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.

Change the world Wednesday – 24th

April is nearly done, less than a week to go. My commitment to eat no beef for two weeks every month (1st & 3rd) has been successful.

I will continue with this as it has certainly not harmed my diet, although I do love my beef. I have instead turned more consciously to pork, chicken and fish, which all featured in my diet as much as beef.

Quite frankly, I haven’t missed it.

One thing, it has made me more conscious when organising my shopping. Actually, I don’t organise it, I hate lists. I just go along to the supermarket with the idea of essentials and things I know that I am running out of, and make up my menu as I go along the aisles.

It has made me aware of things like “Smart Bacon”.

If a bacon was smart, it wouldn’t end up as bacon in the first place.

Have you ever heard of this? It’s stupid. It looks terrible, it certainly looks unappetising.

Why is it smart, because there’s no fat. Actually it isn’t even bacon, it’s vege protein. People have this aversion to fat; fat makes you fat. Generally that’s bullshit!

Looks absolutely hideous

Animal fat is natural in modest quantities. It’s where the flavour of meat is.

The people who have created the myth that animal fat makes you fat are the companies that sell cooking oil, vege cooking lard, margarine, etc. It has nothing to do with reality, but everything to do with making money.

It’s the same as the myth about cholesterol. Every cell in your body needs cholesterol to reproduce. The doctors who tell you that you must reduce your cholesterol are doing the dictates of the BigPharma companies who make and sell drugs to reduce cholesterol. Sure you can accumulate too much, but the levels that the doctors use are well below what you need. So many people are scared into taking these drugs needlessly.

I did meet last week’s CTWW, not a paper towel, nor serviette used.

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On with this week’s CTWW.

We’re visiting the toilet again.

I call it a toilet, some countries euphemistically refer to it as the ‘bathroom’ or a ‘restroom’. To call it by its real name offends their warped sensibilities; they are to afraid to refer to anything that promotes/suggests certain body parts or bodily functions. I wonder who these paranoid people are?

A restroom, for pities sake! I have never rested in one yet.

This week, use less toilet paper. Rather than just pull it off the roll, count out no more than 6 sheets per use. If you accepted this challenge the last time we ran it, and did well, see how low you can go.

 

OR …

If you are already a toilet paper conservationist or have switched to cloth (oh yeah, some use cloth toilet paper), please share other ways that we can conserve paper.

A bidet

Well, the first part is easy.

I have long adopted the European/South American bidet-style of washing my bum after an initial wipe with two pieces of toilet paper. to get rid of the ‘dags’*.

Sprays the nether regions with warm water

I don’t actually have a bidet, but my shower has a hose with a rosette nozzle that does the job fine.

You can get kits to attach to your cistern, but that is a cold water job.

The cost of such a kit, would soon be offset by the saving in toilet paper.

Washing your bum is certainly a lot more hygienic than smearing faeces across you skin then wiping hard using a lot of paper to make them disappear.

A bad case of dags

*dags – the crap encrusted wool that dangles behind a sheep.

Hence the phrase, “Rattle your dags” when you want someone to hurry up. Because when a sheep so endowed runs, sometimes the hardened dags actually rattle.

Pthirus pubis … at risk from ‘deforestation’

Yes, another creature is heading for extinction.

Hardly surprising, we hear this word so often, extinct this, nearly extinct that.

Big cats, polar bears, pandas and Javanese Rhinos, all have extinction looming over the horizon.

But…

Is there a creature whose demise we wouldn’t lament?

Are pubic lice in danger of extinction?

Some doctors have suggested that modern pubic-hair grooming practices, such as the Brazilian wax, are destroying the natural habitat of Pthirus pubis

Pthirus pubis … at risk from ‘deforestation’. Photograph: Alamy

Pity the poor pubic louse. Every few years, a story comes along predicting its demise, most recently a Bloomberg article that blames the increasing number of women – and men – who remove their pubic hair. Think of it as deforestation on a massive, global scale.

It wasn’t much different in 2006, when doctors Nicola Armstrong and Janet Wilson, two sexual health specialists, in a letter titled “Did the Brazilian kill the pubic louse?”, raised the possible link between the decreasing number of people coming to their clinics with public lice, and increase in the number with shaved, trimmed or waxed pubic hair. Where does this leave the woman who has so far resisted all patriarchal and capitalist pressures to wax her bits until they resemble a child’s, but would like to do her bit for parasite annihilation? Tricky.

 

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