Well it was just over a month ago when significant attention was bestowed upon me over my self experiment — months in the making — to rid and free myself from soap and shampoo. You know the story.

I got a kick out of a lot of the comments at boingboing at the time, like, "he must be a vegan." Many suggested I must be an unwashed hippie. And many failed to draw the distinction, right there in the boingboing post title — "Body washing with water alone" — between not using soap & shampoo and not washing at all. But more than a month later, the comment I laugh about the most was the guy who said: "Don’t use shampoo; use real poo." Cracks me up to this day. How weird am I?

So I have an interview tomorrow morning with the Columbia University Journalism School wire service that distributes via the NYT wire. So, potentially, it could go out to many sources, or, it could fizzle — but I don’t know much about this sort of thing. But I’m game. This is mostly about the growing trend to no shampoo, as the reporter explained it. We’ll see how it goes. Manbe I can get in a bit about paleo, primal, evfit, eh?

So, it has been more than a month. Did anyone give it a try and care to report their results, positive or negative? I’ve got a few to share with you. The most extensive report is by Sean Bonner who wrote up a whole deal on it.

I’ve given up using soap & shampoo forever

Towards the end of December I came across an article written by a guy who had given up on using soap and was now washing himself with water alone. My immediate thought was this must be some dirty hippy and I felt sorry for anyone who lived or worked in close proximity to him – however I was interested in why someone would make a choice like this so I sat down and read both the article and the extremely long comment thread which made much more sense than I expected it to. If you have some time I recommend reading it though the author, Richard Nikoley, is active in the paleo-scene so a lot of the comments reference those ideas. But this post isn’t about that article, it’s about my own experiences.

Please extend him the courtesy of a big increased traffic day and go read the post about his experiences.

Next up is this post where he touches on several life tweaks:

Flipping Switches and Turning Dials

Hair: It just gets weirder. Welcome to the next stop on the freak show. A few weeks ago, I read this post over at Free the Animal. Giving up the use of shampoo and other hair care products seemed unorthodox, to say the least. I tend to be particular about my hair. Yet, I was intrigued.

Go check out his results.

And finally, just a few days ago "Jinx" commented on the original post.

It’s been a month since I went soap free, and 4 weeks since shampoo last touched my hair. My hair is soft, manageable, shiny, has no odor, and my scalp doesn’t itch. I still use soap on my hands after using the toilet, but that’s it. Haven’t even used facial moisturizer. My skin is soft, has no perfumey soap residue, and I don’t need moisturizer even though our winters are very very dry. My hands get dry after using some soaps but a couple of hours later they’re soft again. It’s working out really well for me. I’m glad I found out about this!

So that’s three. Any more who’ve tried it and given it an honest month or more? Positive or negative, let’s hear it.

Update: Well I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with the reporter and actually about half of it was about the paleo / primal / evfit life to include diet, workout, fasting. Covered lots of ground. I speculated that the reason this may be working so well for some as evidenced by these comments is at least partially related to diet as opposed to SAD.

I’m told the article will hit the wire within about two weeks and will go out to 400 newspapers around the country. Let’s cross our fingers that it gets picked up by many and that the paleo way gets even more airtime.