8 ms·
Iranian man who didn't wash for half a century dies at 94
- anotheraccount9 4y agoHygiene => reduced risks of infection => increased lifespan. Should we also get excited when people die from smoking after a century, eating frogs for breakfast, or growing insanely long nails?
- naillo 4y agoIt could as you hint to that he simply lived a very sedentary life and avoided infections that way (sitting there near his house like the image depicts never getting a cut for decades).
- somenameforme 4y agoIt's not so simple there. To take it to extremes somebody who had literally perfect hygiene (to the point that he was exposed to 0 unintended bacteria/viruses/etc) would undoubtedly become gravely ill, and very possibly die, once being introduced into society at large. Our bodies are extremely adaptive. A common example of this would be travel. If you move to an area with looser standards of food handling/preparation, then you're probably going to get sick - and possibly quite sick. Repeatedly. Then eventually your body will get used to it, and you'll find yourself able to comfortably eat just about anything. So there's going to be some sort of a bell curve. Too much hygiene is bad for you. Too little hygiene is bad for you. There's some sweet spot that optimizes strengthening your body without over stressing it.
- btbuildem 4y agoWell, I think it's clear, the water and soap killed him -- he was right to fear them all along.
- eganist 4y ago> But, local media say, Amou Haji finally succumbed to pressure and washed a few months ago. > According to Iran's IRNA news agency, he became ill shortly afterwards and died on Sunday. I'm really hoping an autopsy is done to figure out what exactly killed him, because this might be the most interesting opportunity for a hygiene case study in generations. Identifying even just one potential opportunistic disease, autoimmune condition, or even mental phenomenon which might've precipitated his passing... I'm not saying it's likely something novel will be found, but it's more likely than not.
- ceedan 4y agoWhat killed him was probably the same thing that motivated him to finally get cleaned
- eganist 4y agoActually that's probably the most likely case lol. Still hoping for a public autopsy and case study just for the sake of the science.
- nosianu 4y agoAh, but there's also this part, apparently his water and diet were no better than his outer shell: > his diet had consisted of rotten meat and unsanitary water drunk from an old oil can. > Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad, the news agency said. And then there's the picture where he's smoking four cigarettes at once. I mean, I'm really kind of impressed.
- xattt 4y ago> Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad, the news agency said. I can’t avoid looking at this man’s situation from the a Western “mental health awareness” lens. Why would he subject himself to this? Is he attempting to exert control as a result of a past situation where he felt he had none (psychosocial trauma)?
- highwaylights 4y agoOn Keto? Old hat. On Paleo? So 2015. Get you on the Keith Richards.
- rOOb85 4y agoIf I'm remembering correctly, years ago I read about this man(pretty sure it's the same man) and he was known to smoke dried out animal feces. So...yea...not just a "smoker" but a smoker of feces.
- 4y ago
- fallingfrog 4y agoUgh I love ads that take up half the screen and you can't click away from
- soperj 4y agoDon't know how you live without an ad blocker.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoThere are a lot of people on this site who work in adtech, so don't run an ad blocker I have to respect the willingness to self-flagellate
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> not using an ad-blocker Stop hitting yourself.
- danielodievich 4y agoThere is a popular russian joke I just recently heard told that has a bumpkin from the village say to his buddy, hey, you know, my friend got a French girlfriend and she's so dirty! Why, asks his buddy? Well, she takes a bath every day!
- reidjs 4y agoCan you explain this one?
- MrMan 4y agowho needs to bathe a lot unless they are very dirty? airtight reasoning
- mc32 4y agoThey get so dirty so quickly they need to bathe way more often than someone who does not play in dirt and filth.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lelandfe 4y agoSurely the humor is in the country bumpkin believing that a daily bath is unusual, and only a habit of someone extremely dirty.
- conductr 4y agoFirst impression is dirty in bed, turns out she is just getting filthy and needs to bath a lot
- lelandfe 4y agoThat might be a part of it, but it is a translated joke - so the double entendre of “dirty” may not be intentional
- 4y ago
- wiradikusuma 4y ago"..skin covered in soot and pus..", "..diet.. ..rotten meat and unsanitary water..", "..fond of smoking..". "..dies at 94". I don't even know what to say. Those two snippets can't be in the same sentence right? I'll think twice before telling my kids to "eat healthy and don't smoke"!
- edm0nd 4y ago"hey kids, stop playing outside and come eat this rotten meat we cooked! After dinner we'll have some cigarettes"
- amelius 4y ago* we didn't cook
- ffhhj 4y agoHe probably didn't ingest sugar and fats, also had a life without anxiety.
- mr_mitm 4y agoAnd a lot of luck. These are all statistical correlations, there are bound to be outliers.
- gwn7 4y agoThose correlations might imply causations as well. Just because we can't (yet) tell for sure, we cannot reliably attribute the phenomenon to luck either.
- paulpauper 4y agohmm Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have famously horrible diets yet sill fully active at 91. I think a lot of it comes down to genes. Some people simply do not suffer from the ravages of age compared to others even when they seemingly break the rules.
- 4y ago
- cies 4y agoThat's one data point :) I've stopped washing my body for a few years now. I do wash my hands regularly (with soap), I take a few saunas a week, and when I think I stink I take a shower with sodiumbicarb as a soap. I believe this is possible due to a fairly clean diet (eggs, dairy, union/garlic, meat, fish -- they make me stink and I no longer eat them). My skin has never been better.
- adhoc_slime 4y agohas anyone commented on your scent?
- cies 4y agonope. and i ask regularly. i remember eating eggs, many years ago, and I could smell myself for a few days after that, while showering every day. i told someone and they said they noticed too. i've not eaten eggs in 9y now. same for other "food that makes me smell", I eat a lot less of it. for me that it more important to how i smell than regular showers/ parfumated soaps/ deoderant/ etc.
- tmaly 4y agowhat is the take away here?
- et-al 4y agoYour office neckbeard has an excuse to continue not showering.
- hunterb123 4y agoHumans can be crazy resilient or delicate thanks to genetic diversity and the randomness of the universe.
- hinkley 4y agoSometimes people succeed against all odds?
- codezero 4y agoIf you're a hermit, don't let people near you, they transmit a lot of diseases :)
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoHis life stinked.
- jswartz 4y agoHis favorite food was porcupine! That's some Chuck Norris stuff right there!
- zwieback 4y agoYeah, I want to try that now. I doubt this guy's preparation was very sophisticated, though, he also ate rotten meat.
- marcodiego 4y ago> Amou Haji finally succumbed to pressure and washed a few months ago. > According to Iran's IRNA news agency, he became ill shortly afterwards and died on Sunday. I don't think evolution prepared us to 3 showers a day. I also don't think it prepared us to instantly available unhealthy all-food-you-can-eat. We have to consider how much of our sedentary behavior is unnatural and how much of it is really improving our lives. I mean, there are probably many accepted habits that people hope your have that are not healthy; 3 showers a day is probably one of them.
- barbazoo 4y agoI've never thought about showering 3 times a day. Is that common anywhere?
- clucas 4y agoI haven't been brave enough to try it, but: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/i-stopped-showering-and-life-continued/486314/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/i-stopped...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- birger 4y agoI shower at most once a week, without or just a little soap and/or shampoo. Everything is fine, what's in the article is true.
- jerlam 4y agoThe author expanded the topic into a whole book: https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Science-Skin-James-Hamblin-ebook/dp/B081M5SSJ2 https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Science-Skin-James-Hamblin-eboo... It's a fun read; it's a lot more focused on the microflora on your skin and the health effects of regularly wiping them out than just "not showering".
- bitwize 4y agoEvery Hackernews knows that it's the standard American diet and toxins from first-world industry that are the root cause of nearly every major health problem. Some Hackernews have also quit bathing entirely and they're in perfect health because microbiota or something.
- nunez 4y agois the bug diet still popular here?
- zwieback 4y agoAlso Soylent, although this Iranian guy lives on porcupine.
- TremendousJudge 4y agoI miss n-gate.
- z3t4 4y agoA friend of mine stopped using soap and after a few months people started complimenting on how good his hair looked. So I tried the same and after a few weeks I got cold after cold, so I got back to using soap.
- tsol 4y agoHis hair didn't become incredibly greasy and knotted over time? I feel like my hair would be the biggest problem. Skin usually adapts pretty quickly
- sfpotter 4y agoPIMP.
- kstenerud 4y agoI stopped using soap a decade ago. The only time I use it now is for rare occasions where I get something on me that requires soap, such as motor oil or chemicals. I also only wash twice a week or so. People always recoil when I tell them, but then I ask them what I smell like to them. They say I don't really smell like anything. The first month was the worst, because my skin took time to adjust to not having its oils washed off every day. I felt REALLY greasy for a couple of weeks, like the feeling you get when you've worn a pair of jeans far too long between washes. Then as my skin adjusted things went back to normal. The only real issue is hair; it becomes REALLY unmanageable without shampoo. So if you have long hair, just keep using shampoo.
- Markoff 4y agoSame here, I wash twice a week (same as my son who had really bad eczema when he was kid, think hospitalization kind, now almost completely gone), stopped using shampoo and shower gel about maybe 2 years ago, don't really have any problems with body odor, don't smell like anything, if I get smelly it's only armpits (when hot) and despite having short hair (I usually trim it to like 3-9mm, then let it grow for at least 2 months except warm months), I don't really like oily and itchy hair after few days. The reason I stopped were issues of my kids with eczema considering I had also a little bit of eczema (but nothing really bad, usually flared up only winter months) so after people doing this I decided to try and to my surprise I see no negative difference on my body and actually even on my hair, which became oily/itchy after few days no matter whether I used shampoo or not used it. Though I've had test runs before when travelling around southeast asia for extended period when I took just daily shower without any soap and had no problems. I've had really trouble through pandemic with mandatory disinfection to the point they didn't want to let me into kids kindergarten to accompany them despite having pretty bad eczema/skin issues on hands if I use anything irritating, this was resolved by wearing gloves and sprinkling stupid disinfectant on gloves or pretending to use the machine. Disclaimer: I use shampoo (well it's actually shower gel) after trimming my hair (5-6 times a year), I use shower gel for my intimate parts at each shower (2x a week) and I wash my hands as usual with liquid soap after toilet or when dirty or prior/after cooking. My kids take shower twice a week and use fancy Bioderma shower oil though I am thinking also about giving up on using anything and see what happens with their skin.
- s_dev 4y agoI recall that a similar thing happened in New York but with two men. A particularly unkempt homeless pair of men were given a bath and died shortly afterwards. Google results are poisoned after this news though. Can't seem to find it. I think it's relevant here.
- dazbradbury 4y agoAccording to [1], he didn't wash in water, but with Fire instead: "He would reject water in favour of what he called a “fire bath”. “Every evening as villagers gather, Kalau … lights a bonfire, smokes marijuana and stands on a leg praying to Lord Shiva,” the paper said." [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/25/worlds-dirtiest-man-dies-in-iran-at-94-a-few-months-after-first-wash https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/25/worlds-dirties...
- somenameforme 4y agoThat's referring to an Indian man, not this individual. Interesting story nonetheless.
- dazbradbury 4y agoMy mistake, thanks for the correction!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- iliaznk 4y agoAn anecdote: A reporter interviews an old highlander at his home: - What's your secret? How did you manage to live for so long? - For all my life I've followed three simple rules: no alcohol, no tobacco and no women! Suddenly they hear some noise behind the wall in the other room. - What's that? - asks the reporter. - Oh, that's my elder brother. He's drunk again and is beating his wives for hiding his cigarettes.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoHow this typically plays out, AFAIK, is that the interviewee's brother would be the second oldest person in the area. In a town behind the hill, there lives the oldest person in the region - a woman that's over 100 years old. Her secret? The place doesn't do birth certificates, and she took over the identity of her mother once the latter passed away.
- r3dneck 4y ago> But, local media say, Amou Haji finally succumbed to pressure and washed a few months ago. > According to Iran's IRNA news agency, he became ill shortly afterwards and died on Sunday. Wicked Witch of the West effect? Consequentiality does not mean causality, but Jesus !