Mud boosts the immune system | Hacker News Reader

Mud boosts the immune system

bbc.com

209 pointsBrajeshwar130 comments

There are various bacteria that stay within our gut and help us process fibre that comes from mud and nature generally, we have a symbiotic relationship with at least thousands of bacteria.

The more interesting and potentially very medically relevant presence in mud is Phages, viruses for Bacteria. There are various bacteria our body can not clear and that are also antibiotic resistant and a treatment for them would be immensely beneficial. Yet nature has a phage for all of them, millions of different ones and they are very effective if you can find the right one.

Really fascinating area of science. They were ignored in lieu of antibiotics in the post war forming of big Pharma (except for pockets like France and Russia). Startups are working in this space now https://www.phagos.org/

You forgot Georgia. They are way ahead of Russia when it comes to phages

We’ll phages present their own issues. Antibiotics were cheap and easy to mass produce.

Are you talking about bacteriophages? What issues do they present?

I'm guessing that once the research into a particular phage reaches a level equivalent to research in a particular antibiotic, the cost to manufacture that phage might be higher. In order to mass-produce phage you need a population of vulnerable bacteria kept alive long enough and in high enough number to keep your phage replicating since they rely on cellular machinery, and that takes large bioreactors.

And that's if you're lucky. Some bacteria replicate under extremely obnoxious conditions, and sometimes the phages will only generate double-digit levels of virion particles each generation as opposed to the triple-digit target you want, and all your attempts to optimize the system hit a brick wall. Ask me how I know? :)

The phages we are interested in here would be grown against human intestinal pathogens, and human gut conditions are not that hard to simulate, right? They are not volcanic thermophilics. A patient’s fecal sample could be grown in an incubator, and the phages on file could be tested on it. Surely this can be automated.

Your specific example is a rather tame case. Ideally, you would need to incubate the sample in multiple batches to catch the bacteria in the sample that may not grow at a certain percentage of atmospheric oxygen. Testing an entire phage library against it can be automated and I've seen it done, but the machinery to do so is still what qualifies as a big investment for the companies I know of that work on this.

But if the library fails, and you need to find and mass-produce a new phage, the pipeline starts over again. That is what I was referring to in my previous comment. I have worked with certain gut bacteria that can be infected by phages, but those phages replicate in the tenfold range rather than the hundredfold range you see with bacteriophages like for E. coli. Growing such bacteria at bioreactor scale is challenging enough before you add in a phage that, by its nature, does not replicate at the scale you need. And post-reaction, filtering out the phage into something safe like saline can lead to more loss of phage, which I have also seen happen.

They are viruses, so they reproduce and mutate. Quality control is difficult. They're also rather specific in what bacteria they infect, so you usually first need to isolate the bacteria and culture them to figure out which phages like them.

My understanding is that phage therapy has some promise, but that its successes are overstated and challenges understated by folks who may think they're an easy alternative to antibiotics.

You can get packets of bacillus subtilis at farm stores, labeled "Sav-A-Chick". You can add it to your chickens' water; it helps with diarrhea.

> various bacteria our body can not clear and that are also antibiotic resistant and a treatment for them would be immensely beneficial

Do phages attack human cells? I thought they were a pest to bacteria.

No they are very specific in what they attack, you can have a phage for killing E Coli but it will only kill a very precise subspecies of E Coli. They are so specialised there are many millions, maybe even billions of them and they ignore anything that isn't their target.

This what makes them amazing and awful at the same time. It could take a while to identify the right phage for a bacteria that is killing a patient and you have to wait and see if it works. On the other hand when you find the right thing you can destroy the bacteria without hurting the patient and without destroying other bacteria in the process. Unlike antibiotics you are not going to destroy you microbiome with the right phage.

> Yet nature has a phage for all of them

Why do you say that?

This explains a lot about my childhood when my parents would just let me be outside all the time.

Also it reminds me of an interesting conclusion somebody had here on HN that it's weird how we insctinctively know how each thing around us would taste.

Like if I told you do you know how the door would taste if you licked it. A taste would come in your mind.

Fascinating stuff. This article is definitely going into my next week's newsletter for remote working parents (https://thursdaydigest.com/). Even though most of my subscribers are from HN.

Babies offered free choice from a variety of foods seem to automatically know how to pick in a way to get a good balanced diet [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/

When you visit the page, the title is "How mud boosts your immune system" -- but isn't all the evidence and discussion about children?

As far as I understand, this exposure to mud / bacteria is particularly beneficial during the first three years (maybe a few more years; probably not much consensus there) and there isn't evidence to think people over 18 would benefit from continued exposure (though gardening seems to benefit health; and perhaps those who have gone through antibiotic treatment might benefit - though I know of no such evidence, never looked).

Could anyone who has more familiarity with the topic comment? :)

> When you visit the page, the title is "How mud boosts your immune system" -- but isn't all the evidence and discussion about children?

You wouldn't be able to find enough people to test if you focused on adults who played in the dirt and mud now, but didn't when they were children. I don't think there's any reason to doubt that it would work on adults, although I wouldn't assume it would, either.

Back in Eastern europe, usually in the summer and by the seaside or in an usual sunbathing setting, older people with various ailments such as rheumatism cover themselves in black mud and keep it on for hours then wash it off. Some of them are also practicing nudism as well, this part is quite funny. I never knew if there was an actual benefit from it, and still am somewhat skeptical though I’d give it a try if I had the chance and need. Could as well be a bucket list item. At the same time I think we’ve lost some ancient treatments this way and when it comes to the immune system, seems to me it’s on the better side if it’s stimulated rather than overprotected by isolation from exposure sources. I have a kid in preK and they’re sick quite frequently and it’s quite a normal thing.

Does the length of time it covers you matter? It would seem to me that leaving it on for shorter periods but getting more diversity by having more applications of new mud would be more effective.

Babies are born from a sterile environment and apparently passing through the birth canal and then immediately being placed on the mother for skin-to-skin contact, even if only for a few minutes, is sufficient to populate the microbiome. But perhaps that’s because it is a clean slate being populated.

I actually found its more widespread in use, here’s the wiki entry for mud bathing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_bath

This seems to be a unique period in history to test the idea with a large sample size.

I'm not sure how this could easily be measured while taking into account every variable, but I'd love to see good studies done over the long-term based on how people are reacting to living with Covid-19.

Due to a high state of fear, a portion of people seem resigned to living the rest of their lives wearing masks/gloves/face shields everywhere in public, very frequently cleaning themselves and their living environments to kill every possible germ, washing their hands more frequently than might be reasonably necessary, avoiding many public interactions, etc. If humans are better off with some reasonable amount of exposure to the normal bacteria in nature, the fearful people might end up with worse off immune systems due to this lack of normal exposure.

The whole point of the covid measures was/is not to avoid getting covid, but to slow it down. Because if everyone is sick at the same time, it's extremely bad.

There is a balance to find between living the rest of your life with a mask and refusing to help slowing the pandemic down by doing a small effort, because YOLO. But that's far from being globally understood.

on the other hand, if this mostly applies to childhood behaviors, I doubt we'll see much of an effect. My kid was still chewing grass and tasting dirt clods in the middle of covid.

I'm not providing a reference with this comment but I've heard numerous times that at the time of the polio epidemic it was a common observation that kids raised in "rough" conditions, i.e. on the streets and exposed to all the insalubrity that goes with it, were handling polio infections much better than kids raised with modern hygiene. The so-called "hygiene hypothesis"...

I think the "hygiene hypothesis" is mostly related to allergies, not infections per se.

Kids in countries with "rough" conditions have a much higher mortality than kids in the developed world. I think it's pretty well accepted that the hygiene revolution decreased child (and adult) mortality a lot. That's not to say it didn't create other problems, but surely on net a "cleaner" world is better. Nobody is advocating not washing your hands before you eat.

So while "tougher raised" kids probably have a better immune system, the risk associated with pathogen exposure grow even more dramatically, such that they surpass the benefit.

I think both can be true, question of balance.

Concerning kids exposed to those pathogens in the developing world, we have to consider that malnutrition is a major contributor.

Or, said another way - it was harder to survive being raised in those 'rough' conditions, but if you did, you were tougher. Survival of the fittest.

One of the failings of the simple concept of "survival of the fittest" is that survival just means you pass on genes, your quality of life might be poor up til then or you die shortly after, and fitness is towards the environment you grew up in, you may fail completely at adapting to an environmental shift later on.

The concept only goes so far, and people need to be wary of it being used to potentially justify that harsh living conditions are okay or "better". It can come off as an appeal to nature.

I think the previous comment was referring to that the people with weak immune systems/severe allergies don't make it to adulthood. And so of course in clean environments where they survive there is a higher population of people with allergies.

Only in very severe disease would that be the case. Many can become maimed & debilitated instead of just dying(e.g. Polio), and even those who come through "unscathed", the damage may just be hidden. You can see this with a lot of diseases like HPV, herpes(chickenpox/shingles) or hepatitis, where severe disease manifests well into adulthood. Many diseases have adapted to not kill the host and evade the immune system.

You also may just have chronic re-exposure or a failure to clear pathogens, which can be detrimental to an entire population. An example would be worms that don't get cleared by the immune system and for which the person is constantly being re-exposed to. You end up with cognitive and physical issues that don't kill, but reduce a person's quality of life.

Some of the hygiene hypothesis is around the immune system amping up its response due to parasites, and without the parasites present to attack it turns against the body itself. This is kind of what I am talking about. The people with amped up immune systems possibly handled parasite infections better when they were a common problem, but in a society where most people no longer live with chronic parasite infections, it manifests as allergies/immune disease. Living with chronic parasite infection is certainly not on the top of anyone's list to do, though helminthic therapy is something some people have tried to fix their allergy issues.

It is also incredibly hard to determine who has truly lived a "pure" lifestyle free from interference of modern conveniences, so that evolution can truly be the driving factor in their life. Civilization has disrupted evolution for millennia by now, we can't just look back a few generations and claim they were a "tougher breed" who were better because of their purer natural lifestyle.

Doesn't matter, had sex.

We could give birth to more children and let them die. Those who survive will be stronger. People removed natural selection from the equation with children healthcare. It could be a wrong direction for humanity.

> So while "tougher raised" kids probably have a better immune system, the risk associated with pathogen exposure grow even more dramatically, such that they surpass the benefit.

Maybe, but

1) the younger you are, the better you can deal with a lot of these infections, it's when you're older and you haven't seen them that they become a problem, and

2) the kind of exposure you get from being filthy is not going to be as concentrated as most of the exposures that make you sick e.g. from other people. A tiny exposure from a bit of dirt is going to take forever to grow into something that will hurt you, so your immune system has plenty of time to figure it out before it gets there. Then when somebody sneezes in your face, you've had the immunity without ever being aware of the sickness.

Yeah this is the failing of hygiene hypothesis. Do kids raised in dirt or near animals have stronger immune responses than kids raised in a sanitized modern life? Probably. Do they have better long term outcomes in terms of overall health and longevity? Very unlikely and certainly never proven.

Is it the exposure to dirt, or the lack of health care that contributes more to the excess mortality?

> insalubrity

great word

> Noun. insalubrity (usually uncountable, plural insalubrities) The condition of being insalubrious; unhealthiness, unwholesomeness.

> I'm not providing a reference with this comment

Here is the CDC saying it:

> Before the 18th century, polioviruses probably circulated widely. Initial infections with at least one type probably occurred in early infancy, when transplacentally acquired maternal antibodies were high and protected infants from infection-causing paralysis.

> In the immediate prevaccine era, during the first half of the 20th century, improved sanitation resulted in less frequent exposure and increased the age of primary infection, resulting in large epidemics with high numbers of deaths. The incidence dramatically decreased after the introduction of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) in 1955 and continued to decline following oral polio vaccine (OPV) introduction in 1961. From the more than 21,000 paralytic cases reported in 1952, only 2,525 cases were reported in 1960 and 61 cases in 1965.

> Poliovirus Secular Trends in the United Status:

> * Before the 18th century, polioviruses probably circulated widely

> * In immediate prevaccine era, improved sanitation resulted in less frequent exposure and increased age of primary infection, resulting in large epidemics with high death count

> * Incidence dramatically decreased following inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) introduction in 1955

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/polio.html

This wasn't in infants, children of age to play in the streets.

No, it's only in infants. If a child old enough to walk around is exposed to polio for the first time (no vaccination or exposure as an infant), they'll have no protection and have a serious risk of being crippled. The sanitary conditions in which infants were kept in the decades preceding polio vaccination prevented them from being exposed to polio during their short window of protection, and as soon as they left the crib they were at serious risk.

It's specifically the sanitation of the living condition of infants that had the effect, not the general sanitation level of society. Polio was still circulating through the population outside during this time period, but infants were shielded from it during their short window of protection.

ok, but the observation I was referring to was talking about those children, and how they tended do to much better when exposed to polio; maybe that's a complete fabrication, I don't have a reference on hand

I think you probably heard a corruption of the truth through a game of telephone. Playing outside never gave children any protection from polio, but unsanitary living conditions for infants did.

You're right, after researching, mentions of the hygiene hypothesis all attribute the epidemic to decreases in exposure in infancy, and possibly decreases in exposure in the mother as well.

But I did find where I got that from, for whatever it's worth, George Carlin:

> When I was a little boy in New York City in the 1940s, we swam in the Hudson River, and it was filled with raw sewage. OK? We swam in raw sewage — you know, to cool off. And at that time, the big fear was polio. Thousands of kids died from polio every year. But you know something? In my neighborhood, no one ever got polio. No one. Ever. You know why? 'Cause we swam in raw sewage.

(from https://www.businessinsider.com/george-carlin-why-we-need-to...)

[edit]: I do wonder if, because I have no reason to doubt it's true, what being exposed to sewage-infested water did is provide some sort of vaccination, by means of exposure to very low levels - insufficient for infection - of pathogens including polio. After all, that kind of analogue process is what early vaccination was.

[edit 2]: that might still be completely off, I mean, reading about it I understand that at the time, 10x as many children would die by accidents, and 3x from cancer.

Does this take into account the fact that before hygiene, germ theory and the beginning of the C20th, most infants died early? Dying of these pathogens as an infant is a reliable way not to catch them later in life.

It has nothing to do with mortality rates generally, and is specifically about polio. Polio generally wasn't killing very young infants, most of them were protected by antibodies from their mothers.

My guess is that sanitary conditions during infancy were still a net positive overall. Just not with respect to polio specifically. To protect children from polio you either need vaccination with dead/weak polio, or exposure to polio as an infant when they had protection from maternal antibodies. Either way teaches the immune system to fight polio, but without either of those the risk of polio rises with age. An adult who catches polio is about 10x more likely to die than a child (not infant) who catches it.

> * In immediate prevaccine era, improved sanitation resulted in less frequent exposure and increased age of primary infection, resulting in large epidemics with high death count

How do you suss out the difference between increasing sanitation vs vaccination in a time where sanitation is on an upwards trajectory? Polio is spread from feces. Eventually people stopped drinking contaminated water. full stop.

I’ve heard that poliomyelitis (the specific nerve damage) can be also caused by other things than the poliovirus. Most notably certain pesticides that are fortunately no longer in widespread use.

It’s hard to find non kooky references, but the notion of environmental poisons in the gut somehow transferring to the lower spinal cord sounds at least plausible.

I don't see how one can conclusively say rough conditions improved immune systems.

What rules out the theory that those who survived were born with superior immune systems, or that they were missing traits that would make them susceptible to severe illness?

You've reminded me of this George Carlin rant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo

Edit: Usually I regret scrolling down to youtube comments, not this time:

> This is not a comedy, this is a TED talk.

When I was a kid (in China), before boarding my flight to the US, my relatives packed some balls of dirt in my carry on for me to make “tea” from.

what kind of tea could that be?

I just put the ball of dirt in water and drink it.

All I have is anecdata.

Early years were extremely urban; still have allergies; learned some things about managing them as an adult. Had a resurgence in autoimmune issues a few years ago (triggered by an initial misdiagnosis); declined doing allergy shots again, absolutely no doubt in my mind that my improvement since would be claimed as a win by allopathic practitioners if I'd gone that route.

I used to spend a lot of time in the woods doing extreme stuff; I've bled all over the place, even got some nasty puncture wounds, never got infected; scuffed my hand in an urban park and got blood poisoning.

I eat produce and fruit from my own grounds. I hug chickens. I pick up and dispose of dead things (carefully). Yes, I've had a tetanus shot in recent memory.

Pretty sure I had COVID early on, barely noticed it. Or it could have been the lisinopril (blood pressure issue also stemming from the misdiagnosis, although it too is improving). I can only say "pretty sure" because I've asked repeatedly for an antibody test and the doctors have refused.

Worked for biotechs, had safety training. Wore N95s throughout COVID indoors most places, taking care when removing them; sanitize my hands; wash them when I get home; avoid public restrooms if at all possible; have only eaten at restaurants twice since COVID started. In summary, I take measures which are probably half-assed, but I'm very consistent.

Haven't had the "flu" either. Moved my annual physical to June starting this year, which is the yearly minimum for ILI around here; the physician had a studied "no comment" about this.

When I was at the clinic in February to set this up, while I was sitting in the waiting room the linen service employee came to pick up the wash wearing dirty work gloves and nobody paid attention; after five minutes I got up and took some sani wipes to the door handles; then they noticed.

Is the point of your comment that exposure and being active outdoors helps build your resistance.

Also you sound a bit over cautious. Are you over 50? Otherwise you don’t really need a yearly physical. At least according to my doctor.

> helps build your resistance

I think "resilience" is more poetic than "resistance". Kind of like "modulation" instead of "moderation". Basically yes, but a lot of it is mental attitude and being willing and able to learn lessons from that activity.

> Also you sound a bit over cautious. [...]

See previous point about mental attitude. I clearly said I do a "half-assed" job, but do it consistently so that I can judge the effect.

Do you need a yearly physical? Can you afford one? Is the risk vs benefit different at different points in the ILI (influenza like illness) cycle? Is it different depending on the general quality of medical care in your community? Is it different if the linen service comes through the front door of the clinic, or if the staff bothers to wipe the door handles?

I think you need to be observant to develop answers to those questions and have any confidence in your reasoned judgement concerning related ones.

Finally, I consider myself fortunate to have gotten out of the urban core and embraced a little of the "hard" part of life.

This article has a blind spot large enough to drive a truck through, related to the author's apparent belief that we all live in some kind of bucolic pre-industrial society. Take this claim:

> "People who grow up on farms are generally less likely to develop asthma, allergies, or auto-immune disorders like Crohn's disease – thanks, apparently, to their childhood exposure to a more diverse range of organisms in the rural environment that had encouraged more effective regulation of the immune system."

The vast majority of farming in the USA and Britain is industrialized and relies heavily on regular application of pesticides and herbicides in the fields. Animal farming is centered on factory farms where animals are kept in close quarters and given antibiotics and hormones to prevent disease outbreaks and increase growth rates. The fecese and urine from these operations stink for miles around.

Childhood exposure to such environments results in everything from asthma to neurological damage - see Parkinsons relationship to organophosphorous pesticides, say. Another concrete example: methyl bromide in the strawberry fields of California:

https://www.ewg.org/research/heavy-methyl-bromide-use-near-c...

That's the industrial agriculture reality, so packing your kids off to such farms to get their dose of 'good natural microbes' is inadvisable. It's just half the equation, however, as other kinds of industrial activity have loaded up soils with all kinds of chemical contaminants, from heavy metals (sometimes radioactive) to persistent organics with negative health effects. For example, anyone living downwind of an oil refinery or coal power plant, or around a uranium mine etc., should thing twice about galavanting through the local mudholes. Richmond, in California downwind from Chevron and other refineries, is a case example:

https://www.ehn.org/pollution-poverty-richmond-2645503359.ht...

Even without the modern industrial-related issues, historically animal farming has been linked to all kinds of parasite issues, such as the hookworm pandemic that afflicted the American South for many decades (linked to pig farms). The 'get in touch with nature on a nice organic farm' theme should be tempered by such realities, i.e.:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...

However, direct interactions with relatively pristine natural environments are likely great for kids (and adults), and the notion that ultra-sterile equals ultra-healthy doesn't make any sense either.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11597666/

Asthma is a bit more complicated than that, and the urban/rural breakdown seems highly site-specific.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23625129/

> "Although evidence shows that differences in the prevalence of asthma do exist between urban and rural dwellers in many parts of the world, including in developed countries, data are inadequate to evaluate the extent to which different pollutant exposures contribute to asthma morbidity and severity of asthma between urban and rural areas."

>The vast majority of farming in the USA and Britain is industrialised

Where I grew up farming was not industrial to the extent it has become, and I never met any single person with allergies until I moved to the city, neither did we experience pandemics. I known this is not just my experience. Isn't there some value, to see how children grew up with access to grass and dirt, yet also to sanitary conditions inside the home, hospitals and schools? Perhaps it was due to the period of my childhood and the smaller nature of farming, plus it was a fairly wealthy part of the world considering.

I grew up on a pretty old, small farm that mostly had some animals and garden plots. I have asthma and severe allergies. I’m especially allergic to horses and dogs, which we had in abundance.

I also spent about 20 weekends a year camping from about age 10 to 18. I can’t say it did anything for my immune system.

Sounds like genetics?

Probably not enough information. For example, exposure to diesel emissions is closely correlated with childhood asthma, and this may or may not be an issue on different farms (tractors not being very clean-running typically). Some farmland is in very dusty regions as well. Hence, growing up on a farm might or might not be as bad as growing up right next to a major freeway or oil refinery:

> "In a study funded in part by EPA, researchers from Johns Hopkins University found that children exposed to outdoor coarse particulate matter (PM10-2.5), were more likely to develop asthma and need emergency room or hospital treatment for it. Coarse PM can come from roadway particles such as brake and tire wear, and mixtures of road dust and metals."

https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/links-between-air-polluti...

No diesel and humid southern Virginia. Just bad(Epigenetic) luck I think.

Could be? Neither of my parents had issues.

You’re right that the vast majority of our food supply comes from industrial ag. There are also many many people with small family farms, maybe a few chickens, a sheep or goat and vegetable gardens. This is the beneficial environment. Both small scale and large scale exist.

> According to recent research, the dirt outside is teaming with friendly microorganisms that can train the immune system and build resilience to a range of illnesses, including allergies, asthma and even depression and anxiety.

In that light, does it make sense to speak of "boosting the immune system"? If I understand correctly, allergies and asthma are the result of overly active immune system. Depression and anxiety are completely unrelated to the immune system as far as I know. So if anything, playing in mud dampens the immune system of children, albeit in a good way.

Also, the title of the article neglects to mention that this only applies to children.

It was my understanding that in those cases the immune system overreacts because it hasn't been correctly calibrated by being properly challenged.

It's not that it's too strong, it's that it lashes out at things that aren't actually threats because it's ability to recognise what is and isn't a threat is diminished

Yes, "calibrating" is the word that also just jumped into my mind. That would have been a much better fit than "boosting".

An additional datapoint I remember reading is that humans for so long has worms and other parasites that dulled the immune system that our immune system is actually hyperactive because we no longer have those parasites to repress it.

Depression and anxiety are completely unrelated to the immune system as far as I know.

They are definitely related. Many studies have found links between inflammation and both anxiety and depression. There's even a Wikipedia page about the depression/inflammation link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_and_immune_function

Not saying it's the same but here it is: I lose small patches of beard during prolonged unhappiness/depression/anxiety/stress

This probably doen't apply to everything, but I did read that the lack of early exposure to peanuts had actually increased the number of individuals who developed peanut allergies. I found a 2017 NIH post which reccomends early exposure to helo prevent the alergy from developing: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-earl...

Somehow, I suspect a mud resort is behind this.

Perhaps. Sort of makes you want to go out and dig a hole.

Seriously. Claim Elvis, Madonna, and Oprah visited. And it has indescribable cleansing properties. Wellness is the easiest place to make money because it's selling sweet little lies people want to hear.

Plus who doesn't like digging a good hole in the ground.

And hence the reason why kids who grow up in urban areas, tend to have considerably lower than immunity kids raised in rural environments. Urbanism negatively affects us in a lot more ways than we're currently even aware of

Walk barefoot more. There was an article on here a while back that also claimed it helped. Because you get in contact with dirt/ground.

But do be careful of domedtic fecal matter.

Domestic fecal matter? Someone shits on the floor in my house, and I step into it? Yes that could present some problems, such as slipping on the stairs.

What’s the mechanism here? Doesn’t the thick skin on the bottoms of your feet prevent and microorganisms from entering your body? That’s what it’s for after all.

In at least one case, worms.

https://www.science.org/content/article/parasitic-worms-may-...

Hemlinths enter the body through contaminated food and water, not through the feet. They’re also pretty bad for you, and can make you very sick for years.

Electrons: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265077/

That paper sounds like total techno-babble. Electrons, really?

This is right on the edge of what I'm willing to believe, even with a legitimate looking citation(that to be fair I only glanced at)

Seem like total nonsense to me.

grounding your electrochemical system 'soup' of cells

That sounds like ridiculous pseudoscientific babel. The idea that electrons from the ground as opposed to electrons from anywhere else have a special effect is unbelievable.

you technically don't need to have your feet touching the earth, but you could have say, a patch strapped onto your chest that is plugged into a building's electrical sockets 'ground' channel (bottom hole in North America).

If you really wanna dig deep, look up the latest research on electrophysiology and embryonic development. Heres an old example from 2011[0]

Our neuralcrest cells are also influenced by electrical charge [1][2]

[0] https://now.tufts.edu/2011/07/18/face-frog-time-lapse-video-...

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001216062... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6619192/

That cells travel along electrical gradients is not news, or related to the claim that touching “ground” or “grounding” is beneficial for health. Your body has its own weak electromagnetic field.

These grounding claims smell seriously like bullshit.

yes, its farfetched so definitely hold it with scrutiny. the science is still new.

I think what we should pay attention to is how electricity can affect our cell growth and regeneration.

see this https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523124219.h...

"Recently scientists have been able to control and influence cell-differentiation via long-lifetime electric fields. (Although the electric potential was created chemically via ion pumps rather than externally).... this kind of electrical signaling is likely the primary mechanism by which your cells know what to become and in which direction to grow" via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31238490

I'm bringing up the science of bioelectricity to point to that fact that our cells (and the cells of all our much more delicate microbiome neighbours in our stomachs) are affected by the electricity in our body. Could it at all be possible that when exposed to changes in electrical environment a biological electrical system can vary its the cell-level chemical reactions inside it, affecting cellular repair and growth? These studies all say yes. ___They made a worm grow two heads for crying out loud!!!____

Now after making a worm grow two heads from messing with bioelectrical stuff, is it that far of a leap to wonder if grounding your bioelectrical system would have some tiny effect on its cellular chemical state? your body is dying every second and regenerating cells in a complex chemical reaction.

Again, I’m totally unsurprised that electric or electromagnetic fields can influence biology. But none of that has anything to do with “touching dirt” or “grounding”. You’re literally always in the Earth’s magnetic field.

>You’re literally always in the Earth’s magnetic field

Even if an object is in earths magnetic field, grounding itself still discharges electricity...

when you ground yourself (one way is going bare foot on the ground)...

> The ground on which you walk has a negative electrical charge. Therefore, it’s able to neutralize positively charged electricity

https://monroeengineering.com/blog/how-does-electrical-groun....

> Electrical systems are inherently powered by electricity. As electricity flows through them, however, it may build up to dangerous levels. This is why most electrical systems are grounded. Grounding ensures that any excess electricity will be discharged.

A biological system that is grounded has less excess charge inside it.

The surface of the human body is slightly negatively charged just like most soil/the ground. There’s nothing to neutralize there, it’s just bullshit.

Its not about the surface of the skin, the skin/sweat can act as a conductor for the electrons to pass through into our body, and a wet ground helps even more. Our bodies are slightly positive due the oxidative effect occurring in our proteins, fats and other bodily tissues.(Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which atoms lose electrons)

>Unlike the epidermis and dermis layers of our skin — which are poor conductors of electricity — our sweat is rich with electrolytes such as sodium and chloride, which makes our sweat a surprisingly decent conductor of electricity (though not quite as good as metal). >What’s more, our bodies don’t just sweat when we are hot. Every square inch of our skin is releasing traces amounts of sweat, regardless of temperature. https://research-collective.com/biometrics_galvanic_skin_res...

Tissue is semi-conductive. Different tissues, more or less so. When earthing, your skin comes in contact with the relatively negative potential of the earth. The electrons will be drawn into the body due to the body's relatively positive charge. This is not quite the same thing as building up a high negative surface voltage such as from friction. Though I imagine over time this static charge could be drawn into the body.

Being a bit more speculative, I have read in sci studies that electron tunneling into positive holes (atoms with missing electrons in the outer shell) across proteins can typically occur in 10 to 20 angstrom hops. These hops range in speed from milli to nano seconds. Performing a little simple math it can be calculated ( roughly) that it will take about 2 minutes for electrons to travels an inch or so through the tissue (of course once into the blood stream they can be transferred at a different rate at the same time recharging depleted water soluble anti-oxidants eg.. vitamin c and uric acid). There are approx 12,700,000 hops per inch. Therefore, the process is not instantaneous, which goes along with how people report benefits (people talk about 20 to 30 minutes grounded to really start feeling the beneficial effects.

From my bio: "The problem: We use logic, but on the basis that everything we know currently is all there is to know about this thing." I think that in 100-200 years our understanding of how electricity affects our cells will be transformed.

If I can't convince you that walking barefoot on wet soil or grass does nothing in terms of transferring electrons into the body, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The body isn't positively charged on net. The interior of most cells is negatively charges and the surrounding fluid is OFTEN slightly positively charged which is part of the normal mechanism for material crossing cell boundaries. The whole thing on net is basically neutral. If you're starting from a different position, then the whole idea is baseless out of the gate.

If you had any net charge you'd discharge that into the environment if negatively charged, or vice versa. Usually there's enough humidity in the air to do the trick, but in extremely dry environments static electricity builds up until you touch something like a metal door knob.

If you just wanted some electrons, then generating some static electricity on a rug would be even better.

Even still the amount of current flowing between a person and the earth will be at best minuscule, almost unmeasurable[1]. The idea that "electrons going into your body" this way has any effect on your health is frankly not something that should be taken seriously.

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4241473/

It was all healthy until polyfluoroalkyl contamination spread around the globe, and now rainwater is toxic and so is the soil.

And in other news, bears seen defecating in silvan locations /s

This is definitely true, but not exactly news to most people

It is probably not as known to as you think. Lots of parents out there would put their kids in sterile rooms if they were able to. Idea of their kids playing in mud would faint a couple parents out there. Most uses antibiotics on their kids with slightest fever

> Most uses antibiotics on their kids with slightest fever

People in my vicinity generally understand that antibiotics don't help viral infections. What doctors are they getting these antibiotics from? I doubt this claim.

I’m not sure it’s as true now as it was 20 years ago, but I do remember seeing several campaigns raising awareness of the risks of antibiotic abuse.

At any rate, you’re not necessarily contradicting GP. You can both know that antibiotics don’t help with viral infections and also believe that antibiotic use is harmless. Put the two together, and giving your kids antibiotics “just in case” seems perfectly reasonable.

But in the US at least antibiotics require a prescription from doctors. So you need the doctors to play along, too, and in my own experience I’ve never received antibiotics unnecessarily

You can easily end up with leftovers from a prescription if stop taking them midway through the course once you're feeling better. Those left overs can then be used to self-medicate.

I could speculate on how else it happens, but the important part is that it does happen, and e.g. the Mayo clinic says:

> According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one-third of antibiotic use in people is not needed nor appropriate.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health...

.. and this is one of the biggest sources of antibiotic resistance: people not finishing the course of antibiotics becasue they 'feel better now', rather than eliminating the pathogen so it can't gain resistance. Generally, there should never be leftover antibiotics.

As I understand it, there's been some recent studies that suggest it might be better to stop early (which is interesting, but that hasn't become standard practice, so I'll just keep doing what the actual professionals tell me to)

This is true in the US. In Brazil, my experience is that people expect a doctor to give medicine no matter what, even if it’s not warranted.

Major cultural difference to the point where Brazilians feel like American doctors aren’t even treating them.

At least in Turkey, such parents find new doctors if their old ones does not give them the antibiotics they want. Doctors either dont care or are greedy enough to keep such patients at the expense of fucking up theirs or their kids immune system for life

Maybe younger generation knows this. I know some older people who keep stash of antibiotics at home and pop those pills for almost everything.

>Lots of parents out there would put their kids in sterile rooms if they were able to.

It's pathological microphobia

It's developed from an early age when schoolchildren are taught that all germs are evil.

> This is definitely true, but not exactly news to most people

A lot of people believe it’s true, but having a proof of it is newsworthy. This is an old theory and there’s still no 100% scientific consensus on whether it’s true or not [1][2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

[2]: https://www.verywellfamily.com/hygiene-and-cleanliness-won-t...

I do take my rather glib comment back, with apologies to the readers here, I know better than that. Indeed, the Hygiene Hypothesis is misused a lot, and which I was actively looking up post-comment. It's the reason a lot of people are - erroneously - trying to infect themselves with COVID-19, to prorect themselves from later catching... the very same harmful pathogen.

See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5320962/

A relevant article arguing the opposite can be found in Elizabeth's blog: "Eating Dirt is Basically Made Up" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JzJcgsKBf35FeuZSD/eating-dir...

Not really. Your reference is against "eating dirt" which seems to have become a popular pop-sci article shorthand for other stuff about sanitation that she says has plenty of backing. I was a filthy kid, but I didn't intentionally eat dirt (that would be weird), I ate with dirty hands.

I'm told I used to eat dirt (sand, soil, etc) as a child, which upset my brother. It seems to have worked out for me - I have no allergies and can digest anything and everything, in contrast with people who proclaim that carbs make them bloat, they get tired after eating sugar, etc.

I still get a good dose of dirt from frequent bike rides on dusty logging roads, where the occasional passing car stirs up dust clouds that end up in my mouth and nose.

I love to hear about dirt "teaming" with microorganisms. They make a great pair!

It's all fun and games until you get the brain-eating amoeba. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria_fowleri

Not for the amoeba!

Or lead

Not the game then

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