His health was not good by modern standards, though it was likely typical of a Copper Age middle-aged man. His joints showed degenerative changes in the spine, knees, and ankles. He had gum disease and dental cavities, probably linked to a grain-heavy diet. He had Lyme disease — or a closely related Borrelia infection — making his case the earliest documented instance of that pathogen in a human. He had whipworm parasites in his intestine, confirmed by ancient DNA analysis of his gut contents. His stomach contained Helicobacter pylori bacteria, in a strain most closely related to modern South Asian strains, in a finding that contributed to research on the migration of that pathogen through human populations.
His fingernails showed Beau’s lines — transverse ridges that form when nail growth is interrupted by a period of illness or severe physiological stress — in a pattern suggesting three significant illness episodes in the six months before his death.
He had blackened lungs, almost certainly from a lifetime of campfire smoke in enclosed spaces.
He ate well, in Copper Age terms. Analysis of his stomach contents in a 2018 study identified his last meal as ibex meat and red deer, eaten with einkorn wheat and other plants, consumed roughly two hours before death. An earlier meal, eaten about eight hours before he died, included chamois and red deer with what appears to have been a grain-based flatbread. His diet was not vegetarian, as had once been suggested, and it was substantially higher in fat than earlier analyses had indicated.