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Note: everything written on this particular page is true, of course, but it is wise to remember that medical advice you find on the internet is often quite capable of killing you.
Eat Right for a Healthy Immune System There used to be a disease called ptomaine poisoning, which was caused by eating tainted food, but not any more. Why? Not because the disease is now easily curable or preventable, but because this disease never existed in the first place. You can get sick from food, but not because the food is spoiled or "tainted". Food is called spoiled if some kind of bacterial, fungus, or yeast culture is growing in it, but in truth many such cultures are harmless, beneficial, or downright tasty. Examples include yogurt, sour cream, buttermilk, leavened bread, sauerkraut, kim chee, vinegar, beer, wine, aged meat, and blue cheese. Yogurt, in particular is good for your health: it replenishes the intestinal bacteria which you need in order to stay alive.( Each of us carries around several quadrillion bacteria in our intestines, most of which are dead. To put this number in perspective, the national debt is only a few trillion.) Almost all food poisoning is caused by organisms which were present when the food was fresh, rather than from organisms which appeared during "spoilage". In many cases it comes from an animal which was infected while it was alive (e.g. trichinosis). In a few cases it is caused by inept attempts at preservation (e.g. botulism, which mostly is caused by bad canning practices). In a very large number of cases it is the result of contamination by fecal matter spread either by human hands, contaminated water, or pests such as flies. But it almost never is caused by food "sitting out" or "spoiling". Of course, if contaminated food is incubated, the contamination already there can become more threatening -- especially in the case of salmonella. But this happens mostly in restaurants, where food sits for hours on a steam table set at the optimal temperature for bacterial growth. (In subtropical Taiwan, families protect food at room temperature simply by keeping the flies off with a screen cover.) So it doesn't make a lot of difference how clean you keep your kitchen. What's most important is whether the food was contaminated in the first place, and how well you cook it. (A spotless Martha Stewart kitchen can be contaminated with e. coli or salmonella -- you can't see germs). But it gets worse. Being too clean is bad for you. On the one hand, an unchallenged immune system isn't going to have much strength --if you want strong muscles you exercise them. But beyond that, there is evidence that an unused immune system turns against its owner and causes autoimmune diseases such as asthma, allergies, and worse. (Some have even suggested cancer). So what should we do? The short answer is, eat dirt. Perhaps there is a marketing ploy here. The same way that bran (usually fed to pigs) was marketed for a year or two following a report that it prevented colon cancer, perhaps barnyard dirt could be marketed to excessively-clean supermoms. (This could also ease the plight of the independent farmer). So once you've got your house exactly the way you want it, just take a pinch of aerosolized barnyard dirt (ABD: copyright) and sprinkle it strategically throughout the house (especially in the children's rooms). Or you could just use my method, and live like a slob. Leave food out, let dishes mold in the sink, and if you drop food on the floor, pick it up and eat it. It works for me: I haven't had the flu or a serious cold for more than twenty years.. (I also recommend taking a gram a day of Vitamin C.) Some links: Gary Hamilton: "Let them
eat dirt: Could today's squeaky clean world be making us
ill?" "The short answer is yes, according to a growing number of scientists who are warming to the paradoxical notion that our obsession with cleanliness and hygiene carries a hefty price tag. They suspect that our growing separation from dirt and germs is behind the rapid rise in asthma in the US, Western Europe, Japan and Australia, and may be triggering other allergic diseases, too. Our hygiene fetish could even be pushing up the incidence of more serious autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis (see "Self defence")." "If proponents of the hygiene hypothesis are correct, of course, it will mean more than a new set of vaccines. Western society will also have to rethink its obsessive hatred of germs. And while this obviously won't mean putting out the welcome mat for bubonic plague, it might mean accepting that a little bit of dirt is more of a tonic than you think." Gary
Hamilton, "Insider Trading" "The most dramatic evidence that, rather than simply enjoying the gut's bounties, the resident bacteria have something to give back comes from observing what happens when the bugs are removed from the scene. Mice that have been delivered by Caesarean section and raised in germ-free incubators have massively swollen guts that also show other physical changes from the norm. What's more, germ-free mice are far more susceptible to infection, getting sick on a single dose of just 100 live, pathogenic bacteria. It takes a million times as many to make normal mice sick, because, it is thought, the resident bacteria physically block disease-causing outsiders, preventing them from gaining a foothold, or spew out chemicals to repel them." New Scientist Archive (requires registration for one week free trial) Science News: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/8_14_99/bob2.htm Philadelphia Inquirer: http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/3464/News/germs.html
www.idiocentrism.com jjmrsnx
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