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

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63389045

by WithinReason • 4 years ago

61 115 4 years ago

eganist2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

eganist2• 4 years ago

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.

nosianu• 4 years ago

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.

xattt• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

Get you on the Keith Richards.

rOOb85• 4 years ago

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.

yamrzou4• 4 years ago

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

Maybe he died of sadness after all...

googlryas2• 4 years ago

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.

SomeBoolshit• 4 years ago

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

mc323• 4 years ago

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.

fallingfrog• 4 years ago

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

soperj• 4 years ago

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

Firmwarrior• 4 years ago

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

MichaelCollins• 4 years ago

not using an ad-blocker

Stop hitting yourself.

danielodievich• 4 years ago

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!

reidjs• 4 years ago

Can you explain this one?

MrMan• 4 years ago

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

mc323• 4 years ago

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

lelandfe2• 4 years ago

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

conductr2• 4 years ago

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

wiradikusuma• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

amelius• 4 years ago

* we didn't cook

ffhhj• 4 years ago

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

mr_mitm• 4 years ago

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

paulpauper• 4 years ago

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.

thenewthotness• 4 years ago

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

ansible• 4 years ago

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.

ChuckNorris89• 4 years ago

Survivorship bias my friend. Literally.

sva_• 4 years ago

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

RajT88• 4 years ago

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

somenameforme4• 4 years ago

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/

nly• 4 years ago

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?

TremendousJudge2• 4 years ago

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.

tsol2• 4 years ago

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.

jollyllama• 4 years ago

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

rowanG077• 4 years ago

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.

cies2• 4 years ago

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.

adhoc_slime• 4 years ago

has anyone commented on your scent?

cies2• 4 years ago

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.

tmaly• 4 years ago

what is the take away here?

et-al• 4 years ago

Your office neckbeard has an excuse to continue not showering.

hunterb123• 4 years ago

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

hinkley• 4 years ago

Sometimes people succeed against all odds?

codezero• 4 years ago

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

Andrew_nenakhov• 4 years ago

His life stinked.

anotheraccount9• 4 years ago

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?

naillo• 4 years ago

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).

somenameforme4• 4 years ago

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.

jswartz• 4 years ago

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

zwieback2• 4 years ago

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

marcodiego• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

yamrzou4• 4 years ago

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

BrandoElFollito• 4 years ago

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

timbit42• 4 years ago

Brazilians average twice a day.

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

clucas• 4 years ago

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

birger• 4 years ago

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.

jerlam• 4 years ago

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".

bitwize• 4 years ago

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.

zwieback2• 4 years ago

Also Soylent, although this Iranian guy lives on porcupine.

TremendousJudge2• 4 years ago

I miss n-gate.

nunez• 4 years ago

is the bug diet still popular here?

sfpotter• 4 years ago

PIMP.

z3t4• 4 years ago

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.

tsol2• 4 years ago

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

btbuildem• 4 years ago

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

kstenerud3• 4 years ago

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.

Maursault2• 4 years ago

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.

nextaccountic• 4 years ago

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

wrp2• 4 years ago

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.

qbrass• 4 years ago

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.

newt_slowly• 4 years ago

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.

pixxel2• 4 years ago

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 :)

kstenerud3• 4 years ago

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.

mort96• 4 years ago

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.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

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

Markoff5• 4 years ago

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.

wrp2• 4 years ago

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.

s_dev• 4 years ago

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.

dazbradbury2• 4 years ago

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...

somenameforme4• 4 years ago

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

dazbradbury2• 4 years ago

My mistake, thanks for the correction!

iliaznk• 4 years ago

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.

TeMPOraL• 4 years ago

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.

r3dneck• 4 years 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 !

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

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