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Comment by seattle_spring | Hacker News Reader

I hope you either still use soap when washing your hands, or work from home and don't go out to eat. I work with a bunch of nastyass people that take huge noisy dumps and then just walk right out of the bathroom without washing. No wonder I get sick several times a year now.

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When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands I always have an urge to say something but never do.

The bad thing is that they leave before me as I wash my hands, but then like a minute later I need to use the same door they used to enter our office. :(

I always grab a paper towel on the way out to open doors with.

We had the "Toepener"[1] installed on the bathroom doors of my last office. A bit tricky to use in heels but otherwise it got nothing but positive feedback.

[1] https://www.thetoepener.com

>When I see colleagues just leave the bathroom without washing their hands

Perhaps they have mastered the art of pissing without pissing on their hands...

Or you could wash your hands anyways, since it's a good opportunity to wash your hands? Regardless of how clean you think your body is?

That would weaken the immune system...

So you're cool with folks touching their genitals and then touching you?

Totally, especially if it involves sex.

So you're fine with them touching their sweaty junk and then handing you a donut with the same hands?

Totally! It even adds a pleasant salty taste to the donut!

If only that was the only problem.

Hi, I don't want to shake hands with your genitals thank you.

I've have a weakened immune system and am also a wedding photographer, so staying healthy is important. If I can use a bathroom with touching anything but myself (#1), I'm going to do it. If everything is motion activated I'll wash my hands, otherwise I'll just use hand sanitizer at the next opportunity just to be sure.

Yeah, I don't understand this at all. We went like 200,000 years without soap, and as soon as we discovered soap, we were like where have you been all my life!? And now people think they don't need soap, and I wonder if they really don't smell, or if like our ancestors, learned to tune out the reek?

I'm kind of glad someone brought this up. I've known a handful of people who went soap-free (I used to live in a much more granola part of the country) and they insisted they had no odor.

That was actually true for one of them. The other four or five (including a significant other, who I eventually split up from for a variety of reasons, and this was a small one) definitely had a musky odor that would grow increasingly strong throughout the day.

They all insisted there was no odor, but...well...there was. It was never terrible, but I think there's a reason we've really all moved to soap as a people. Sorry, friends and coworkers.

How we smell depends a lot on our activities. It's really the bacteria that cause sweat to smell bad, so it depends a lot on a physical activity and how long it's been sitting on the body. When a person sweats a lot, like during sports, sweat contains much more water and less food for bacterias, so the smell is less intensive. In high-school I used to spend whole summer on the beach playing sports, sweating like a pig, but also going in and out of water every few hours, and never smelled sweaty although I often would shower just once a day, before going to bed, and often with no soap at all. On the contrary nowadays after a day of 10h sitting in front of the screen I smell horrible even 10 minutes after just having a bath with soap and douche gels and everything.

Indeed, I remember hearing about a product being researched which was a spray made from a certain kind of soil that promoted a different bacterial population on the skin to reduce malodor. Unfortunately I can't find any references now. Still, it actually works pretty well to go to the beach for a while and then you will smell better for days, so I think there's something going on there, whether it's the ocean water or the sand.

There's AOBiome, which makes Mother Dirt, which I use. Anecdotally it works to reduce my smells and need for deodorant and soap/shampoo for body/hair washing & hygiene.

Always wash your hands with soap and water.

Just if you try it, or something like it, do not get excited and jump in head-first like us humans are wont to. And like this[1]. A month is not enough... Like, slow roll 6 months or a year.

Some people are like, "Oh, cool. Stop bathing. That's easy." No. Actually it's more like slowly cut back on detergents. Then slowly cut back on showers. Always be increasing the time and effort used to check if you're a presentable human for society today.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-sh...

Along those lines, I've found that I'm much more distinctly odor-free for a few days, after I spend a day at the russian bathhouse. Something about sitting in hot tubs, steam rooms, cold showers (I've never done the arctic pool! haha), saunas and banyas, rotating throughout the different conditions somehow cleanses off ALL of the bacteria, to where if I didn't have any deodorant on the next day it wouldn't be a thing.

It's pretty physically taxing to make a whole day of it, especially when you're splitting a bottle of vodka at the same time, but nothing leaves me feeling cleaner.

Correct. 200,000 years dying at an early age from easily-preventable infections, among them cholera and dysentery which are easily spread from --yep, you guessed it-- not washing after using the toilet.

And people wonder why I refuse to take part in "potluck" lunches, or eat others' foods. I need to save the URL to this discussion.

I, too, cannot believe someone who does not use soap does not smell like a wild animal. It is surely a case of adaptation. Hoarders who live with hundreds of animals and urine/feces littering the floor claim they cannot smell the ammonia. They have adapted.

People of hackernews, wash your filthy hands with hot water and soap. (that's not an insult, it's an trivially-proven factual assertion: unwashed hands are filthy.)

Oof, do you also wear gloves 24/7 to protect yourself from the dirty world out there too?

Unless your immunocomprimised or old, your body's immune system can handle the everyday bacteria that is everywhere in the world.

Or unless you inherited those beliefs from your parents, who kept you oversanitary as a child. Then the world really is very dangerous for you; childhood is the best time to get exposed to stuff.

No, you'll be fine and you'll quickly gain missing immunities, if you have any. A good chunk of the behaviors might even be counterproductive.

I hope so, I've heard otherwise. I was personally a filthy kid, so I'm not talking about me.

My wife was a severely germ-sheltered child like that. She has overcome it, and she does not get sick any more than I, a pretty grimy/dirty/often-filthy farm kid, do.

The hardest thing about that upbringing for her is that her instincts toward our children are very much geared toward avoiding germs at all costs. Because that was how she was raised, that's the only way she really knows how to raise our kids. Fortunately, I'm there to get them really, really dirty.

There's a reason that food safety protocols in the restaurant biz are pretty strict: you don't get a biological adaptation to eating feces by eating a little feces here and there. There's a reason (well, really, several) humanity switched to processing food and water with heat (cooking meat, drinking coffee and tea) when we were coming down out of the trees.

Trying to make fun of someone who's being careful about what they eat is pretty insulting.

The hypochondriac / overactive purity instinct / easy to insult temperament hurts their life and the life of people around them by making them annoying and unpleasant to be around. Also by keeping things super 'clean', they increase the likelihood of their children to develop lifelong allergies. They deserve to be mocked.

Food processing laws are there because certain bad things do happen at scale in factories & restaurants that don't happen in home kitchens and when they are personally eating things in the world around them. The laws have to protect the very young, sick and the very old with their compromised immune systems. So there are different standards for different circumstances.

There is also a matter of degree. A commercial food chef needs to wash their hands, a healthy adult person eating prepared meals by other people doesn't need to wear gloves everywhere to be safe.

Also a lot of restaurants and farms are pretty gross places, go work at a fast food place, butcher, meat processing factory and cow farm to see how gross it gets, even with food safety laws & inspections.

Handwashing and bathing are very different things. Frequent bathing with soap is a new phenomenon in many cultures. Weekly baths were more common than daily baths in the US 50 years ago, and I have heard that many people bathed once or twice a year. Daily or twice-daily showering is extremely recent in almost all cultures, although many cultures had the equivalent of a sponge bath once or twice a day in antiquity.

I think in the past we not only were more comfortable with odor, we also used it to recognize people. And some people suffered from malodor and were rejected by society while others were blessed with good fragrance and benefited.

I quit soap (except on my hands) and it has helped my eczema tremendously. In my experience, I have been able to wash off excessive odor without soap if I feel like I smell, but my normal odor is inoffensive. I wear undershirts to wick the sweat away and clothing (cotton, nylon) that has better properties for keeping odor at a minimum. Polyester clothing (Under Armour) gets that "gym" smell and it's hard to get rid of. The polyester fabric promotes bacteria that create foul odors.

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