According to a variety of authorities, body odor is the result of bacterial interaction with sweat and oil excretions of the body. The medical name for severe body odor is bromhidrosis. But the key is that there is an interaction between the microbiome in the area around your sweat glands, and your sweat that causes the odor.
Anthropologists studying primitive peoples have found many cases of people who do not bathe regularly and yet do not smell either. A group at MIT did some studies with repopulating the microbiome with ammonia consuming bacteria from soil as a way of avoiding body odor without washing. And the folks at the Microbiome project cultivated a bunch of microbiomes from people's arm pits and thighs which also informed this area (although there isn't really a pro-biotic deodorant that I know of yet)
As I understand it, showering and washing isn't getting rid of "odor" it is getting rid of bacteria that is outgassing odor after processing your sweat. You could be odor free without showering with the right bacteria consuming the sweat.
Personally I've found I don't need a ton of soap, can get by without deodorant if not especially active, and can skip shampoo most days but do need conditioner and aggressive rubbing it in/scalp self-massage to avoid dandruff.
Curious: Does conditioner help you avoid dandruff? Any explanation as to how it does?
The conditioner helps with styling it / keeping it feeling smooth and pliable. Especially since I still shampoo once or twice a week for additional dandruff control, which wipes out some of the natural oils.
The aggressive rubbing is the part that does the daily dandruff control. Seems to exfoliate the dead skin.
I was homeless for nearly six years. The last couple, I showered about once a month most of the time. No, I did not stink to high heaven.
I actually smelled worse when I had a corporate job and showered twice a day because I was extremely ill. I smelled worse when I was first homeless and showering daily at a women's shelter because I was still ill.
As I gradually got healthier on the street, my hair got less greasy and other things changed. This is why the advice that you just need to get through the first month doesn't necessarily generalize. These changes occurred gradually over the course of several years as my own microbiome, nutritional status and other metrics changed.
”When adult armpits are washed with alkaline pH soap, the skin loses its acid mantle (pH 4.5 - 6), raising the skin pH and disrupting the skin barrier. As many bacteria thrive in this elevated pH environment, this makes the skin susceptible to bacterial colonization. […] Underarm hair wicks the moisture away from the skin and aids in keeping the skin dry enough to prevent or diminish bacterial colonization. The hair is less susceptible to bacterial growth and therefore is ideal for preventing the bacterial odor.”
I think deodorant mostly is an example of capitalism creating demand where none exists.
That’s the most foolish thing I’ve read in a long time.
When I was growing up, I was a bit stubborn regarding use of soap and deodorant: I pretty much refused to use anything but water to shower, and never used deodorant (or any other topical substance, for that matter).
That approach worked just great, until I hit puberty... Trust me, if you think nobody needs deodorant just as long as you don’t use soap (or some other such nonsense), I am the living proof of just how extremely far from the truth you are.
Of course, many people out there will never need deodorant (genetics play a large part here, according to some studies I’ve read). There may even be some microbiological technology we can find to cure body odor in alternate ways. But to assume that deodorant is a universally needless product (in favor of not using soap) is incredibly naive, or nearsighted.
I’ll save responding to your random derision of capitalism for another debate.
oh, middle school... i can certainly attest to your experience.
> Of course, many people out there will never need deodorant
Many? The only ethnicity that does not have that is asians IIRC, they lack a certain gene for body odor. So i think it's really everyone but them.
There are many unpleasant aspects of being human that we tolerate, because we have no other choice. Through time, technology is created that helps us deal with more and more of these things. That's only natural, and good.
In the same way, sometimes, when the trashcan is full, I don't really notice the smell until I leave the house, breathe the outside air and come back inside after. Then it hit me.
Also, how can one really clean his ass crack without soap? Water alone is definitely not enough.
It will be awkward, but walking around smelling is going to hurt him in all areas of his life.
If a few people mention it, they will have to do something. And you don't have to risk getting yelled at.
I loved the technology and product at that workplace but such awkward situations ensured that I moved on as quickly as I got the opportunity to do so.
We had a guy at a previous job of mine (food service) who (almost certainly) didn't wear deodorant and it became an HR issue.
His roommate (who also worked with us) said he did shower.
Unless the person in question had a medical condition... I find this very hard to believe. There are a lot of cultures where people don't use deodorant but wash every day (and more if doing sports etc... And it's not an issue).
To both you and abawany: maybe just send a polite, anonymous email (make a one time use gmail or something)? Like a personal version of the public service whistleblower, this is the sort of situation that seems like a good fit. A simple "Hey, I see you fairly regularly and..." type of thing, that they're a nice person and you're worried they might not notice this and don't want them to be embarrassed.
I do agree that a (perceived) lack of personal hygiene can hamper people in subtle ways socially and in turn professionally, and it's possible that they could never realize why. If they're a decent enough person that's a real shame, and a quick equivalent of "Your fly is unzipped" could be a real benefit long term.
Imagine you get an email from anonymous person at your workplace. This is about as awkward for workplace culture as it gets. Knowing that there is some guy a) who thinks that you stink, and b) who is not man enough to actually talk to you and instead sends an anonymous message, and c) you have to continue to work with that person, d) but you don't know who it is. Any of your coworkers could be that socially challenged person afraid to talk openly and taking such a ridiculous route.
Either you find the guts to and talk about it openly or you let it slide. I'd much prefer you take the first route. I consider this part of being an adult. It's only awkward if you make it so in the first place.
Not man enough, seriously? So are women exempt from this sort of direct confrontation?
There are plenty of good reasons to not talk about it "openly", one of the most important being that it takes skill to do it well.
Wow, you are seriously crazy. May I point out that your perception first of all is the result of your own brain? It is you yourself who has those ideas in their head - i did not write any of it, you found it in yourself.
As for part two of your fantastic rant, I refer back to what I wrote. You merely restate what was already said and what I responded to. Repetition does not make the argument any better.
If you'd read the following, and take the spirit of this site to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it:
I received a really nice French cologne as a birthday gift back in the 80's--women loved it. It was low grade enough that only people very next to you would notice, and it would last days ... even after showers. This made for some interesting interactions with women at the office ... "Oh, looks like someone had a good weekend ..."
At some point, they had to change out the binder/fixer/whatever (presumably it's either horribly toxic or horribly cruel to skunks), and colognes haven't been the same since.
Now, in order to get a cologne to last even a couple of hours, they create things that are horrifically strong at start, and you still almost can't smell them several hours later.
(I actually had the misfortune to test this. My mother used Chanel No 5 Eau de Cologne that I would buy for her as a gift when she ran out or it went bad. The last one I bought smelled wrong as soon as I opened it--they reformulated it and discontinued it soon after. I wound up kicked through Chanel customer service to get some of the last "real" stock they had--they knew that the updated one was wrong and had kept a small amount for customer complaints (and presumably very rich patrons).)
Try using an oil-based soap, using a dab of unscented baby oil on your skin or not showering for a day before using perfumes.
I do know of the fragrance-free options, of course, but I’ve suffered comfort issues from being near other people’s fragrances for over a decade. I have to try to find fragrance-free and natural versions of everything for my girlfriend.
It isn’t a problem for my own use, as I use very few personal care products, but it would be great if the general public understood the things you say.
Their liquid soap.. no so good, doesn't lather well and doesn't go the distance.
So much. Had this one colleague, luckily not in the same room, but he once touched my screen (which is already a big no-go for me anwyay) and I could still smeel it days later. Maybe my sense of smell is too good, don't know, but this was rather unpleasant.
Nice to have a gameplan thereafter though.
What mechanism of applying body soap do you think persists after showering? Either way, the bacteria are mostly gone and more importantly their food is mostly gone. Of course, they immediately start trying to grow back, whether you used soap or not.
(I don't see any reason the tooth-brushing metaphor is warranted, since it seems to introduce more differences than similarities.)
If water alone did a good job of removing bacteria, then surgeons wouldn’t scrub with soap for 15 minutes.
Citation needed? Sweat is mostly water and trace amount of salt. It dissolves easily in water.
> Water alone doesn’t do a very good job of removing bacteria or dirt
We agree here! (With some qualified reservations about what the subjective "very good" means, and how necessary it is for body washing applications.)
Water does a reasonable job of removing bacteria -- handwashing studies show this. It's a lot better than nothing. Yes, water combined with soap does a better job.
> If water alone did a good job of removing bacteria, then surgeons wouldn’t scrub with soap for 15 minutes.
The topic under discussion is body soaps, not handwashing.
I would always suggest washing your hands with soap! You use your hands to prepare food and touch mucus membranes. The same is not true of, say, your armpits.
(Going off into the weeds here, but: surgeons do not scrub for 15 minutes. That would destroy their skin and increase risk of transferring disease. Timed scrubs are 3-5 minutes. And they certainly do not perform surgery with their armpits.)
If I'm not mistaken, the materials I've seen indicate it's the scrubbing for a certain period of time (20 seconds?) that removes the most bacteria in handwashing. Just putting your hands under running water alone doesn't do much, if anything.
The set of people who vigorously scrub their clean-shaven armpits under water for 20-30 seconds each is probably pretty small.
So, for me walking to work, that would be about 10 minutes.
And most of the east coast is 90% humid and in the 90s come summer
Provided your mouth isn't dry (e.g., when you're asleep), brushing your tongue should help a lot. Getting rid of the white furry stuff very much helps keep things fresh - at least until you start drinking coffee/sugar and eating foods again (apples might be alright though).
While you didn't mention tongue brushing - I won't presume whether you do or don't do that already so I'm replying as such for others' benefit - I believe not everyone realises[1] how much of an improvement tongue brushing makes. Those with a strong gag reflex[2] might also be reluctant to brush - it's not something my parents ever taught me to do and one of them still has it as strong as I used to only around 10-15 years ago - I had to learn it myself from online reading and gradual practice.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brush+tongue
[2] My own tips for dialing down the reflex is to not have a full stomach (so not immediately after breakfast or dinner[3]), breathe in deeply beforehand, brush from back of the tongue to the front, and grimace/retract the tongue before a gag kicks in (but also not worry if there is still a gag; just take another chance to rinse/breathe). The other benefit to being able to be relaxed about this is that dentist visits become a lot more relaxing (i.e., I've almost drifted off before while occupying/placing my mind in other places and thinking about - meditation, self hypnosis perhaps?).
[3] One other common dental hygiene recommendation is to brush three times a day, but I've never really been able to do that consistently and know of very few people who do. I would suggest a compromise solution of brushing morning, and then before dinner to clear the bacteria, and then of course again before bed. The idea isn't to have no bacteria in the mouth (that's impossible) but to just cut it back frequently enough to make a difference.
(Background: I'm not a dentist but I've had enough experience visiting them to have permanently made improvements towards my dental health, which I'd guess was below-average in the past. These days I practically look forward to seeing my dentist - so long as it's just the yearly checkup.)
That is simply inaccurate.
"Bacteria of potential faecal origin (mostly Enterococcus and Enterobacter spp.) were found after no handwashing in 44% of samples. Handwashing with water alone reduced the presence of bacteria to 23% (p < 0.001)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037063/
Whether body soap is necessary for you in particular to not smell bad I cannot comment, but it certainly isn't universally true.
I generally don't use shampoo, hair product, etc. But I really hate seeing comments like this on HN because it is anecdotal and the assumption that it generalizes is unwarranted.
I have a genetic disorder. It has taken me years to get to the point where skipping soap and shampoo in the shower most of the time makes sense. I use lots of hand soap, hand sanitizer and even spray peroxide for germ control.
Physiology, air quality, water quality and other factors significantly impact the particulars here. So, great if you can make it work for you. Wonderful if you want to share tips. Honest. But you only alienate people when you make such claims because inevitably someone reading this will chime in to say they have done absolutely everything you talk about and could not make it work for them.
I once tried not using deodorant in one of my armpits. After about a week things were fine, but it got bad when I wore a tuxedo and went to a fancy dinner. I think the stress of the dinner made me sweat, and the tuxedo trapped the heat and sweat, so the bacteria went to town.
Other than that sort of scenario I imagine I could get by without deodorant. My girlfriend never uses any and only rarely smells bad.
It's possible that you have to wait for the bacterial population to balance out, and then the odors diminish. After you stop using deodorant, you'll get colonized by certain species that are most aggressive. But I'm guessing that over time you'll get a better mix, and better smells.
Would be interesting to see more microbiome studies to investigate this. See https://www.popsci.com/antiperspirants-deodorants-change-you...
Related: How do you feel about the Roman-Empire cleaning method of applying (usually olive) oil to your skin and then scraping it off (with something like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil)? I've been thinking for a while that it might get you clean from sweat/dirt without throwing off your skin-oil balance.
If you get physically dirty, especially greasy, then yeah, use soap.
For most mammals, however, apocrine sweat glands secrete an oily (and eventually smelly) compound that acts as a pheromone, territorial marker, and warning signal.[1]
Before you hit puberty, your apocrine sweat glands aren't really active. That's why prepubecents don't really have BO, just a mild sweat smell.
Perhaps if I had adopted dreadlocks it might have worked, but as a nerdy white guy in the computer lab dreads felt out of place.
I am sensitive to the synthetic amalgam of proprietary chemicals known as ‘fragrance (parfum)’, and I have to evacuate the house or create major ventilation when anyone showers with a shampoo like Suave. I also then prefer not to go near their head for several hours.
It is odd how those shampoos work, fragrance wise. What I observe is a wave of odor that is emitted from the bathroom and slowly creeps through nearby rooms after the door is opened following showering.
i'll leave visible greese stains on a fresh pillow case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-sh...
The stinky part comes from those sopping wet clothes you changed out of and had to hang up somewhere. Hopefully not in your office.
Nose blindness
Social mores
I also shampoo only 2 or 3 times a year. No issues for me. I just use very hot water and really rub my scalp in the shower. Started it as a 30-day experiment in 2010 when I had bad dandruff and never looked back.
My wife is a PE teacher and is quite physically active and it is perfectly fine.
I don't, either - but I do notice it after I've done something athletic, or I haven't showered in 16 hours. I don't think it's because I'm desensitized. A shower and a clean change of clothes fixes that right up.
As an alternative, there are milder ways to wash your hair, the main thing is to not strip out all the oil from it.
For the the shower with no soap, is it really just water that cleans you off? I'm intrigued.
It still does, when I fail to shampoo and conditioner on a daily basis.
Yes, I shower without soap. I guess there's some trickle-down of shampoo, but it's not a major contributor. Hot water and light scrubbing cleans me off. If I am exceptionally dirty, I will use soap, but because I don't work outdoors, that rarely happens.
Obviously, I always wash my hands with soap.
I have three different skin conditions - if i take a shower and use no products (body wash, face wash, shampoo) then they flare/continue to flare. So, no - i'll be worse.
The reality is this isn't going to be for everyone. If it works for you, great. But it's not something everyone can take up and should not be portrayed as such.
Also minimize body soap but can’t do without it. Hands get washed a lot of course but I try to avoid liquid soap (Dr Bronner's is OK) and "purell" if I can.
The natural oil that accumulates let me style my hair without using products.
I also do not use body wash / body soap and no complaints around smell although I do use deodorant everyday.
This is bad advice. You will have BO if you don't use deodorant. There are no natural tricks to solve this.
Other than to be East Asian.
But it does take a few days for the smell to kick in.
I've heard this before but I don't understand it. If I go two days without shampoo my scalp becomes extremely itchy and flaky.
Yes hair is a little less greasy compared to when you shower every 1-2 days and then not for 4 days, but you still need to wash your hair with vinegar and baking powder (wtf) if you don't want it to look greasy.
Not to mention those of us in customer-facing roles, who can’t really afford to hope we’re not offensively ripe that day.
I tried exactly this when I was working from home for a while. The hair worked out wonderfully - better than any product I’ve ever used.
But the BO? It... well, my wife called it a manly musk. She gave it a doubleplus good at home, but i was not allowed to leave the house like that. Even I could smell myself.
I tried adding some probiotic body lotion into the mix, but it didn’t help at all.
And what happens if you accidentally get soap on part of your arm or leg?
Nothing happens if I get soap elsewhere, I just don't intentionally soap outside those regions daily. In my experience arms, legs torso etc aren't particularly dirty on a daily basis and the skins seems more mostrurizied and healthy if I just use water on them. YMMV depending on skin type.
This isn't a case of me not smelling it. I just have another cold shower whenever I need one. But generally speaking most exercise is fine.
This is not true in general. Maybe there are outliers.
The mechanism by which washing kills bacteria is by simply pushing them off your body down the drain. Soap's only purpose is to remove oil, which water does not rinse off by itself.
As a general rule, try rinsing first; if it still smells bad, then use soap. I exercise daily and sweat a lot pre-shower. A rinse eliminates all body odor.
Water alone will do nothing to body oils. They just stick. Bacteria then start to digest it and you get a smell.
Overall, water might cut down some of the smell, but without soap, you're going to smell sweaty.
I know 10 or 15 minute cold showers are less pleasant, but they wake you up and make the rest of the winter less hellish. I actually love the cold at this point.