Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The forgotten joy of soap

spectator.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 218 posts

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#131

Post by Loughla »

organsnyder wrote: post #61
crispyambulance wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What! When did this happen?! Never heard of soap bars being considered dirty ever. That slime is just because the soap has been sitting in puddle of water in a soap-dish. If the soap bar has "stuff" on it, you just rinse it and rub that stuff off in a second.

Perhaps it depends on location? Where I live (Michigan, US) I feel like an anachronistic rebel having soap bars at the sinks in our home instead of liquid soap dispensers. I think the perceived lack of cleanliness is one of the main reasons (along with the Bath and Bodyworks marketing machine).

That is maybe true for location. In my location (west-mid-west US), the sinks you buy to install in your home mostly have little dents with drainage to be soap-dishes for bar soap. They're pretty standard everywhere.

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#133

Post by Pimpus »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #117
kstenerud wrote: post #33

I stopped washing with soap 6 years ago and never looked back. For the first month, my skin was so greasy all the time that it felt like I'd been wearing the same clothes for a week, just an hour after putting them on, but then my skin finally adjusted to the new normal. My skin is soft - much too soft for a man of my age, according to my wife. I have no body odor, even after a heavy workout where I'm still covered i…

Oh, I also stopped brushing my teeth, I just wash them with water. The first month I had halitosis, but it gradually went away. I'm also more productive than ever because my coworkers have started to send me emails instead of having meetings!

We are descended from at least 7000 generations of man, and 99.9% of these ancestors had never even heard of toothpaste.

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#134

Post by jressey »

coldtea wrote: post #118
Insanity wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands I always have an urge to say something but never do. The bad thing is that they leave before me as I wash my hands, but then like a minute later I need to use the same door they used to enter our office. :(

> When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands Perhaps they have mastered the art of pissing without pissing on their hands...

So you're cool with folks touching their genitals and then touching you?

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#135

Post by duncanawoods »

okcando wrote: post #87
duncanawoods wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, no soap. It calls itself a "beauty bar" hah! I use it and it certainly doesn't cause the astringent and drying effect I get from real soap. I tried to find out whether it was actually recommended for the skin and it's an ungoogleable topic infested by a toxic combination of beauty product snake-oil and "chemicals are evil" antivaxish insanity so I'm none the wiser.

Dove beauty bars contain soap. The ingredients list sodium tallowate or sodium palmitate, which are soaps from animal or vegetable fat, respectively.

Thanks, yep. They are not the primary ingredients which is probably why they can't call it a soap bar.

Interestingly, the "Palm" in Napalm is also Sodium Palmitate.

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#136

Post by [deleted] »

oska wrote: post #42
kstenerud wrote: post #33

I stopped washing with soap 6 years ago and never looked back. For the first month, my skin was so greasy all the time that it felt like I'd been wearing the same clothes for a week, just an hour after putting them on, but then my skin finally adjusted to the new normal. My skin is soft - much too soft for a man of my age, according to my wife. I have no body odor, even after a heavy workout where I'm still covered i…

I've gone 30 years without using soap (or anything else) on my body with similar results and experience to you. Also no problems with body odour; instead quite the opposite, being complimented on how I smell (by intimate partners). I still use it to wash my hands however.

[deleted]

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#137

Post by theshrike79 »

coldtea wrote: post #118
Insanity wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands I always have an urge to say something but never do. The bad thing is that they leave before me as I wash my hands, but then like a minute later I need to use the same door they used to enter our office. :(

> When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands Perhaps they have mastered the art of pissing without pissing on their hands...

So you're fine with them touching their sweaty junk and then handing you a donut with the same hands?

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#138

Post by erdewit »

gpvos wrote: post #44

I once had a bar of Greek olive soap that left a very slight oil-like residue on my skin after use, and I totally loved how that felt. I'm not quite sure why the soap was that way; maybe the oil hadn't saponified completely or something. The bar looked perfectly normal though, dark green with maybe a slight transparent quality to it (it was long ago, my memory may be slightly incorrect). I have never found such a soa…

It's very easy to make the soap yourself and to super-fatten it to your own liking. Basically just mixing the oil with lye and water (and perhaps fragrance). The weight ratios can be obtained with for example this calculator:

http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#139

Post by elliekelly »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #88
jazoom wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're interpreting as "clean feeling" is likely stripping your skin of its protective oils. That's why we (doctors) don't recommend soaps as a general rule. That oil is there for a reason.

Is that recommendation published somewhere? I'd be curious to read the details.

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

Re: The forgotten joy of soap

#140

Post by novok »

jackhack wrote: post #100
merpnderp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't understand this at all. We went like 200,000 years without soap, and as soon as we discovered soap, we were like where have you been all my life!? And now people think they don't need soap, and I wonder if they really don't smell, or if like our ancestors, learned to tune out the reek?

Correct. 200,000 years dying at an early age from easily-preventable infections, among them cholera and dysentery which are easily spread from --yep, you guessed it-- not washing after using the toilet. And people wonder why I refuse to take part in "potluck" lunches, or eat others' foods. I need to save the URL to this discussion. I, too, cannot believe someone who does not use soap does not smell like a wild animal…

Oof, do you also wear gloves 24/7 to protect yourself from the dirty world out there too?

Unless your immunocomprimised or old, your body's immune system can handle the everyday bacteria that is everywhere in the world.

Post reply on HN