Dude, I’m never going to eat at your house. That’s just nasty.
“Dude, I’m never going to eat at your house. That’s just nasty.”
Don’t go to the doctor either. They’re a lot more intimate than I will ever be.
It’s a rough world, but doctors, more than anyone, know the damage done to skin by constantly washing and “sanitizing”, which is why they don’t do it either, at least when people aren’t looking.
Sorry Catherine, but Bob is actually right. Google the “hygiene hypothesis”.
And it gets worse. Seems that some of the parasites we rid ourselves of were actually a part of our immune system.
“helminth therapy”
And it gets even WORSE.
“fecal transplant”
If Bob is as healthy as he says he is, he’s EXACTLY the person you’d want to prepare your meals. He’d pass on a healthy balance of bacteria.
Being too sterile has killed the Western immune system. We’ve had germs and parasites (symbiotes) as part of our systems for time immemorial. We were designed to deal with that to the point where their absence makes us sick.
When my kids were little, they were ‘allergy babies’. Allergic to everything. But then they’d go spend a month or two on grandma’s farm. They’d play in the hay, run barefoot through the barnyard with bird crap and worse, splash in the algae-infested, muddy creek...
And they would be healthy. After a month back at home with Lysol, bleach and Purel, they’d be back on the inhalers and coming down with strep, bronchitis and skin infections.
And with that all said, I just bleached my counters and used hand sanitizer. I still can’t get past the ‘ick’ factor. But I am MUCH more relaxed than I was before. I do think there’s a happy medium.