My year-long experiment of not using soap in the shower

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Hi there! First off, thanks for reading despite what you might be thinking; something related to disgust and terror.

That's not the case at all. See, we all have a microbiome on our skin that makes us smell human. The odors produced are methods of communication signaling their health, reproductive status and so on. I wanted to smell more like Mike and less like hibiscus tea sugar whatever.

We also have sebum. It's like what sheep have. They have a substance called lanolin that keeps their hair and skin nice and soft. That's what our sebum does. All you have to do is rinse away the stuff that collects on it like dust and dirt.

I tried going shampoo-free for a while It worked! That is, o long as I kept my hair super short and to resist the temptation to condition. See, I shaved my head a while back in a failed dreadlocks experiment. I couldn't comb them out so I shaved my head. (a radical hair redo can be a sign of an impending mental breakdown) I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to go soap and shampoo-free. The shampoo-free part was working. I had lovely curls (2b on top, 3c in back) and it looked and felt healthy and soft and not oily and greasy like you might expect someone who doesn't use shampoo might.

I succumbed to the temptation to wash and condition my hair. It then set in motion a chain of events that led me to having an itchy scalp if I DON'T shampoo. So I'm thinking about hitting the reset button yet again by shaving it off.

I wondered how people would get and stay clean during an apocalypse. Soap and shampoo wouldn't be available nor would hot running water. If someone were accustomed to taking cool soap-free showers, they could easily adapt to bathing soap-free in a lake or river.

Also, I have a friend who, as an experiment, chose to eat nothing but gorilla chow for several months. I'm actually reminding myself to ask how that went with him. I was kind of following his lead with the experimental aspect of it.

Thanks very much for reading!

I know that Chestnut tree leaves when squeezed makes a good antibacterial "soap" and there is also a plant that grows in the UK that can be used in the same way, cant remember the name of it (CBA to remember it since it doesn't grow in Sweden), but it's mentioned in a video with Ray Mears.

I dont use shampoo and just cut my hair really short. I only shower once every 3 to 4 days cause I suffer from severe chronic hives and showers are a trigger. It is certainly not by choice in my case. My hair is fine as long as I keep it short.

I dont use shampoo and just cut my hair really short. I only shower once every 3 to 4 days cause I suffer from severe chronic hives and showers are a trigger. It is certainly not by choice in my case. My hair is fine as long as I keep it short.

If you don't use shampoo, you can always freshen your hair with vinegar....I've tried that before and it feels nice. Also if you're worried about smelling like vinegar after don't, your hair won't smell like it once it dries. But yeah if I tried going entirely shampoo-conditioner free I'd have to at least rinse with vinegar. Because my hair does get greasy and gross looking if I do nothing.

As for soap I cannot imagine going without that, how would I clean out my arm-pits? That said I certainly prefer natural type soap that you can get at vitamin cottage.

Hm, makes me wonder if this is what happened:

Natural probiotic bacteria kept other things in check
Using soap again killed them
A fungal infection took root (the kind that causes dandruff)
And now you have to shampoo to keep it in check

Any flakes? Are you using a dandruff shampoo & that's even more specifically how it's reducing itch?

Are you certain that you suffer from chronic hives & not something else?

I ask because you say showers are a trigger.

I just did a little quick google and didn't find water listed as a common trigger for hives.

The type of itchy skin infections that are notoriously difficult to get rid of & are amplified by moisture are fungal infections.

If they're hives, they'll come & go and usually be in sort of random patterns that, from my experience/memory as a kid, tend to change up - especially when they're short lived. Like, they show up & are irritating after some allergen trigger, then they disappear, and then maybe they'll show up again but the blotches are different shapes in different positions.

Whereas a chronic fungal infection of the skin is more likely to flair up in the exact same spots over and over again, and are directly fuelled by moisture as they thrive on it.

I would at least do some research into this, comparing what you see on your skin to various google image search results & descriptions of symptoms. You know yourself best, but sometimes we, and our doctors, don't know what we're looking at and assume things are bacterial infections or allergic reactions when they are in fact something else entirely. Long story short, I had to learn about this out of necessity to treat a skin infection that became clear as day to me was a fungal infection after myself & several different doctors and pharmacists misdiagnosed it as bacterial. Feel free to shoot me a PM if there's any way I can help with things I learned about it if you think it may be applicable & of help.

OMG...
Yes to all this!

What can I do?

[edit] I think I know what to do. I remember when I started not washing my hair, I "washed" or rather risnes my hair in cool water. The months leading to that. I remember choosing not to scrub my scalp.

I hope I can rinse & repeat

Last edited by Grue on 07 Feb 2018, 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

The bacteria that causes a large part of the odor os from bacteria that eat lipids in your sweat and fart out sulfur compounds. Armpits have a natural bacteria-free smell to them too. It's genetic.

I once didn't wash my hair for 3 weeks because I was spending my winter holidays in a hut with 10 C degrees inside and no running water, so I didn't even think of rinsing them.
I just combed my hair and braided them to keep them in order.
I have particularily greasy hair.
My scalp was itching, but after a week or so, the itching stopped. Like some new balance was found?
I didn't like the way my hair were, sticking to each other like they were wet, but braids kept them well in place.

After I came home and finally washed my hair - geez, my hair never ever was so good! Soft and in perfect condition!
But it didn't last, after a few days all came back to normal.

I haven't used shampoo in years, my hair has never been better. With shampoo, it would get oily and gross immediately. I use a little aloe gel, a few drops of tea tree oil, and some baking soda. I know the latter is bad for your PH, I haven't bothered finding a substitute yet, though I know I should.

"No soap" is an interesting idea, but not feasible for me. I do try to avoid antibacterial as much as possible, though.

Eucalyptus oil is supposed to do the trick, if it is a fungal infection. I would look it up to be certain, but I think you just add a few drops when you wash your hair.

Huge like!

There are a few different antifungal dandruff shampoos. When I dealt with some pretty severe dandruff, I kept my hair cut quite short so that my fingernails/hairbrush could reach my scalp. I used head & shoulders shampoo as well as a tea tree oil body wash I would alternate and sometimes mix together, (lather and leave on to penetrate the fungal infection for ~5-10mins before rinsing - just turn the water off and wait a bit) then after showering when my scalp was moist and the fungal infection patch was "mushy" due to being hydrated vs. dried out and flaky I would attack it with my fingernails and a hairbrush to scrape as much of it off of my scalp as possible. Sometimes I would use a brush while IN the shower and scrape away gunk and let it rinse down the drain. It took patience and persistence, but over several weeks I was able to get rid of it entirely - it took a lot of scalp scrubbing quite hard. There are also other antifungal oils/herbs/lotions etc you could put in your hair after you shower. I remember putting a few drops of tea tree oil (not the premixed soap, the essential oil) into my hair and brushing it into my scalp with a hairbrush, too. Coconut oil is a mild antifungal.. I'd be tempted to mix some tea tree oil into a high grade coconut oil in a small dish and then rub/brush that through my hair (scalp!) after every shower, too. And fungus like moisture, so keep your head dry vs. be out in the rain or go swimming often.

Yes I absolutely suffer from chronic idiopathic urticaria (chronic hives) formally diagnosed. Other triggers are exercise, friction, heat, NSAIDs and Opioid mu agonists. Hives arent actually the worst part of the disease, its the non stop 24/7 365 head to toe itching along with full body stinging pain component, only kept in check by huge doses of antihistamines. I take 175mg Doxepin, 20mg Reactine, 50 to 150mg of Benadryl, as well as an IGE blocking medication Xolair 450mg and a novel treatment using an opioid mu antagonist, Naltrexone 4.5mg.

Whoa, that can't be fun. Interesting, though, I've never heard of showers as a trigger for hives - pretty well always an unknown (or sometimes known) allergen.

Haven't used shampoo for years. The odd bits of non-dread hair that I have (they escaped!!) are much less greasy than my hair ever used to be when I used shampoo. Rosemary tea is really good for itchy scalps.
I wouldn't use soap if I was better at remembering to shower more often than I do and didn't have knackered hands. No soap=more scrubbing=ouch.