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John, I love your writings.

Just stay away from the Worcestershire sauce, ok?

Here is a link that might be useful: I almost spent some money here...

It's not a bad thought :-)
Jessy, I soooo _want_ a lot of that stuff :-D

How much of this uber-cleanliness do you think is fomented by manufacturers who have a product to sell? (Purell, I'm looking at you!)

"With fewer external challenges to fight, our immune systems start to malfunction and the rate of autoimmune disorders rises."

There was nothing uber-clean about my childhood growing up on a National Priorities List Super Fund site. Lots of animals around also. Heck, I even had a pet monkey. Yet, I have quite an array of auto-immune diseases. Hmmm, back to the research drawing board... :)

/tricia

Having suffered my whole life with a touchy stomach, I'm not about to experiment. But I'll second Jessy on, "John, I love your writings." Always a good read.

Though I'm sure that our 'over-clean' culture has played a role, I think the over-use of antibiotics may be more to blame. You must understand, I come from an environment where one side of my family (mine) only takes meds when NECESSARY, and the other side of the family (his) wants to pop a pill because something MIGHT be amiss. It has led to some interesting child rearing, uh hemmm, "discussions". I'm guessing it may be a combination, but the cultures that can afford and have the availability of the antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, Purell, Lysol, etc. seem to be suffering the most.....hmmmmm.....

Since this is the cooking forum, if there is to be a coming zombie apocalypse, maybe we need some recipes for the zombie meat.

How about:

Flamethrower-Roasted Zombie Arms
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Method:
Blast approaching zombie with flamethrower until it stop moving.
Hack off arms with cleaver. Serve warm.

Note: For a special touch mix apricot preserves with the gelled gasoline in the flamethrower, to impart a fruity flavor to the roasted meat.

See - tastes like chicken, even looks like chicken!

I am sure that to some extent your hypothesis is correct....but having spent most of a year with a compromised immune system and knowing well 4 who have died of AIDS I do believe in caution.
You develop immunities by being exposed to whatever....but over exposure will kill you or make you very sick. Sort of like the bee keeper who eventually becomes immune to the venom or the snake handler who becomes able to fight off the rattler bite, but dies when he is bitten by a cobra.

I won't eat spoiled food no matter how much cumin and tumeric you put on it....it just tastes nasty....rotton tomatoes? Blech! brown peaches? Yukko! But those same apples with dark bruises make awesome cider. and have you ever stood around a wine press? Seen all what goes in with the grapes? Spiders, bird poop, sticks twigs other bugs....all pressed and fermented together. Swore I would never drink wine again...
Well you know how that goes!

Baby pigs gain faster when they don't have diarrhea ...cows give more milk when they don't have mastitis....so they are given antibiotics routinely...
I think that' a lot of our problems....but I know that antibiotics have saved my life, my husband's life my son in law's life and 2 grand children. An I willing to trade some IBS for their lives? You Betcha! Zombies be damned!

George Carlin pegged this beautifully some years ago. He relates that he was a kid in NYC, where he and his pals swam in the Hudson; there was raw sewage in the water and he made the comment that his immune system was 'tempered in raw s**t!'

Click on the link if you want to see his routine. Caution: this was filmed toward the end of his life, and over his career the language got coarser and coarser. This isn't his 'hippy-dippy mailman' phase; this is his raging against the world phase, and the language is pretty rough.

Here is a link that might be useful: george carlin on immune systems (warning: language)

Oh arley - I spit my Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi all over the monitor at the last line! Thanks for the laugh.

/tricia

I am with George Carlin on every thing.

I have lived briefly in a place where there were outdoor toilets which drained everything directly to the vegetable farms, and we ate the vegetables from those farms. No one every got sick.

It is no secret that modern living has produced progressively inferior biological human beings, and super strong germs.

There are not too many rabbits we can pull out from the medical science hat anymore.

dcarch

Modern sanitation revolutionized our lives and I would not want to be without it. I do genealogy and the sad fact is no family I have ever researched before the early 1900's ever raised all their children. They lost them to infectious disease that can largely now be prevented mostly by sanitation and also of course the use of vaccines and antibiotics. I would rather have a living child who has asthma I guess than a dead one from thyphoid.
Joann

This actually fascinates me because I am an ecologist. Nature is all about balance and the myriad of complex interactions that create it. There is a lot of great research going on these days about the bacterial ecosystem, in our guts and in the soil and what it contributes to human health. Human designed factory farmed systems simplify everthing and are constantly running amok which then requires even more wacky Rube Goldbergian "fixes." I just read the papers from a symposium on this ultra toxic e-coli strain that is a direct result of factory farming conditions. Yes, to raise healthy meat animals without antibiotics requires more land, and more human work and therefore costs more. Cleaning up water pollution so that fish can breed naturally costs money. Using IPM and organic farming methods, same deal. But one of the few sources of activity in our economy these days is "health care" which is basically selling products to America's chronically "unwell" population. Widespread disease and immune system problems are a sign of stress, and it's not just humans that are showing signs of this, too many species to count at this point, and it isn't a matter of individuals, it's whole populations that matter statistically. So in my mind, we have shifted the jobs and money from one sector (food production) to another, (medicine). Taking care of our natural resources creates economic activity too!! And contrary to what some would believe, I don't think it is an either/or situation, either use factory farming methods or go back to desperate poverty, illness and starvation. C'mon, we are Homo SAPIENS!! . . . From the Latin "sapient" meaning wise, having taste and discernment, sound judgement. There are millions of bright minds working on solutions, all using Nature as the template. IMHO, before we completely destroy the planet's natural operating system and replace it with what the human mind so far has managed to perceive, I think we should figure out and save the blueprints and directions!!!

Oh, and I'm happy we have whipped some of the acute major diseases that used to kill us, and made our world safer for workers, who used to die from work-related problems a lot. So I say, let's move on to tackling this chronic illness situation!! And I have a feeling the solution won't be the latest pill the pharmeceuticals will spend millions developing. I suffer from a myriad of chronic inflammation conditions and will probably add a third or fourth before I die. And I am positive it is genetics, but genetics oftentimes just loads the gun, then it's the environment that pulls the trigger. My doctors can't understand why I won't have anymore of their expensive tests that keep the medical system of the economy rolling along, but so far have contributed ZERO to any information as to why I am having these problems or what can be done to "cure" them. BTW, they are migranes, IBS, a herniated disk, severe menstrual cramps, and interstitial cystitis. And I've paid THOUSANDS for useless tests, including several MRI's, EKG's, x-rays, and blood tests by the dozens. How many times do you have to rule something out??!! I know some type of arthritis is looming once I get through menopause. Now I realize that in the past most women died in childbirth or some type of infection, before they could experience all the chronic conditions I have, but as I said, we're not doing very well at moving beyond the model that solved those problems. Although I will say we have come some distance in the 27 years since I started with my first spell of migranes. And I'm pretty sure the stress of chronic underemployment and long hours commuting are the major triggers for these issues. So I'm alive, which I probably wouldn't have been 100 years ago, but my quality of life is questionable. 100 years ago if I had lived, I would have been living in a hovel in Poland or a hut in Holland, doing some type of miserable, menial work and dodging either Cossacks or the Sea. So I shouldn't complain. But it does fascinate me from a scientific inquiry perspective.

Since we are creating supergerms with our overuse of antibiotics it won't be too much longer before those glory days of "survival of the fittest" will be upon us again. I suspect that in the past those who made it past childhood were pretty robust in their prime, but that is the key, surviving past childhood. I and a brother contracted spinal meningitis back in the early 50s and without modern medicine would surely have succumbed. As it was, it was quite touch and go. Being the "fittest" often has to do with being in the right place at the right time. I had a ggrandfather who died at 39 years from typhoid in his water. His fatherinlaw (gggrandfather) died about the same time at age 98 after having spent the morning walking behind a mule plowing 40 acres. But then, he had survived the Trail of Tears when his wife did not. All, I imagine were sturdy stock, it was just the luck of the draw.

Great post, lpink.

I have recently listened to a few discussions by research scientists on the same topics.

dcarch

Since 1 in 4 American women takes mental health drugs, perhaps we're already in the midst of the Zombie Apocalypse and haven't recognized it as such.

I wonder how the Zombies died in the first place. An overdose of Purell? I wonder why Mexicans don't get sick from street food while all the gringos get Montezuma's Revenge. I suppose our (presuming you are a gringo)gut simply does not have the flora to cope with the invaders from the outside world.

However, there's no doubt that disease is spread through people living in filthy conditions, and you will never convince me that eating semi-spoiled food is okay.

I believe there is a happy middle ground where we aren't overly obsessed with germ-free living but do use common sense where hygiene is concerned.

I love that people bring their dogs into cafes in Paris and I never for a minute think the dogs are contaminating the food. You will not die from eating a few dog hairs, should one or two land in your vichyssoise.

I am grateful for antibiotics. I am glad that docs, nurses, etc have to wash their hands between patients. I like that the deli person wears plastic gloves, because who knows where those hands have been.

John, please tell me you did not eat that sandwich.

Ruthanna that was the best laugh I have had in a long while. A great "thought for the day!" :)

"--1 in 4 American women takes mental health drugs--"
The other three can't afford the medicine? (Just kidding, just kidding)

Not trying to patronize the fair sex, our social system is so unfairly structured that causes so much more stress to women.

Lower pay for the same job, single parenthood for the female, fulltime job and taking care of the household, taking care of elderly parents, men's shorter life to take care things ---etc.

dcarch

I did eat that third sandwich, actually, after carrying it back to Portland on the bike. My tummy was a touch queasy after, which pleased me. I think of it like sore muscles after lifting. You know after the muscle heals, it will be more powerful, and after the tummy dispatches the three day old sandwich, it will be more resilient. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and all that.

So, on the topic of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the company I mentioned above is testing a "drug" which is pig whipworm or something like that, in a suspension that you drink. The worms only live a couple weeks in your intestinal tract and are unable to reproduce - not being evolved for the human body - but while they are extant, apparently the immune system finds something else to do and doesn't manifest as IBS. That is the indication from the early clinical trials, anyway.

I am not making this up. This was what I heard from those research scientists.

There are people so sanitized that they lack certain microorgsnisms for digestion.

There is a proceedure for BM transplant from healthy people top the patient.

dcarch

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and all that.

John, not always. Sometimes it actually does kill you.

Speaking of Zombies, how about Vampires?

Just saw this:

"Rabies has been thought of as virtually 100-percent fatal unless treated immediately, but new research shows that a small number of isolated Peruvians have natural immunity from the animal-transmitted disease.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in 15 people living in the remote Amazonian region in Peru were protected without medical intervention against the virus that kills more than 55,000 people globally every year.
Their trick: Vampire bats exposed the remote Peruvians to enough of the rabies virus to confer resistance, but not enough to kill them."

dcarch

I tend to be a believer in the whole "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" theory but also the 5 second rule.

I also believe somewhat the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but I have limits.

My old doctor who was a very wise and moderate man told me that we were "sanitizing ourselves sick" and that if we didn't expose ourselves and our children to soem things we'd never develop a natural immunity.

Of course, I'll kiss a horse on the lips, don't blink when I eat ice cream with raw eggs (although the fat content gives me pause, LOL), if I find a dog hair in something I pick it out. I eat raw tomatoes from the garden, dusted off on my shirt, although I know I grew them in nicely composed cow manure.

However, I don't eat meat that's been sitting on the counter for two days, I won't buy home canned goods from people I don't know and I cringe when someone sits their purse on my counter, knowing that purse has been on the floor of the bathroom, the back seat of the car, sitting on the sidewalk. I really don't like it when I go somewhere and see cats walking on counters either, because I know they've dug in their litter box. At my home I just quietly clean the counter before I start food prep and don't obsess. At the cat's home, I just shut up because although I find it icky, it won't kill me and I know it.

And I'm not one of the people who get so grossed out over a bug. Insects are eaten in many parts of the world (although I choose not to except in case of starvation) and I love lobster which is basically a huge water bug. Yeah, really, it is, look it up.

So, at the end of the world, the zombies are going to have to do me in, my immunity at this point is pretty good.

Annie