News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The forgotten joy of soap. Parent comment

Re:The forgotten joy of soap by elliekelly on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @12:56PM (#20393899)
I don't have any published sources about not using soap but I use Mother Dirt products and my understanding is that nitric oxide ("NO") on the skin has a whole bunch of important functions[1] and a lot of NO on our skin comes from ammonia oxidizing bacteria ("AOB")[2] that colonizes on our skin and eats (metabolizes?) our sweat. In theory, all of our modern hygiene products reduce the AOB (and presumably other "good" bacteria) on our skin and less AOB means less NO.

But all of my knowledge in this area came from someone trying to sell me something so it should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm sure there's a microbiologist somewhere on HN who could explain the relationship between soap/skin microbiome much better.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15275864

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrifying_bacteria

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The forgotten joy of soap by benj111 on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @05:21PM (#20396741)
"someone trying to sell me something"

What were they selling? Not washing doesn't seem to provide many business opportunities that I can think of. Posies?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The forgotten joy of soap by elliekelly on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @06:01PM (#20397111)
It’s called Mother Dirt[1] they have a line of microbiome friendly personal hygiene products. I only use AO Mist (I think this was the original product) and have been since maybe 2014 or 2015. They’re made in Cambridge, Mass and the original product was developed by (affiliated) bio-tech company AOBiome.

I bought the Mist on a whim after chatting with someone at OpenBiome (AFAIK unaffiliated). I figured I’d try using it instead of face wash for a few months as a little experiment to see how my skin felt.

Well I have lupus so I sometimes get the “butterfly rash” across my cheeks. Anything from hot water to alcohol to a cold can trigger it. I hadn’t even considered that the mist might help with it but I was shockingly and pleasantly surprised that over time the butterfly rash became much more faint so I just kept using it.

It’s entirely possible that it’s the placebo effect but when I get the butterfly rash now it’s imperceptible to anyone who isn’t looking for it. If I were a true scientist I’d stop for a few months and see if if returns with the same intensity but I guess I’m too vain.

[1] https://motherdirt.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]