Change the World Wednesday – 20th Nov

Got it right this week, CTWW on Wednesday, not Friday.

My new non-stick saucepans

Small commented about my ‘FAIL’ stamp; the fail was not getting CTWW up on a Wednesday, which I normally do, only once before I missed and hit a Thursday.

The other aspect of the ‘FAIL’ was my new saucepans… non-stick, but aren’t they beautiful? That deep red burgundy look is so chic. Also, I like the glass lids, so you don’t need to keep lifting the lid to see what’s going on in there. While I succumbed to the non-stick, they are replacing aluminium pots, which I consider the greater evil when it comes to contamination, but then at my time of life memory loss can be explained easily; and sometimes it is most convenient…

I have been a little more than off-colour since Saturday night; I disagreed with something that ate me. But this morning, as I predicted in today’s early morning post, Farting with Confidence all is explained. The preceding posts explain why I have a new camera. The above photo was taken as an experiment. So, my week so far has been off-colour, but colourful…

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On with this week’s CTWW.

It brings with it some disturbing news.

Small is going to do her annual magic act and disappear until the 20th Jan.

Now, I know that Small works hard, and she has a life to lead; not like some of us old doddery folk who have the luxury of spending our lives at the keyboard. She, therefore deserves a rest. But she has set a good challenge.

What would you like to see on Reduce Footprints in 2014?

I’d like to know if there’s anything you’d like us to add, delete, or improve upon. How can we make CTWW better? Does Meet & Greet work for you? Do you find guest posts valuable and, if so, what topics would you like to see? Can we improve upon the Recipes, Reviews, and Special Offers pages? All suggestions are welcome so … the sky is the limit … consider this your “wish list” for a new Reduce Footprints blog!

Wow! A wish list. Now is that a Christmas wish list, or a Bucket list?

So we have to put our thinking caps on.

My initial thought is that Small does a pretty good job, her blog is cool, and she uses a great design.

I have been following Reduce Footprints since Adam was a cowboy and Moses played fullback for the Arabs, that’s a long time, since the beginning.

I have seen changes from the original, I have seen changes in the blog layout, I have seen changes in the content.

Green thinking cap

Most of the content does it for me. I even read the vegan recipes, although I am a carnivore, they are of interest because of the other cap I wear, the Chef. I am not a fan of vege/vegan, although many dishes are exactly that.

Special offers, etc don’t do it for me. But then I am a stingy old crock, and I live in a part of the world that doesn’t have many of these products. I have no doubt there are many who would find such info useful.

There is also the fact that I haven’t embraced buying stuff on the net; I like shopping with real money, the thrill of the hunt, the capture, and dealing the final coup de gras by paying for your prize, then you walk out of the store with your trophy and a smug smile. I don’t consider that ‘shopping’, to me it’s more like therapy. It’s the feel good factor in life, a bit like digging in the garden and getting ones hands dirty. The internet, although I use the net a lot,  has made life too clinical, clean, sterilised; it has taken the adventure out of life.

If I had one criticism, it would be the lack of images. I have a golden rule, at least one image per post. I try to make the images used pertinent, or not (maybe humerous, satire) just to break the monotony of ‘just’ text. Having said that, I don’t find RF boring, far from it. I am much more eclectic in my content, whereas RF is more focused.

Over Small’s festive season hiatus, I will endeavour to make posts on a Wednesday, that have a CTWW flavour, I can’t bear the thought of no CTWW for two months, it would be like morning without coffee, it would be like vegetarian without lentils, it would be like Christmas without Santa; you just don’t do it.

Thank you Small for your company and all the hard work that you do during the year. Have a good break and come back refreshed.

Also all the referrals that I have had from RF, a BIG GREEN thank you too for your support, and I hope you also have a great festive season.

I am pressing my ‘thank you’ key.

I am Laughing my Socks Off!

I have always considered that we are too hygienic, so hygienic that our systems have lost the resilience to germs.

It’s documented here on the blog.

Cow poo is good for you!

Now read this…

Alzheimer’s may be linked to better hygiene, say scientists

Reduced contact with infectious agents might stall development of key elements of immune system, researchers suggest

The researchers say hygiene is positively associated with risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Photograph: Jeff Blackler/Rex Features

Improvements in hygiene could partly explain increased rates of Alzheimer’s disease seen in many developed countries, according to research into the link between infections and the condition.

The researchers studied the prevalence of the neurodegenerative disease across 192 countries and compared it with the diversity of microbes in those places.

Taking into account differences in birth rate, life expectancy and age structure in their study, the scientists found that levels of sanitation, infectious disease and urbanisation accounted for 33%, 36% and 28% respectively of the discrepancies seen in Alzheimer’s rates between countries.

In their report which was published in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, the researchers concluded that hygiene was positively associated with risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Countries with greater degree of sanitation and lower prevalence of pathogens had a higher burden from the disorder. Countries with greater degree of urbanisation and wealth also had higher Alzheimer’s burdens.

Whether hygiene causes the pattern is not yet clear – cleanliness or infectious disease might be associated with some other factor – but the team does have a speculative hypothesis for how the two factors might be linked.

Exposure to micro-organisms – good and bad – is important for the body to develop proper immune responses.

The researchers’ “hygiene hypothesis suggests that as societies have become cleaner, the reduced level of contact with bacteria and other kinds of infectious agents might stall the proper development of important elements of the body’s immune system such as white blood cells. The team suggest that developing Alzheimer’s might be linked to autoimmune disease, in which the body’s immune system attacks itself.

“Alzheimer’s disease (AD) shares certain etiological features with autoimmunity,” the researchers wrote in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. “Prevalence of autoimmunity varies between populations in accordance with variation in environmental microbial diversity. Exposure to micro-organisms may improve individuals’ immunoregulation in ways that protect against autoimmunity, and we suggest this may also be the case for AD.”

James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, who was not involved in the research, said it was well known that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease varied between countries. “That this discrepancy could be the result of better hygiene is certainly an interesting theory and loosely ties in with the links we know exist between inflammation and the disease,” he said.

“However, it is always difficult to pin causality to one factor and this study does not cancel out the role of the many other lifestyle differences such as diet, education and wider health which we know can also have a role to play. One in three people over 65 will develop dementia. The best way to reduce your risk is to eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, not smoke and keep your blood pressure and cholesterol in check.”

Opinion:

I agree that this report is not conclusive, but it does represent so many links in common, that it cannot be discarded entirely.

The hygiene industry is huge, globally amounting to trillions of dollars, we have swallowed all the propaganda that germs are bad and flocked to the stores to protect ourselves. Much, as it seems, to our detriment.

“Waiter, there’s a hair in my soup!” Maybe that hair is there for a reason, ever thought about that? I bet you hadn’t! Misadventures like finding the erroneous in places it’s not supposed to be maybe part of nature’s design to keep us healthy. Meanwhile, we are doing our utmost to go against that design.

Once again, we are trying to control the way Mother Nature works, and to me it looks like we have created more problems than we have solved.

Dirt and germs CAN be good for us.