally friendly since they contain chemicals that are easily broken down and not made from chemicals that require a masters degree to pronounce and a PhD to explain.

Borax (sodium tetraborate) and Washing Soda (sodium carbonate) go a long, long way to keeping things clean for pennies on the dollar. If you're looking for color safe bleaching action in your laundry, throw in some sodium percorbonate as well and allow for a couple hour soak.

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
reply to post by ypperst

 

I wonder if there is a group of no toilet paper people yet. I can already see it now. "Its more natural"

I'm sure there is. I'm also sure they live far away from the general populace. One can only imagine shaking hands with such an individual.....shudder...

Originally posted by Metallicafan
I actually do the same. I'll use soap only on my hair, armpits and private parts. I take a shower every day. Only water except that I use soap on the head , armpits and private parts.

Too funny... I thought that's what all guys did... face, pits, b@lls, butt....

If I tried this I'm sure it would be succesful... would definitely succeed in driving the women away.

water-only washing for hair has been well documented to work, for many people. The transitioning period (so I've read) can be pretty horrible though as the scalp has to adjust to its preferred level of sebum production and that can take months of gnarly, greasy, hair and maybe itchy scalp.

I've not tried this, so no personal experiences to relate but here are a few tips I've read:
Tips

Soft water is better than hard water and the more powerful the blast from the shower nozzle, the better.

Massage the scalp in the shower for quite some time to dislodge built up sebum on the scalp.

A final rinse of diluted AppleCiderVinegar/water is helpful. Buy organic, not the fake stuff.

Daily "scritching" of the scalp, with wooden comb (not your fingernails!) to dislodge built up sebum and then use a boar-bristle brush to move it down the hair. This is were the old saying of brush your hair 100 strokes or more before bed, came from. In the past, this is how women managed to avoid oil/sebum build up and a clear scalp.

Coconut oil can be used (lightly) to prevent moisture loss, coconut oil is one of the few that will be absorbed rather than sit on top of the hair shaft.

The shorter one's hair, the easier it may be, but it is the scalp that will decide whether this will work or not and how long the transition will take.

Once the hair and scalp have transitioned you must continue with WO. If you decide to shampoo/condition/or use soap, now and again you will probably revert back to stage one and undo all of the transition

*Also, if your hair isn't natural (i.e. has been chemically dyed or bleached) you will have serious problem with moisture loss. Coconut oil may help, but this may not work at all, until your hair has grown in naturally.

I might try this myself, i have often thought about things like this and i knew that hair washed itself, so i thought why do we use all these new products? people 1000 years ago and less couldn't have all stunk and had greasy hair? In fact they probably in general were better off!

I haven't used a bar of soap or any other kind of anything on my face for the last 10 years.

I have had maybe 7 pimples in my life. And they lasted maybe 3 days tops

Your skin creates an oil barrier, by constantly pulling this off every day and splashing chemicals on (women) or just soap (guys) is terrible

I'm in close contact with people every day as part of my job. I can smell the difference between vegetarians/vegans. They smell nicer than omnivores, and MUCH nicer than heavy meat and processed food eaters.

I am going to try this.

I have had a sensitivity to most surfactants they use in shampoos my entire life, and an outright allergy to others. As a consequence, after spending ridiculous amounts of money over the years on natural and alternative shampoos, some that literally peeled the skin off of my hands, I have resorted to mainly using plain, old fashioned, olive oil soap bars. I live in a middle eastern community in Canada and there are stores around here that sell this antique/rustic version of soap made of nothing but olive oil and no artificial additives. It is good, but not perfect.

I stopped anti-persperants several years ago. I stopped daily use of deodorants about 2 years ago and only use them if I know I am going into a really stressfull situation where biology governs that some kind of odour is likely. It is great, and works perfectly.

So now, I am going to eliminate all shampoos, conditioners or even my plain soap bar. I've had psoriasis and dandruff my entire life. Oil makes my scalp worse so anytime I tried going without shampoo my scalp got oily, got itchy, and so I'd go back.to shampoo.

Now that I hear that that oiliness is short term I am going to give it a shot. This is just one more step towards reclaiming or revisiting that lifestyle that got us thru the first million years of human existence. Mind you, this is just one more stage in the big process of eliminating all synthetic chemicals from my life.

I will let u know how it works.

Ladies, do not attempt.

Originally posted by Lysergic
Ladies, do not attempt.

Ha Ha, I can imagine nothing finer than a lady "au naturale" in all senses of the word.

12 days and counting
no soap, shampoo or conditioners
no lotions
almost no toothpaste -- but I am going to go out today and get some of that Pink enzyme stuff for household cleaning and might try it on my teeth -- supposedly its safe.

so far so good.