For most of her life, blogger Starr Vartan took a shower every night using soap to cleanse herself. But she suffered from chronic dry skin and cystic acne, so she started searching for alternative remedies. A few years ago, Vartan decided to ditch both soap and her daily shower, and her skin problems disappeared.
"A couple of years ago, I started doing some reading, and there's been this growing movement of using less shampoo, and oil cleansing and now showering less to support your skin," she recently told HuffPost Live host Nancy Redd. "I did it for a couple of weeks and I realized it really made a huge difference. My skin was just so much happier, so much less dry and itchy, so I was a convert."
In addition to showering less frequently, Vartan began oil cleansing in lieu of soap. Her cystic acne cleared up soon after. "I started oil cleansing and I started showering less kind of at the same time, so I think it was less exposure to those hot temperatures in the shower, which ... is great for opening pores, but can also stress your skin out," she said. "And then also using oils on my skin at the same time, it was like a really complementary thing, and my cystic acne is totally gone."
Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!