Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonunivgrad | Hacker News Reader

Go hiking for a week without showering. You can smell the soap and shampoo on the day hikers from many yards away. You acclimate to just about anything.

View on HN

I went to school with a guy who stopped bathing. After a couple of weeks, he was so pungent that the smell actually became somewhat sharp and startling. Standing next to him was almost overwhelming. Eventually, school staff had to take him aside and mandate that he start showering. It's hard to imagine living in a world where everyone smelled that way all the time.

Keep in mind that our bodies are used to regular bathing, and overproduce the oils and grease and other "junk" on our skin and hair. Of course a person who stopped bathing for a few weeks would smell terrible, but I do wonder if a person who hadn't bathed in months or years would smell so bad? Honestly, I imagine that the smell would be strong, and not entirely pleasant, but not horrible. More akin to a roofer coming home after a hot day. Smelly, sure, but it's not overpowering, and I could see that smell just fading away if everyone smelled that way.

In my grad program there were a few foreign exchange students that obviously didn't bathe very often and the smell was quite overpowering. Maybe diet contributes to it and we have more availability of spices and other pungent things.

But I got assigned an office with one of the students and decided to hold office hours elsewhere.

I believe hiding smells has been a thing for a long time so I can't imagine it just goes away.

I'm sure you're right. Plus, it's not like people in the "olden days" didn't bathe at all, even if it was to just take a dip in a lake.

Probably would, humans aren't the only creatures that clean up after them selves or bathe

I read about a guy who studied this. He said that after some time (a month or two IIRC), his body's bacteria adjusted to have a lot more of the ones that ate ammonia, and his scent went from terrible to quite neutral, and not strong at all.

I would link it but it's been ages since I read it.

I seem to recall him using water but no sodium lauryl sulfate shampoos.

Going to have to look for that article now

Found it, at least the one I seem to recall reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-sh...

People who don't shower do smell very very bad after a while, that smell doesn't go away but somehow gets to this familiar rank baseline that I've noticed on a number of unshowered people one might encounter in public. Not sure why it always ends up on the same note smell wise, but fade away it does not.

Did a solo 3-passes trek in Nepal in Everest region, where I've spent some 9 days continually above 4500m, once slept in 5300m. Did take 1 shower (more like warm bucket) cca in the middle. No smell smelt at all. Same would go for Aconcagua expedition, also 1 shower, and that was 2.5 weeks. Some members of the team skipped that shower altogether.

I can deal with not showering during longish hikes. But still sensitive to nikwax. That’s the smell I associate with hikers. Not body odour.

In cold climes, you don’t sweat as much. Which is why it’s important to hydrate a lot. And you pee it out. You can only induce sweating by increasing body heat and spices do a great job. The importance of sweating can’t be underestimated. Sweating is the trigger that encourages us to hydrate.

Exactly. The zero-pont of scent perception is not fixed. One never smells one's own halitosis... If one is lucky they have a good friend that will alert them. I would guess that every perception of how the "past" smells is biased by by zero-point of ones own ... biochemical cloak ... ]?]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com