In summary: He stopped washing his hair with any products and started using just cold water, in an effort to help with his dandruff problem. Overall seems to have worked for him. Seemed mildly interesting to me.
Not actually NSFW, but I tagged it because the thumbnail is a close-up of some pretty severe dandruff, and there’s a few seconds of video in the middle where he shows the condition of his scalp before quitting shampoo. Just thought I’d mention, in case that makes you squeamish.
I’m not a doctor, but something just hit me.
We use soap when washing to remove debris and microbes from our skin, largely to prevent infection and illness.
Presumably, the same idea is applied to hair. However, a single strand of hair has an absolute crap load of nooks and crannies for microbes to live in.
Sebum, the waxy substance that makes our hair and skin “oily” is a defense mechanism against microbes by creating a sealed surface (though some types break it down and create odors). Soaps denaturize this substance, and then rinsing it off removes this protection.
This sort of says to me that this guy also highlighted a question of mine I’ve wondered. Without a specific need to disinfect hair, or remove the built up odor, why the fuck would we want to destroy that wax we evolved to protect our hair?
So unlike hand soaps etc, shampoo is not trying to sanitize your hair. Washing is to remove dirt and grease, not necessarily kill microbes.
Yes sebum is beneficial to the scalp. And yes stripping too much sebum from the skin (washing too often) can lead to dryness and irritation and dandruff symptoms.
But dandruff can also be caused by fungus and bacteria, see the “Causes - > Microorganisms” section of the Dandruff Wikipedia article. The fungus mentioned here specifically feeds on sebum, so not washing enough to remove that sebum can cause that fungus to thrive.
So yes washing too much can cause dandruff, but so can not washing enough (I linked this interview with a dermatologist in another comment, they say the same thing here.)
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer here. But doctors do recommend washing your hair regularly - how regularly depends on a variety of factors.
Fungus. I hate fungus. I know we need it for antibacterial purposes and for trees to even survive, but did it have to be gross.
That’s how it works. There’s another layer to it though. We have symbiotic relationships with microbes and bacteria that live on our skin and in our pores. They swim around in the oil and they eat our dead skin and they manage all the stuff on our skin. When a foreign pathogen or microbe shows up not only do they have to make their way through all the protective oily waxing stuff but they also have to fight our little army on our skin before it ever even gets to us. By using soap you’re killing everyone on your skin and removing everything leaving your bare skin with zero defense. We evolved to have the oils and the bugs on our skin and it’s a great system. I’m pretty sure soap salesman just started making up lies in the Victorian era and beyond and everyone believed it an internalized it.
Jesus Christ the uninformed comments in this thread. Are you seriously saying soap is bad?
You do understand the benefit of removing viruses from your hands, right?
I can only hope you were only trying to reference scalp care rather than the benefits of soap as a whole.
But either way you’re wrong.
This is how people get started on the anti-science train. Next thing you know they’ll be talking about how bad vaccines are for the body.
Yeah in this age of misinformation I think it’s really important to not just share the truth, but also avoid saying something that could be interpreted in an anti-science way. No the commenter doesn’t explicitly say “never use soap” but, as written, that’s what’s implied.
We’re interpreting this comment very differently. The way I read it, they’re saying that the oils and microbes that occur naturally on our skin are largely beneficial to good health, which means that there are downsides to removing it.
That shouldn’t be controversial. It’s not saying “never wash”, but rather pointing out that excessive cleaning with soap can negatively impact your health. There’s plenty of evidence that that’s the case.
Of course, you should be washing your hands properly, there’s also plenty of evidence that not doing so causes disease. I think the major point here is that it’s not black and white. Excessively washing your whole body with soap can very well lead to dry/cracked skin and skin infections.
Since you want to get hostile: if you you could read, you’d already know that no one is saying don’t wash your hands with soap. All the people who poses reading comprehension skills in this thread understand that we’re talking about the excessive use of soap when not needed; for example everyday on your hair or perhaps even all over your body.
Lol yep tell me more about your reading comprehension skills