Can Water-Only Showers Really Treat Skin and Hair Issues?

[Pythagorean]

I had issues with dandruff for a long time. Once my second kid was born, I went two weeks without a shower.

My dandruff basically went away. Since then I've been showering with water only. My hair has become way healthier and my skin is all a consistent color and doesn't get scraped and scratched so easily anymore.

Thoughts from medical experts? Are all people like this or very few? How many problems do we treat with new products that we could have treated by using less product?

 

[Evo]

I had issues with dandruff for a long time. Once my second kid was born, I went two weeks without a shower.

My dandruff basically went away. Since then I've been showering with water only. My hair has become way healthier and my skin is all a consistent color and doesn't get scraped and scratched so easily anymore.

Thoughts from medical experts? Are all people like this or very few? How many problems do we treat with new products that we could have treated by using less product?

Sounds like you may be prone to dry skin. I read an article just the other day that said people showered/bathed too often, of course now I can't find it. One problem with shampooing is that people often don't rinse all of the shampoo out.

 

[I like Serena]

Some skins are susceptible to irritation, irritation causing it to produce excess skin tissue.
Typical anti dandruff shampoos are rather aggressive, making it worse.
A mild shampoo should work better.

 

[HeLiXe]

I am not an expert -_- But I know that dandruff can also be caused by an accumulation/excess of "grease" or oils on the skin. Has to do with oleic acid, and I know that some shampoos have oleic acid.

 

[turbo]

I use Scent-Away liquid soap and shampoo. It is formulated for hunters that want to be pretty innocuous in the woods. It is very mild and it rinses clean, so even a 5-minute shower will leave your body free of residues. Ironically, I have struggled with dry skin and an oily scalp, and dandruff. Scent-Away took care of all of that.

 

[Pythagorean]

Sounds like you may be prone to dry skin. I read an article just the other day that said people showered/bathed too often, of course now I can't find it. One problem with shampooing is that people often don't rinse all of the shampoo out.

come to think of it, ever since I moved away from the ocean and into an arid region, my shoe size has shrank and my weight has gone down.

 

[JorgeLobo]

Frequency of bathing is as much or more a social custom than a health necessity. Still, as our society has moved to more frequent bathing, cleaner houses, immunizations etc - we have certainly become healthier (tho' "healthier hair" is a marketing concept - not a reality). With your bathing habits, I wonder if your 1st child will be your only one.

Dandruff is attributable to the host-parasite dynamic between your scalp and a fungus. Shampooing with atitdandruff shampoos does indeed mitigate dandruff and shampooing in general removes "flakes'.

 

[fluidistic]

If I don't use shampoo or soap my hair remains oily after a water-only wash. I have a very oily hair (grr!). With shampoo I can stand around 48 hours before having the look of constantly wet hair (due to oil). With soap only, around than 24 hours.

 

[JorgeLobo]

Not a surprise - oil (here sebum) isn't soluble in water, not on your hair and not on that of the original poster. Soap (sodium/potassium soap) will solubilize a substantial part but will precipitate with any divelant cations (Calcium, Magnesium, etc) and form a coating of inosluble soap that will make the hair look oilier sooner. Using detergents as almost all shampoos are now will not leave that coating.

 

[Pythagorean]

What I've read on the internet so far (not peer-reviewed!) is that if you keep stripping your oils every day, you either

a) are already a low-oil output person, and therefore lose your oily protective coating, leaving your skin more susceptible to drying out and getting scratched. (me)

b) are already a person that produces high volumes of oil, your body will overcompensate and you will always have oily hair. (oily headed people)

I have read a lot of "testimonies" of people going water-only and their oil levels adjusting more appropriately after several weeks of not using shampoo/soaps.

 

[turbo]

I had a friend in college who worked in a local high-end steakhouse. He had very long blonde hair, and he never used shampoo. However, he brushed his hair every single day and tied it back in a ponytail. He never looked disheveled or oily-haired, despite being a fry-cook in a very busy place.

Aside: He was a skinny little guy with a BMW cafe racer, and he kept threatening to have a custom-embroidered patch made up with a biker "club" name "Screaming Gypsy Devil Bandits" and the numeral "1".

I once offered to defray the cost of the setup and embroidery to get a second patch and he looked at me dead-pan and said "What do you think the '1' stands for?" What a nut!

 

[JorgeLobo]

As I said, the frequency of bathing - hair and general is largely cultural. Testimonials are as much to justify ones current practices as accurate assessments of physiology - especially as tied to what they consider "natural" and healthy. Though some pracries can produce the observation of dry scalp or skin in some folks, not sure ones "oil levels" is a techncial term - dip stick or not.
Water-only bathing typicaly is accompanied by rejection of deodorant/antiperspirant use. Is that your practice and can you ealborate as to your reasoning.

 

[Pythagorean]

I wouldn't call it rejection so much as neglect. I haven't used deodorant in a long time, mainly because I'm not courting. Also there is a lot of social acceptability here. We have a lot of students and even a few professors in "dry cabins" (no running water) up here. It's the rugged northern way, etc.

When I first got here, I showered every morning and wore deoderant, thinking I needed to impress people, but this is an arid region and my skin quickly filled with blemishes. I didn't really recognize it was the shower causing it, but eventually I slacked off and adjusted to the society around me (reduced to a shower a week, still using products though).

(also a note: the local water contains VERY high volumes of calcium carbonate. Three times that of what's considered "very hard" water on our local water report.) This may contribute, I don't know. It definitely makes a mess of inorganic materials, leavig CacO3 deposites everywhere.

Anti-perspiration products block your body from dumping toxins, which has shown to be an issue with breast cancer in women. I am not a woman, but still, it makes sense to me that I should let my body dump its toxins; that's what armpits do.

Anyway, I don't have a huge problem with perspiration and body order in the first place, just my body type. In it's place, I tend to have a super-fast metabolism (or bacteria colony?) that seems to instantly "sublimate" anything that enters my stomach =P (i.e., my digestive system can turn almost any food into gas).

 

[JorgeLobo]

It's cultural and it sounds that the environment in wnich you work is one where few use soap and deodorants so your with them.
The "toxin" and antiperspirant matter is urban myth. Armpits dump sweat - not toxins - and there is enough sweat elsewhere on the body to eliminate such mythical toxins if they existed.
Be aware that many folks can't smell their own body odor.

 

[lisab]

I had issues with dandruff for a long time. Once my second kid was born, I went two weeks without a shower.

My dandruff basically went away. Since then I've been showering with water only. My hair has become way healthier and my skin is all a consistent color and doesn't get scraped and scratched so easily anymore.

Thoughts from medical experts? Are all people like this or very few? How many problems do we treat with new products that we could have treated by using less product?

I wonder if your dandruff is due to irritation caused by the shampoo, i.e. something like contact dermatitis. Maybe if you apply the shampoo to your skin for several days to see if that's what's bothering your scalp. (Of course, I mean apply then rinse off.)

Question is, I don't know if your scalp skin would react differently than normal skin. Maybe our medicos here would know if skin sensitivity changes on different body parts? I.e., could a product cause contact dermatitis on one place on your skin, but not elsewhere?

 

[lisab]

It's cultural and it sounds that the environment in wnich you work is one where few use soap and deodorants so your with them.
The "toxin" and antiperspirant matter is urban myth. Armpits dump sweat - not toxins - and there is enough sweat elsewhere on the body to eliminate such mythical toxins if they existed.
Be aware that many folks can't smell their own body odor.

I, too, get a skeptical reaction when I read the word "toxins". In many contexts, it's an undefined, slippery word - used more to get an emotional response than to convey information.

 

[gravenewworld]

Hmm interesting. I would have thought washing your hair less would have led to an increase in your dandruff problem. It is hypothesized that the yeast P.Ovale, which is found on everyone and 'eats' sebaceous oils producing oleic acid (which people who are genetically prone to dander are sensitive to), is the main culprit. I would have thought greasier hair would worsen the problem. Maybe you have something other than dandruff? Psoriasis perhaps? Or like Lisa suggests, maybe you are just allergic to the shampoos you were using.

 

[Pythagorean]

Hrm yeah, anti persperants causing cancer is something I learned about decades ago in high school, never realized it was controversial.

 

[Drakkith]

Hrm yeah, anti persperants causing cancer is something I learned about decades ago in high school, never realized it was controversial.

I have a very hard time accepting most health studies. The number of variables are astronomical and simply because "studies show that drinking coffee may cause a slight increase in cancer" and all that jazz doesn't mean anything to me. When you really get in and look at most of the data for these it turns out to be things like people who drink a 55 gallon drum of coffe a week and gargle with motor oil or something. Well, not that crazy, but every time I look into a study it's always either such a miniscule change from "norm" or you have to do something so drastic that its unrealistic.

P.S. I use deoderant every day. I can smell myself if I don't.