I'll speak for the silent majority here who loves body wash. Unlike soap, it moisturizes your skin and makes you feel really clean.
The forgotten joy of soap
81–90 of 218 posts
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#82I 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…
Chances are it'll be Papoutsanis soap. These are available in many places with Greek stuff, especially tourist places.
For a more hand made one check this one too: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Greek-Traditional-Pure-Olive-Oil-So...
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is why i visit hacker news edit: i'll also add that i too use soap minimally when showering (nether regions). i'm asian so BO has never really been an issue but i did notice that my athlete's foot has not reappeared since i stopped washing my feet with soap for a few years.
No kidding? Did you do anything else to treat it? I thought diligently cleaning my feet with soap would be helpful. I think it has been, but it's recently started coming back a little bit, so I'm not sure. I've tried a whole bunch of other things too, but didn't do anything other than constantly soap for a while because it didn't come back for so long. And now it's coming back....
I started using boric acid about 6-7 years ago.
I’m nit talking about those ineffective foot powders, just straight pure boric acid (looks like powdered sugar), about a teaspoon every 2/3 days in my shoes.
Basically stopped all smells, no fungal infection of any kind for years, and at the end of the day, my socks still smell of fabric softener.
Doesn’t prevent sweat but the boric acid completely blocks the proliferation of bacteria, so no smells and no fungus can grow.
It’s more effective if you start using it on new shoes as they will never be contaminated by bacteria.
Truly amazing how effective it has been. Just give it a few weeks.
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#84Does anyone else find shower-gel just completely ineffective? After using it I don't feel clean. I feel like I just rubbed cooking oil on my body. With regular soap bars you get the "clean" feeling which no other product seems to match.
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.
How big a problem is this if you re-oil afterwards?
I use soap and just apply jojoba oil (and aloe) after showering, which I understand is similar to human oil, but it's unclear to me whether it's truly a good enough 1:1 replacement or if I could be doing some kind of harm longer-term.
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#85I 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…
For anyone reading this, please don't try this without honest friends or an honest spouse who will give you feedback. It works for people with specific genetics, but not for the majority.
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#86I'll speak for the silent majority here who loves body wash. Unlike soap, it moisturizes your skin and makes you feel really clean.
It's only america that has theis strange obsession with bar soap. Go to a hotel anywhere else in the world and you get bottles of gel.
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if that Dove bar has soap in it, but there are many non-soap cleansers of varying degrees of harshness. I only know the brands available in Australia.
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.
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#88Does anyone else find shower-gel just completely ineffective? After using it I don't feel clean. I feel like I just rubbed cooking oil on my body. With regular soap bars you get the "clean" feeling which no other product seems to match.
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.
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#89I 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 hope you either still use soap when washing your hands, or work from home and don't go out to eat. I work with a bunch of nastyass people that take huge noisy dumps and then just walk right out of the bathroom without washing. No wonder I get sick several times a year now.
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?
Re: The forgotten joy of soap
#90Soap strips away all the barrier oils produced by your skin to protect itself.
Natural skin is slightly acidic with a pH of around 5.5 and so for the last 30 years I have used tablets of a soap substitute with the same pH value. These are called "sebamed", (manufactured in Germany). Highly recommended.