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Comment by buckbova | Hacker News Reader

> The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years.

It's hard for me to imagine that these people don't stink and that after a workout, run or hike they don't smell "strongly". I guess you can still rinse off in the shower to get sweat and grime off, but not use any soap.

For the sake of my lady, I'd have to at least give the undercarriage a good scrubbing.

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(20+ years ago) during summers, while at college, working 12-14h a day on construction projects in Siberia sometimes we wouldn't have access to shower or similar facilities for a couple of weeks... We called it "dry cleaning" - meaning that beyond some threshold the dirt (like for example cement powder) doesn't accumulate on you anymore, it is just supposedly falls out, especially considering that heavy sweating during work washes the old dirt from you... I don't remember any stink from me or the people around me :)

> I don't remember any stink from me or the people around me :)

I think it takes someone from outside to really tell the difference. It's like going to Iceland and realising the water in the north has a smell of sulfur. After 2-3 days of showering in it / drinking it you don't notice anymore.

>I think it takes someone from outside to really tell the difference.

from far outside :) It is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't seen local young women there spraying "Vapona" insecticide ("dichlorvos" ("dichlophos" in Russian)) on their open legs - quick and convenient solution for wearing daisy dukes in a killer mosquito and flies area :) If you know what Vapona/Dichlophos is and how it smells and what it does to your brain ...

The thesis is that the source of the 'stink' is Ammonia and the bacteria are eating it and turning it into nitrides. The question is of course how quickly they can do that.

Its a pretty interesting theory.

It's an odd theory. Humans have very little free ammonia in their bodies. There are enzymes that quickly catabolize it to urea.

Second, nitrides seems like an odd product of ammonia metabolism. I've only ever heard of metal nitrides, nothing organic.

It's pretty well understood that bacteria on the skin metabolize the fatty acids in our sweat to short chain aliphatic acids (propionic acid, butyric acid, etc). If you've ever smelled those chemicals you'd see the resemblance.

The stink is often byproducts of anaerobic metabolism. Diet and stress greatly affects it. If you keep lipolysis and protein catabolism down, you really don't smell.

I've found it very noticeable how much I stink after stress, like public speaking. It's because cortisol and adrenaline ramp up inefficient anaerobic metabolism.

Most domesticated dogs generally don't "stink", despite being bathed fairly infrequently by our standards. They have a bit of a smell, but usually it is barely noticeable. Ok maybe dogs were not a good example as they don't sweat, but the majority of domesticated animals don't stink.

As someone who doesn't live with dogs, the smell of a home with dogs (or cats, for that matter) is, in most cases, immediately apparent to me. If you're not habitualized to the smell, it does actually stink. Not terribly, but it's there.

Thus the answer. If you live in a super clean environment devoid of most smells, you don't get used to them and they stand out. If you are used to the smells, then the smells become norm and nobody bats an eye.

The point is to keep the smells in reasonable control to a point where its not overpowering. Like dogs do smell. After a month or so they get pretty filthy and stinky. However the fist week/2 they are perfectly fine.

By the way, there're very effective cleansers with ammonia eating bacteria that get rid of cat's urea smell.

They definitely stink. Its quite easy to figure out who owns one by the wet dog smell. Its no different than a smoker imo.

Let me guess. You have a dust and / or smoke allergy as well as finding that dogs stink.

   I met these men. I got close enough to shake their 
   hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they 
   in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either 
   the visual or olfactory sense.

Apparently they don't, but that's not right after a workout.

If most of the stink is ammonia related (and I have no idea if it is), then it's actually pretty easy to imagine that they don't stink.

  It's hard for me to imagine that these people don't stink and that after 
  a workout, run or hike they don't smell "strongly"

My brother mentioned that his partner, who he'd recently separated from, almost never bathed and always smelled fine - even her armpits, and even after exercise. I saw her many times over the years they were together and never once did I notice any body odor, not even when hugging her hello or goodbye.

(I mention their recent breakup only because it made me believe him even more. He didn't have a vested interest in talking her up at that point!)

She was of European descent, by the way. I mention that because many Asians tend to have less body odor, for reasons that other responses have mentioned.

She was a vegetarian as well, though I'm not sure that's relevant.

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