By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The Hygiene Hypothesis is what people are calling the way we are trying to keep everything absolutely squeaky clean and that this could, more likely than not, be the causal agent to many of the diseases that we are suffering today.
Why would that be so if everything is hygienically clean?
The fact is that our lives are too clean and thus all those diseases that affect the immune system of our body. Lack of contact with dirt, for instance, does not allow the body of our children develop immune response against various diseases and parasites and also does not allow our children to ingest the beneficial bacteria that make for a healthy body.
“A little dirt does not hurt,” was the adage of many a grandparent or great-grandparent in the days of my childhood and still is the attitude that many people in rural areas have, such as in rural France and Italy and it is a proven fact that the children of those people are healthier by degrees to those children that, for instance, grow up in the over-clean (minimalist) homes.
The other things that is causing us serious grief nowadays if the use of sanitizing gels and sprays. Those agents, triclosan in the main, kill everything, including beneficial bacteria and, at the same time, cause an immune response in many of the parasites, viruses and bacteria, creating the super bugs that haunt our hospitals since the end of the 20th century.
To all intents and purposes it would appear that much of this and the fact that so many children and adults now suffer from diseases of the immune system, with hayfever and asthma being on the rise, and that being just the mildest problems.
There is no need for any of those chemical sanitizers.
Vinegar, any type of vinegar, though the distilled white one may just be a little superior, as long is has an acidity of 5% or more, is a much better sanitizing agent and one that does not cause us the serious effects that seems to have come about by the use of triclosan and other such agents.
The Hygiene Hypothesis means that the human body needs parasites and bacteria to fight against and if the body has nothing to fight against it may, invariably, turn upon itself. This could be the cause for the auto-immune diseases that affect so many of the world's population, especially in the modern developed world where we are obsessed with hygiene and cleanliness.
“Clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy,” was also an old adage as regards to a (family) home and while we all like to have things sparkling clean, not that one may always have the time to do that (I certainly do not have that time), it may not be healthy to have a totally sanitized home.
Hand cleaning is best achieved with soap and water and not with triclosan-based sanitizers, whether gel or spray, or, if in a hurry, with a generous dab of vinegar.
Fine, vinegar does not smell great but it works and is not harmful to the human body nor the environment.
In addition to that the Hygiene Hypothesis also appear to have lots to do with parasites living in our intestines, and such, and the current lack of them in our bodies due to the way that we seem to have been combating everything that may be parasitical and bacterial without understanding their relationship in the symbiosis of a healthy body.
Much like the fungi and their mycelia that create a symbiosis with trees of one particular species or even inter-species and which enable to trees to actually take up nutrients from the soil. Without their cooperation the trees would, more than likely, die.
There was a time, however, when commercial forestry thought such fungi to be parasitical and thus destructive and tried to eliminate them. Now it is understood that they are required for healthy trees and healthy forests.
In the same way there are beneficial bacteria and parasites that inhabit the human body and we destroy them at our peril.
© 2011
