Showerless Bathing

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by slomotion

Don't know about American Indian bathing habits, but Pre-Columbian life expectancy in North American was about 30.

All I know about this is that I take a short shower as hot as I can stand (full hot with our electric tank onshore) and after a half hour cool off I sleep wonderfully and wake up refreshed.

Clean is beautiful and it doesn't take a long warm shower to obtain good results.

Heading that way now!

Steve B.
PS I'm 62 and perfectly healthy

[liberty16]

Human flora - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Up to 100,000 species of bacteria live on and in your body.

Your body is made up of 100 trillion cells, but there are 1000 trillion bacteria living in you.

Showers are good for get rid of dead ones. Whether you bathe in hot or cold water doesn't really make a difference. I think the main reason to shower is to prevent fungi from growing but I don't know this for certain.

[Ex-Calif]

I'm with perrit head. Cold showers are no problem. I'd guess 90% of asians (particularly south asians) don't have hot water. I shower routinely in "tepid" water because getting out of a steam and stepping into 31deg 90% humidity air turns one into a wet sponge in 5 minutes.

The Asia bucket bath is pretty efficient and just takes a little getting used to. It works on deck, on the swim step or in the shower if you have one.

Use a loofah or a sponge to get wet, lather up and then bucket yourself to rinse. The loofah is awesome for the scrup down and makes you feel like you've been cleaned.

Obviously in colder climes you need a different plan but who wants to live in colder climes?

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by ireaney

Get a decent watermaker and have fresh showers daily!!

I'm glad someone finally mentioned this. If daily showers are important to you, invest in buying or building a R/O unit.

[Kanani]

We have been on many long ocean passages, up to 59 days in length. We regularly bath on deck using sea water, then spray off with fresh water in a presurized garden sprayer. It uses about 1 quart of fresh water for the 2 of us. It gets all of the soap off and made us feel like we had a fresh water shower.

As for soap, regular bar soap doesn't suds up (as mentioned earlier) but shampoo does. We used shampoo to wash our entire body and it felt great. We tried the "Joy" thing and it is a detergant. It made both of our skin feel very dry.

[Mike Banks]

Rodney--boils are infected hair roots. They are caused by bacteria on the skin--and a brief wash with disinfectant, rest for two minutes minimum then shower or sponge it off will keep the critters in check. You would have to boil yourself to get rid of them all--unless you use some type of bacteriocide. A dilute Dettol wipe down would do it. I use a chlorhexidene product--it is quite dilute and comes with its own detergent. You do not have to use it every wash--but every day or so would not go amiss. There are several brands available. The brand I use is Microshield.