Theres plenty of evidence that, just like ones gut microbiome, ones skin microbiome is important for correct immune system normalisation and skin health.

The relentless use of soaps and surfactants on our skin during showering/washing sterilises our skin, strips all its natural oils and opens the way for less desirable microbes to form imbalanced communities in their place, cause our skin to overproduce its natural oils in order to compensate and make plenty more body odour than we would normally generate if our akin microbiome was more ‘normal’. Interestingly, soil bacteria that metabolise ammonia are heavily implicated.

So, the use of soap and surfactants makes us smell more, and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Who’d have thunk it eh.? The soap we use to make our hands clean for food prep also kill bacteria across the rest of our bodies!

It’s all out there on t’internet to learn about.

I shower every other day, or after exercise. As an experiment, I stopped using soap or shampoo last August, using only an exfoliating sponge, so I effectively rinse.

My wife and kids dont know this, nor have they noticed and my wife is always ready to criticise me any chance she gets.

@reluctantjumper
Full Member

Shower every day for me. I struggle to sleep if I haven’t, I just feel dirty and I definitely have to change the bedsheets more often if I miss a day. I’m not particularly sweaty though, just tend to do some form of exercise every day and work was always physical with a cycle commute too.

First part for me, sometimes on a weekend if I haven’t been doing much I will try not having a shower. Always have a terrible nights sleep bedclothes stick to me and I just feel grubby, have even got back up at 3am after being awake and had a shower then go to sleep easily?
My job is often physical and in hot mucky conditions so the thought of not having a shower makes me shudder.
I hated being a child in the early 70’s with the lack of a shower just baths
Probably not helped by having greasy skin and a sweaty sod (what a catch eh)

Ditto clothes. No need to wash the outer layers everytime you wear them unless they have visible dirt.

You need to meet my girlfriend’s daughter’s boyfriend.

He showers at least daily (though he’s a mechanic so after work is fair enough) and somehow manages to generate enough laundry to run the machine pretty much every single day. That’s despite the daughter almost never leaving the house and therefore rarely even changing out of PJs, and it’s not our stuff because if I leave so much as a damp tea towel in the drum the cheeky little bollocks will take it out to do his own.

It’ll save me a fortune when they move out. The tumble drier packed in a couple of weeks ago, I’m not fixing it until they’ve gone.

Single, work from home, exercise 5 days and probably shower three times.

Definitely single. 💩

If you stop showering everyday with detergents that destroy yout skin’s natural defences you’ll stop smelling ripe after a few hours.

I only use warm water (sometimes cold) and some simple natural soap. Very, very rarely use deodorant of any kind. BO is caused by bacteria, sweat and often a number of other factors. How exactly is our skin’s ‘natural defences’ dealing with sweat and bacteria, and stuff?

“Bridges – the chemical smelling bunch are not the same as the shower every day bunch! ( or not always). I don’t use any antiperspirant / deodorant and I don’t smell – because I am clean having had a shower or bath at least once per day!”

I have no idea if people wash and use deodorant, or don’t wash and use deodorant. I’m not party to their hygiene routines. All I know is that the Tube stinks of a mixture of BO, horrible chemicals of various kinds, and that electrical burning smell. As for you not smelling; it’s more down to your diet and lifestyle, than washing, as pointed out; some people can stink even straight after washing. And you probably do smell; everyone does. You just don’t notice it.

I shower or bath once a day and use a non-perfumed roll on deodorant. If I do smell then it’s only my manly musk, not BO or chemicals.

No deodorants for me either, the active ingredients in them make me sweat heavily! Never had a complaint of me smelling from anyone under normal circumstances so I must be doing something right.

not being smelly is part of the consumer society. people who are scared of being smelly have been brainwashed

Holy mother of god, I’m not going down on any of you soap-dodging stinkers!

scienceofficer has it.

I pretty much stopped using shower gel or soap and just have a quick shower every 2-3 days days or after intense exercise/sex. Maybe more often on the rare occasions when the weather is actually hot. No complaints or comments from anyone ever.

The idea that we all have to smell like Lynx Africa or equivalent and not just like a person is recent and bizarre and marketing-lead.

Holy mother of god, I’m not going down on any of you soap-dodging stinkers!

I’m good thanks.

Apparently you smelly lot that shower every day are just less evolved.

Or less mutated, depending upon how you view it.

I have eczema, and when it was less controlled I needed to shower 2 or 3 times a day just to keep what little control I had. Eventually I was escalated to the very top in treatment terms and the first thing the Professor at the Hospital said was “Stop Showering! From now on only a bath, once a day.” Ain’t nobody got time for that, but I tried to cut back on the showering as much as I could. Now I am on medication that has made a massive difference and I could go for days without showering if I had to, but I still start the day with a shower purely for hygiene reasons.

For the people who say “no complaints from others”… have you ever known someone to tell another person that they stink? Just doesn’t seem to happen.

The idea that we all have to smell like Lynx Africa or equivalent and not just like a person is recent and bizarre and marketing-lead.

I quite agree. However stinking of unwashed bodies is not nice either – how about smelling like a clean human? I just use a little pure unscented soap.

Smelling of anything is generally bad, someone with excessive perfume on is as bad as someone sweaty imo

Smelling of anything is generally bad, someone with excessive perfume on is as bad as someone sweaty imo

I used to work with a reasonably heavy smoker, coming back into the office after one of her many tabs she’d drown herself in cheap perfume in the lift back up. I’m sure that she thought “no-one would ever know” but going in there right after she’d just got out was like being hit with pepper spray.

Elizabeth 1 only bathed once a year.Still managed to rule the country.

For the people who say “no complaints from others”… have you ever known someone to tell another person that they stink? Just doesn’t seem to happen.

Yep. When was v young man ninety eighty something I used to cycle to work in some old, knackered, many times soaked-through Brooks hi-top trainers. I’d wear them all day long seated at my board in a superheated, closed-windowed/unvented and small backroom studio of a design for print company.

My other clothes weren’t much better as all I had back at the duplex hovel was an inherited ‘Baby Burco’ which was basically a slow cooker for clothing. GF and I would boil our dirty clothes then let some grey water out into a bowl. Then hang the clothes to harden on a rack in front of an electric fire.

No shower in our hovel (just a bath and immersion heater) so 6am I’d have a standing wash at the basin then hop on the bike about 7am to cycle to work in nice tight sweaty jeans. Not the best hygiene, especially riding through rain and drip-drying in the warm studio. I’d habitually rush a Silk Cut before going in. To be fair even I thought my old trainers smelled like a couple of dirty hamster cages. They were offensive in an ammonia-type way.

My poor, long-suffering surly-faced colleague (who had always to sit right next to me at her board) one day just blurted out those exact words. ‘You stink!’. She wasn’t being jovial, just honest.

I took the ‘hint’ though 🤣

You know the kind of people that sit down next to you on a train and you gag at the odour they’re emitting. They don’t shower every day either.

ll save me a fortune when they move out. The tumble drier packed in a couple of weeks ago, I’m not fixing it until they’ve gone.

Disconnect the connector for the washer circuit board, maybe that’ll speed the process.

I had a mate who wore suits to work, dry cleaned them about twice a year. Came home, put on jeans etc. Next day different jeans etc. Had to do wash 4 x per week. Dried everything so crispy the jeans were like cardboard. And wondered why his suits lasted forever but his jeans were threads in months.

Showering every day dries my skin out and my eczema can get out of control.

Sometimes it’s necessary to shower every day and my oh notices the dry skin rather than change in odour. She finds it odd that I don’t stink after exercise.

Possibly not being particularly hairy means any stink ends up in the clothes rather than trapped in the hair.

Risking a slight niff is worth it compared to eczema and I work alone mostly so nobody should be nasally offended.

Shower every day here without fail (once when I was wild camping in Iceland, I jogged three miles to a campsite, showered, and jogged home – and even when I go to festivals I find a way) but I will regularly wear the same underwear for several days if it means my freshness standards… :-/

In the far east equatorial climate showering once a day is the norm but twice is also very common while 3 times a day is silly like my father (morning, afternoon whenever he feels like and evening), due to the high humidity.

Over in the UK I only shower on alternated days and it is a quick in and out thing because it’s bloody freezing. Too cold that little birdie would hide deep in the bush. I can go without shower easily for 7 days during the winter if I don’t sweat.

However, if you consume a lot of meat, dairy or butter then please shower often as you are scent marking all over if you don’t.

Holy mother of god, I’m not going down on any of you soap-dodging stinkers!

This wins the frequency debate. 😆

One of our neighbours has a 21 year old daughter still at home. She showers 3 times a day. And 30-35 mins each time.

His bills are double our’s (family of 5) and yet I’m not aware that we stink.