I wasn't talking about soap. I never use it or shampoo either. My theory is that by washing away all the oils from your skin, you just encourage your body to produce oil faster. That's why you soap users get all goopy at the end of the day and your clothes smell. I can wear my clothes for at least 48 hours before they start to smell.
But anyway, even just water can dry out my hands, and I don't want to use any creams. Either they contain alcohol and dry my hands out further or make them too greasy, and cause then to stop producing oils.
I think your just going to have to get used to the fact that there is going to be traces of poop and pee wherever you go. I mean, even if people like me did wash my hands, the spray from flushing the toilet disperses fecal matter and urine throughout the whole room, onto your clothes, on your hair, in your mouth when you breathe.
It's probably a healthy thing, exposing your immune system, anyway.
why would you favour naturally oily hands over clean hands? you are sacrificing everybody's hygiene for your own comfort. what do you do around babies and the elderly? despite your superior body chemistry, do you not wash your clothes in soap? would you refuse antiseptic treatment, or condone a team of surgeons with your unhygienic practice to save your life?
there is a reason humans harness sanitation: it saves and prolongs lives
> why would you favour naturally oily hands over clean hands?
At the end of the day, with your accelerated oil producing hands, that became that way because you are constantly stripping them of it, your hands are much more goopy than mine.
> you are sacrificing everybody's hygiene for your own comfort. what do you do around babies and the elderly?
I don't even think about it. Despite your implication of calamity, nothing happens. (Besides, babies are a lot dirtier than me, drooling and sticking everything in their mouths)
> despite your superior body chemistry, do you not wash your clothes in soap?
Clothes are another matter, they aren't living organisms with evolved mechanisms to survive in a natural environment full of all kinds of microorganisms that could kill you. You need to wash clothes just as you need to take care of any artificial tool.
Naturally, we don't need soap. This is a classic marketing technique, create a problem, “hygiene”, then push a solution, buy my soap. Only the soap creates more problems, but nevermind that. Oh if you're really suffering, buy my hand cream.
> would you refuse antiseptic treatment, or condone a team of surgeons with your unhygienic practice to save your life?
Would you take blood pressure medication when you didn't need it? How about put a cast on your arm for a week after lifting a heavy object just in case the bones are slightly weakened? Just because medicine can cure a problem doesn't mean you should use it all the time.
> there is a reason humans harness sanitation: it saves and prolongs lives
An enormous oversimplification. Obviously it saves lives, but if we lived in a world where we never came in contact with any microorganism that might kill us, our defense systems would be weakened to a point where if we were ever exposed to one, we'd all die.
> > why would you favour naturally oily hands over clean hands?
> At the end of the day, with your accelerated oil producing hands, that became that way because you are constantly stripping them of it, your hands are much more goopy than mine.
my hands are certainly not "goopy", but if you associate soap with that, then you obviously haven't found the right soap for you.
> > you are sacrificing everybody's hygiene for your own comfort. what do you do around babies and the elderly?
> I don't even think about it. Despite your implication of calamity, nothing happens. (Besides, babies are a lot dirtier than me, drooling and sticking everything in their mouths)
this sounds like an uneducated statement to say the least. it's not about dirt (a bit of dirt never harmed anyone), it's about bacteria and diseases, and the risks posed to those with developing or weakened immune systems. could you sleep if a baby you had contact with died from MRSA or diarrhoea? if you are consciously assisting the spread of infection and disease then calamity is the least you deserve.
> > despite your superior body chemistry, do you not wash your clothes in soap?
> Clothes are another matter, they aren't living organisms with evolved mechanisms to survive in a natural environment full of all kinds of microorganisms that could kill you. You need to wash clothes just as you need to take care of any artificial tool.
if you admit to willfully using soap on items that protect and insulate an organism then these could by natural extension include skin. also, the reproductive and therefore evolutionary rates of microorganisms far exceed our own - you and your kin would not evolve quickly enough to survive a pandemic.
> Naturally, we don't need soap. This is a classic marketing technique, create a problem, “hygiene”, then push a solution, buy my soap. Only the soap creates more problems, but nevermind that. Oh if you're really suffering, buy my hand cream.
bacterial infection and disease are not a product of unethical marketing. nor are they some imagined, artificial problem. the suggestion that soap is not needed is conflating to the domain of cosmetics, of which it does not belong. I'm not saying soap is the answer to humanity's demise, it just enables us and other species to thrive. the major example being post-sanitation life expectancy.
> > would you refuse antiseptic treatment, or condone a team of surgeons with your unhygienic practice to save your life?
> Would you take blood pressure medication when you didn't need it? How about put a cast on your arm for a week after lifting a heavy object just in case the bones are slightly weakened? Just because medicine can cure a problem doesn't mean you should use it all the time.
firstly, soap is not a medicine so that analogy is safely dismissed. secondly, those are auto-negating or rhetorical questions, so I'm not inclined to answer. mine were life-or-death scenarios, which you chose not to answer. I wonder why that was. I will not assume you would choose death, but instead presume you acknowledge that you would indeed need soap.
also, since you touched on threat perception. it's not about what could happen, it's about what is happening and what is being done to prevent it.
> > there is a reason humans harness sanitation: it saves and prolongs lives
> An enormous oversimplification. Obviously it saves lives, but if we lived in a world where we never came in contact with any microorganism that might kill us, our defense systems would be weakened to a point where if we were ever exposed to one, we'd all die.
soap does not alter our immune systems. everything we are immune to has nothing to do with the availability of soap. it's more about protection and mitigation against the things we are incapable of becoming immune to.
it's absurd you dare include yourself in that "we". you are the minority here. you are alive for two reasons, the first being you are lucky enough to live in an environment where sanitation is available, and secondly because the majority of mankind grasp basic biological concepts and are not living under some anti-goopiness delusion.
there are several instances in pre-sanitation history where we did nearly all die. to say that you do not need soap is simply insane (etymological pun intended :)
It's all relative. What you consider normal, is quite slimy for someone who is not engaged in your activity.
> but if you associate soap with that, then you obviously haven't found the right soap for you.
I just told you, this is not due to soap but to the increased oil production in response to you stripping the oils from your skin. Do you not understand this?
> this sounds like an uneducated statement to say the least. it's not about dirt (a bit of dirt never harmed anyone), it's about bacteria and diseases, and the risks posed to those with developing or weakened immune systems.
Jesus Christ, how did you construe that I thought that dirt caused disease?
> could you sleep if a baby you had contact with died from MRSA or diarrhoea? if you are consciously assisting the spread of infection and disease then calamity is the least you deserve.
You dare blame "MRSA" on someone advocating for less routine and systematic destruction of germs everywhere and anywhere? How do you think the "MR" part of "MRSA" got to be that way, hmm?
> If you admit to willfully using soap on items that protect and insulate an organism then these could by natural extension include skin.
There is a huge difference between washing a tool and washing what is as actually a human organ, namely the skin. The human body is complicated and tuned to a particular environment. Radically changing it by smearing chemicals on it several times a day will have many short term and long term unintended effects.
> also, the reproductive and therefore evolutionary rates of microorganisms far exceed our own - you and your kin would not evolve quickly enough to survive a pandemic.
If that were true how did humanity evolve in the first place?
> bacterial infection and disease are not a product of unethical marketing.nor are they some imagined, artificial problem. the suggestion that soap is not needed is conflating to the domain of cosmetics, of which it does not belong. I'm not saying soap is the answer to humanity's demise, it just enables us and other species to thrive.
Our species thrived quite fine before people engaged in obsessive hand washing. And I wasn't aware other species used soap?
> the major example being post-sanitation life expectancy.
Do I really need to explain to you correlation vs cause and effect? Just because people started washing their hands and started to live longer does not mean that one caused the other.
> firstly, soap is not a medicine so that analogy is safely dismissed.
If soap is meant to prevent disease, namely infections, and blood pressure medication is also meant to prevent disease, namely strokes and heart attacks, then how is not a medicine? What is it, if not, and why are you pushing its use so hard if it isn't?
> secondly, those are auto-negating or rhetorical questions, so I'm not inclined to answer. mine were life-or-death scenarios, which you chose not to answer. I wonder why that was.
Are you insane? You don't think scenarios where you ask if I would choose to live rather than die is not supposed to be taken rhetorically?
> I will not assume you would choose death, but instead presume you acknowledge that you would indeed need soap.
You get that I'm not advocating for the banning of soap use anywhere and everywhere, right?
> soap does not alter our immune systems. everything we are immune to has nothing to do with the availability of soap. it's more about protection and mitigation against the things we are incapable of becoming immune to.
If it only targeted germs that we are incapable of becoming immune to, and had no other effects, that sure, why not? The problem, though, is it reduces our exposure to all germs, and our immune systems do not develop properly in this sort of environment. There are many studies that show a connection between over sanitized environments and allergic reactions due to the immune system going haywire, as well as getting sick easily when they are then exposed to dirtier environments.
> it's absurd you dare include yourself in that "we". you are the minority here.
I am a "we" as in I am in a human being in the human race. You really cut those dividing lines deep, don't you?
> you are alive for two reasons, the first being you are lucky enough to live in an environment where sanitation is available,
Am I asking for a ban on sanitation?
> and secondly because the majority of mankind grasp basic biological concepts and are not living under some anti-goopiness delusion.
Sorry, I don't want my body to overproduce oils all the time and then have to wash those oils away every day to prevent being covered in my own body oils. We've lived like that for tens of thousands of years, it won't kill us all.
> there are several instances in pre-sanitation history where we did nearly all die. to say that you do not need soap is simply insane (etymological pun intended :)
Sanitation isn't wholly and exclusively comprised of hand washing. Me advocating for not doing it, isn't being against sanitation entirely.
> It's all relative. What you consider normal, is quite slimy for someone who is not engaged in your activity.
most people can distinguish between slimy and not slimy. I bet you can guess what they'd do if they felt that their hands were slimy..
you try to make it sound like a sordid act whereas in fact, it is quite the opposite, and whatever sensation you attribute to it is invalidated by society's expectation.
> I just told you, this is not due to soap but to the increased oil production in response to you stripping the oils from your skin. Do you not understand this?
then find a soap which doesn't affect oil production if that is your preference or requirement. you're not expected to suffer, or sacrifice, or join a cult. just be clean and responsible. or is that too much to expect?
> Jesus Christ, how did you construe that I thought that dirt caused disease?
I didn't, hence "it's not about dirt", and no mention of causation. besides, you can't really cause bacteria, but you can hinder their growth and spread. with soap.
> You dare blame "MRSA" on someone advocating for less routine and systematic destruction of germs everywhere and anywhere? How do you think the "MR" part of "MRSA" got to be that way, hmm?
the arguments around antibiotics (medicines) seem tangential here, let's save that one for another time. I'm talking about preventative measures for the benefit of all. why do you think they have sanitation stations in hospitals, on farms, in kitchens?
> The human body is complicated and tuned to a particular environment.
bacteria are simple organisms and present in virtually every environment.
> Radically changing it by smearing chemicals on it several times a day will have many short term and long term unintended effects.
if you are worried about certain chemicals, or perceive promoting cleanliness and hygienic practice as radical and unintended, then you should re-evaluate your options or seek advice from a pharmacist. there is no excuse.
> If that were true how did humanity evolve in the first place?
by enduring near extinctions, adapting to new environments, and eliminating the weak? human evolution has been a slow process among a relatively small population. my point is that if we all stopped washing our hands it would mean bad news for all of us, faster than the rate of our evolution.
> Our species thrived quite fine before people engaged in obsessive hand washing.
by becoming aware of the dangers of not being clean. did we choose to live in trees or caves with rot? did we scavenge decaying food? did we favour unclean water sources?
it doesn't have to be obsessive, just regular and thorough.
> I wasn't aware other species used soap?
I was referring to our veterinary use on animals and resistance use on plants. I'm sure many species are instinctively aware of natural bactericides, salts, etc.
> Do I really need to explain to you correlation vs cause and effect? Just because people started washing their hands and started to live longer does not mean that one caused the other.
I'm no expert, but I would expect that there is a strong case for correlation, and probably a causal relationship, between sanitation and life expectancy.
> If soap is meant to prevent disease, namely infections, and blood pressure medication is also meant to prevent disease, namely strokes and heart attacks, then how is not a medicine? What is it, if not, and why are you pushing its use so hard if it isn't?
again, not a medical expert, but my understanding is that strokes and heart attacks are incidents governed by risk factors, not diseases themselves like CVD or CHD. bad examples aside, soap is used for preventing the spread of harmful bacteria. medicine is used for treatment of an established condition. blood pressure medication is specifically for treating high blood pressure. as a side effect it lowers the risk of heart disease. I'm not against using medicine. I am pushing for the use of soap because my culture deems it acceptable to shake hands, share toilet seats, and eat food, with staph-ridden strangers like you.
> Are you insane? You don't think scenarios where you ask if I would choose to live rather than die is not supposed to be taken rhetorically?
I admit it was a cheap shot. but if it saves lives then is that not more important than your perception of harm?
> You get that I'm not advocating for the banning of soap use anywhere and everywhere, right?
sounds like progress.
> If it only targeted germs that we are incapable of becoming immune to, and had no other effects, that sure, why not? The problem, though, is it reduces our exposure to all germs, and our immune systems do not develop properly in this sort of environment. There are many studies that show a connection between over sanitized environments and allergic reactions due to the immune system going haywire, as well as getting sick easily when they are then exposed to dirtier environments.
washing our hands does not reduce exposure to all germs. if they're not on our hands then they're on the rest of our body anyway. I don't use soap in my eyes or lungs. washing hands has one simple purpose: to prevent spreading bad bacteria through a specific medium. it's simple risk reduction. many diseases and infections have a faecal-oral route, with hands as the main carrier. why on earth wouldn't you wash your hands after using the lavatory? it's bizarre and vile. I'm not concerned with cherry-picked studies on such a complex subject as immunology, just common sense and decency.
> I am a "we" as in I am in a human being in the human race. You really cut those dividing lines deep, don't you?
if something is detrimental to the continuation and progression of a race, it does by its own being not belong.
> Am I asking for a ban on sanitation?
you are advocating for and contributing to the spread of bacteria and disease. am I sounding unreasonable?
> Sorry, I don't want my body to overproduce oils all the time and then have to wash those oils away every day to prevent being covered in my own body oils. We've lived like that for tens of thousands of years, it won't kill us all.
it's the twenty-first century, there really is no excuse. I suspect it's more to do with mentality than physiology.
> Sanitation isn't wholly and exclusively comprised of hand washing. Me advocating for not doing it, isn't being against sanitation entirely.
I never said it was. it's just the most basic form and first line of defense.
