Iranian man who didn't wash for half a century dies at 94 | Hacker News Reader

Iranian man who didn't wash for half a century dies at 94

bbc.com

61 pointsWithinReason115 comments

> 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.

What killed him was probably the same thing that motivated him to finally get cleaned

Actually that's probably the most likely case lol. Still hoping for a public autopsy and case study just for the sake of the science.

Ah, 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.

> 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)?

On Keto? Old hat. On Paleo? So 2015.

Get you on the Keith Richards.

If 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.

Wow... That's good shit.

> Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad

Maybe he died of sadness after all...

I had a 40 year old car that was rarely serviced but ran like a champ. I moved across country and the new mechanic told me I should use some cleansing agent to de-gunk all of the various hoses/manifolds/whatever in the engine. It seemed expensive so I went for to a second mechanic and mentioned it, and he was adamant that I not do it, and that all that gunk was what was sealing the hoses and letting the car operate.

I took his advice and drove the car for another 10 years before donating it.

Maybe something similar happened there? Maybe he had scabs that we're ugly but protective - they got scrubbed off, and then his body had to deal with a whole new wave of pathogens.

You're talking about a car and you have no idea what happened to it.

I donated it to a local charity. I believe they used it to shuttle elderly people to hospital appointments.

No need to be rude. He’s making an analogy based on the parent comment and an experience he had.

It’s a good story.

It's possible his immune system was busy keeping infections and so on at bay, but once those targets were removed the immune system reacted in a way detrimental to his health? A sort of shock to the system.

I 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.

Soap isn't what gets things clean, anyway, water does. Soap merely lowers water surface tension, and making water molecules stick together less helps water clean more easily.

That's interesting. But soap also helps in surrounding fats with a water-soluble membrane, right?

I'm not sure why fats would be difficult to wash off, and soaps are made from fats through saponification.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saponification

Fats and oils are hydrophobic.

the process of saponification adds a hydrophilic/water-soluble end to a hydrophobic molecule (fat - which is essentially a long hydrocarbon chain). The fatty end embeds itself in fats/oils which then form what are called micelles with the fatty tail and dissolved greasy molecules on the inside and the water-soluble bit on the outside. Thus it essentially packages up all the grime in little balls that act as if they are dissolved in water and can thus be washed down the drain.

To add a data point here...I've read studies on the effectiveness of handwashing for sterilization. Apparently it's simply the abrasion under water that removes pathogens from the skin. Studies found no difference in effectiveness of just water versus water+soap.

The trick with hair is to not get your hair wet, and to brush it out to distribute the oils your scalp puts into your hair.

People used to avoid washing it very often back when soaps were harsher and conditioner wasn't really a thing. It's why shower caps exist.

I also stopped using soap several years ago. I shower ~3 times a week, and still scrub areas like my armpits but only using water. As confirmed by friends and family, I don't smell. Granted, I've never had much body odor - I can't confirm this would work well if I naturally smelled more after heavy exercise.

I find it plausible that cleaning too much (or with chemicals that alter the microbiome) could be harmful and as such it doesn't seem worth it - following the precautionary principle - unless there were a specific indication to use soap for treating a disease or illness.

May I ask why you stopped using soap?

I can imagine not using soap on arms, legs and torso, but not for intimate areas!

I’m intrigued for sure :)

I read an article about it and decided to try it (just look for "water only" washing - there are tons of articles and people talking about it on Reddit).

I too was worried about armpits and intimate areas at first, but my wife has no complaints (quite the opposite; she loves the way I smell. So does my cat for some reason).

For the first few years I used one of those crystal salt deodorants because I used to smell REALLY bad. But somewhere through the years that went away and I don't use it anymore. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it has something to do with me changing my diet to remove highly processed foods, but we're also talking about a sample size of one so who knows... I do notice that my body smell changes slightly depending on what I eat, though.

How is the weather where you live? I can't imagine this working in a hot, humid tropical country.

I know there's variability in human body odor, like most Asians not needing deodorant, but I'm skeptical because some people do have a strong body odor they can't smell. I've known a few.

I've lived all over the place, from dry to wet-towel-in-your-face humid, from -25c to 45c. Even after an hour long workout dripping with sweat I don't really smell like anything.

The way to test your own body odor without asking other people is to take a deep whiff of yesterday's shirt when you wake up in the morning. Even better would be to walk around outside a bit before you smell your old shirt in order to keep a somewhat consistent calibration. But really, it's best to just ask someone you can trust to be truthful (most people will be truthful if you preface something by "I'm running an experiment").

or you could just ask your own (young) kids, they have no filter, sometimes when we lay in bed they tell me I stink, they mean armpits, not that it would be necessary, even I can smell it at that point if I try

Strong smells also can be associated to pleasant things. If your grampa smelled weird, but you loved him, you'll love the weird smell too after a while.

That's amazing if true, because that means your sweat is hostile to the kind of bacteria that produces the smell we associate with old sweat. It's impossible to sweat distilled water, but maybe it's possible to sweat salt water with low content of fats and proteins, I really don't know. Sloths, for example, are known for having no body odor, so it might be possible for some people.

I'd love to know the mechanism for inhibiting bacteria breeding in skin grease. PH level?

I will look it up for sure. Many thanks for sharing.

> The only real issue is hair; it becomes REALLY unmanageable without shampoo. So if you have long hair, just keep using shampoo.

Huh, this is the complete opposite of my experience. I've had long hair from time to time, and the only time it has been unmanageable has been after washing it with shampoo.

I only really use soap under my arms and mostly in summer. Otherwise it just isn’t needed.

Same 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.

I've read testimonials from women who had severe acne and cured the problem by stopping frequent washing of the face with soap. It that case, the restriction of soap usage clearly improved skin health.

An 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.

How 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.

I haven't been brave enough to try it, but: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/i-stopped...

I 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.

The author expanded the topic into a whole book: 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".

Every 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.

Also Soylent, although this Iranian guy lives on porcupine.

I miss n-gate.

is the bug diet still popular here?

There 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!

Can you explain this one?

who needs to bathe a lot unless they are very dirty? airtight reasoning

They get so dirty so quickly they need to bathe way more often than someone who does not play in dirt and filth.

Surely the humor is in the country bumpkin believing that a daily bath is unusual, and only a habit of someone extremely dirty.

First impression is dirty in bed, turns out she is just getting filthy and needs to bath a lot

That might be a part of it, but it is a translated joke - so the double entendre of “dirty” may not be intentional

Yeah, "dirty" in russian doesn't have the sexual connotation to it. Funny enough, "hot" still has that connotation.

That's funny because the combo of "French", "girl" and "dirty" definitely leans towards sexual connotations in the US and without it I don't find the joke funny at all.

That'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.

has anyone commented on your scent?

nope. 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.

Well, I think it's clear, the water and soap killed him -- he was right to fear them all along.

I 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.

His favorite food was porcupine! That's some Chuck Norris stuff right there!

Yeah, I want to try that now. I doubt this guy's preparation was very sophisticated, though, he also ate rotten meat.

A 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.

His 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

> 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.

I've never thought about showering 3 times a day. Is that common anywhere?

Muslims do a purification ritual called "Wudu" that requires washing face, hands, arms, and feet 5 times a day, once before each prayer.

Important to note, this is purely with water and not much water is used.

Wudu's not bathing, though we do have Ghusl bathing after semen emission to be ritually pure again for prayers, and that can be done, uh, at least once a day I think. Maybe twice.

yeah, I wonder what religion was this Iranian guy, doesn't seem like very good believer

I don't know if your comment is being serious or snarky, but have you looked at his heart to judge his belief?

well he clearly didn't do this ritual and as Iranian he is very likely Muslim, so...

Well, it's not a black-or-white thing where you can label a person as either "bad" or "good" based on your perception of one of his actions.

If he was a Muslim, then yes, he maybe was not practicing, and that would be considered a sin. But you can't deduce anything from that about his fate or whether is was a "bad believer". Why? For a number of reasons:

- From a religious perspective, God charges no soul beyond its capacity, that is, what it is capable of bearing. We know nothing about the guy. What circumstances lead him to this lifestyle? Was he trapped? In the islamic view, actions are but by intentions. Do we know anything about his intentions? Only God knows.

- Also from a religous perspective, there is no perfect human, we are all sinful. Good deeds balance bad ones. One of the stories in the islamic texts is that of a prostitute who saw a thirsty dog, took off her shoe and watered it, and god forgave her because of that good deed.

> doesn't seem like very good believer

Don't twist my words, only one writing here - he is bad - is you. It's like I will say about someone getting only Bs they are not very good student and you will argue I am saying they are bad student.

I shower twice a day when I bike to the office, and three times if I have sport mid day.

Brazilians average twice a day.

Source: https://www.dailyinfographic.com/world-shower-habits

Hygiene => 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?

It 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).

It'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.

> 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 !

According 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-dirties...

That's referring to an Indian man, not this individual. Interesting story nonetheless.

My mistake, thanks for the correction!

Ugh I love ads that take up half the screen and you can't click away from

Don't know how you live without an ad blocker.

There 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

> not using an ad-blocker

Stop hitting yourself.

what is the take away here?

Your office neckbeard has an excuse to continue not showering.

Humans can be crazy resilient or delicate thanks to genetic diversity and the randomness of the universe.

Sometimes people succeed against all odds?

If you're a hermit, don't let people near you, they transmit a lot of diseases :)

PIMP.

"..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"!

"hey kids, stop playing outside and come eat this rotten meat we cooked! After dinner we'll have some cigarettes"

* we didn't cook

He probably didn't ingest sugar and fats, also had a life without anxiety.

And a lot of luck. These are all statistical correlations, there are bound to be outliers.

Those correlations might imply causations as well. Just because we can't (yet) tell for sure, we cannot reliably attribute the phenomenon to luck either.

hmm 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.

Fasted by default, heat and cold exposure every day, carnivore diet if he only ate rotten meat.

But porcupine was best. I mean, say what you will, he still had a discerning palate.

Yeah, well, if he had really good genes (with few genetic defects), maybe he would have lived another 15 years or so if he had a clean diet and good living conditions.

Show me a guy that lived in the same conditions and lived 5 years or more past the current world record (116 years) and then I'll take more notice.

Meanwhile, I'll drink my clean water or enjoy my clean and clear skin for what time I do have left.

Survivorship bias my friend. Literally.

Hate to say it since it seems so cliché, but survivorship bias.

(In Ladies Man voice): Mm. Yeah. Well that is disthgustin'.

One of the most interesting things in all of history to me is the longevity in Ancient Greece. Look up nearly any Ancient Greek one is aware of and you'll find life lengths not especially different than modern times. A study of 'Ancient Greeks of Note' [1] found an average life expectance of a bit more than 71 years.

The obvious explanation for this is a survivorship bias, but the vast majority of these Greeks made their way into the history books many decades before their deaths. I don't find the class issue relevant (beyond of course agreeing that poor Greeks would have had shorter lifespans) since all the money in the world couldn't buy one a single dose of penicillin.

[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/

Isn't the idea that the average life expectancy in antiquity is 40 ish years more to do with the high infant mortality rate than anything else?

Doesn't this mean that modern medicine is pretty horrible though, apart from infant care? With all our know-how, theories, experience, tools, drugs, scanners, etc - we still basically aren't much better than ancient Greece?

Alternatively, it could mean our way of life is terrible and our medical knowledge is the only thing keeping us ahead.

Maybe, but if I didn't know we have similar life spans I would've guessed that modern life is far safer and healthier than ancient life. Some examples - better nutrition as evidenced by height and diet diversity, not drinking dirty water or eating dirty food, temperature controls, modern policing, not regularly exposed to dangerous animals or conditions, etc.

You should take into account that (besides survivorship bias), "Ancient Greeks" you know of are all part of the aristocracy: that means good food, no hard labor, and access to whatever health care was available at the time.

That's mostly hygiene. Bad hygiene is why cities are often associated with disease-- cities are often full of unhygienic practices that allow bacteria and virii to fester. They still didn't understand seizures, or cancer-- ie they were good at one dimension among many that exist in illnesses.

In Ancient Greece one of my favorite little tales is a toilet one. Toilet paper, of course, did not exist. And so the Greeks used sponges, often on a short stick. And these sponges would be cleaned by swirling them about in as bit of water, or for the fancy toilets - a bit of vinegar. They had communal butt brushes in other words.

And there are many other issues of similar effect. Many of the hygienic practices that we now generally believe are intuitive, were anything but. For instance the idea that doctors should wash their hands before examining patients or even doing surgery was simply unknown all the way up until the 19th century [1]. Incidentally, while a basic germ theory was proposed in the 16th century, it wasn't until the 19th that it would come to be accepted as valid.

[1] - https://www.history.com/news/hand-washing-disease-infection

For what it's worth, we can assume he practiced sexual abstinence for about as long as he didn't bathe.

If anything this shows how bad our food has become in the west. It's literally better to eat unprocessed rotten meat, drink unsanitary water and smoke then to eat the modern western diet.

His life stinked.

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