Dr. J offers the latest dirt on dirt
Contributor: “Dr. J”Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.
If you are like most people, you don’t like dirt! As a surgeon, I have spent more time scrubbing for operations than I care to remember. I’ve even done operations that took less time than the pre-op scrub!
Do you know why we work so hard to be so clean? Well, neither do I. OK, maybe I do. It’s for that rare possibility that we will tear our gloves during the procedure and possibly infect the patient with our germs!
It was a dirty job
I’ll always remember a dirty operation I once did with my dad while I was still in training. I was home on a visit, and he asked me if I would like to scrub in on a research case he was to operate the next day. Well, we headed on down, bright and early the following morning, to the hospital.
As is the usual procedure, we went to the doctor’s dressing area and put on our scrubs (amazing how often that term comes up with a different meaning), head covers and masks. Then we went to the surgical area to do the pre-op scrub. It’s a very carefully orchestrated procedure where you start at the hands and finish above the elbows, never contaminating an already clean area.
The procedure is done twice, finishing with the hands held up so no water drips down on them from your upper arm. After this we entered the operating theater where we were helped into our surgical gowns and gloved, by the attending staff. We were ready!
The patient enters the operating room
Now the patient is wheeled into the room! This was no ordinary patient, He was a pig, or, more correctly, a hog!
It’s true, they rolled in this several hundred pound anesthetized boar. My dad and I had prepared for this surgery as carefully as we would have for any person, yet we were operating on a covered-with-dirt, straight-from-the-pen pig!
Well, we shaved and prepped the surgical area with the same care as for any human operation. I’m happy to report, the operation (a bone graft to the jaw for a research project) was a success, and our pig-patient survived, uncontaminated by dad or me!
Why dirt is not so bad, or what pigs have always known!
We have a local cleaning business whose motto is “Rick hates dirt!” Perhaps having clean clothes is a good thing, but having too clean a body may not be.
British epidemiologist David P. Strachan first suspected that too much cleanliness could lead to illness in 1989, when he proposed “the hygiene hypothesis.”
In her recent book “Why Dirt is Good,” immunology expert Mary Ruebush explains how recent research is providing support for Strachan’s hypothesis.
“A baby’s immune system is like a computer that hasn’t been programmed,” she says. “It needs to practice responding to bacteria and viruses and other things found in dirt to learn what it should fight and what it should ignore. It’s not an evolutionary mistake that young children, regardless of what their parents tell them, keep putting things in their mouths.”
In recent years, the percentage of children in developed nations who are developing allergies or other immune system disorders such as asthma is increasing. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently reported that some three million American children have food or digestive allergies, an 18 percent increase from the prior decade.
Time to get dirty
Fortunately, parents don’t have to do anything to help with this problem. Actually, they just need to do a little less. For example, use fewer antibacterial products. Soap and water is all you need to clean dirty hands.
A good bug is, well, a good bug!
In spite of what you may think, not all bacteria are bad. Companies that sell antibacterial soaps and cleaners have exploited people’s fear of germs just to create a market for their products.
It’s OK to allow kids to walk around outside barefoot and play in the dirt. These are things children, and the occasional doctor, enjoy doing anyway. Hygiene-obsessed parents may have good intentions, but the result of this is not the optimal dish of dirt!
OK, you don’t have to do it all in the dirt, just do a little gettin’ down in the dirt to hit some healthy pay dirt!
(Send your questions for Dr. J to calorielab@gmail.com or leave a comment. If your question is used by Dr. J, CalorieLab will send you a $25 Dining Dough restaurant certificate — limited to U.S. residents. More Dr. J posts can be read in our archives.)
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I always wondered what the fine line was between being too hygenic and making yourself vulnerable to bugs because of lack of immune function. Since I moved to London, I get sick way more often than I ever have and my own hypothesis is that it is because of the grime and grit of city life, which previously I was sheltered from living in the ‘burbs. Now I get it. Definitely a valuable piece of info for when the kiddos come!
Thanks!!
~Rupal
I want to have kids soon and my husband quite germ-fearing. I hope he isn’t overly so with kids, I may forward him this article…
Sarah, you remind me of a story my wife loves to tell:
When my daughter was born a while back, I changed my very first diaper while she was still in the hospital. The birth seemed like a medical procedure. I was working in hospitals with rigid “universal infection precautions.”
So before I approached the soiled diaper (#2), I gloved up! My wife howled with laughter.
In my defense, understand that I did NOT put on a sterile gown.
[People without children may not get this.]
Raising young children tends to clear up a germ phobia.
-Steve
Ah, the clean country we are. We drive ourselves nuts from the amount of advertising to try to clean something. I just saw a commercial yesterday promoting the benefits of bleach with disinfecting children toys. Maybe we should send this post to the Clorox people?
This also reminded me of something. I seem to remember the reason that perfume that was created in the 16th century was that people just stunk from not bathing. They would put on the same clothes and never touch a bath for weeks on end so they needed some quick spray so that they could be in the same room with one another. I’m sure there must be a fine line when the dirt is good and when it really is offensive. :) Another fine article Dr. J
Rupal!
I don’t know about all that, Rupal, but when I lived in France during the Fall and early Winter, I would get a cold about every two weeks! It was cold and rainy, and that was just in the hotel :-) I wasn’t taking vit C then, like now (about 2000 a day), and if I held the water up to the light, I could see things swimming around in it. At any rate, I hardly ever get colds now.
Sarah!
I’m sure I will be on your husband’s fav. list sifter that :-)
Steve!
“Raising young children tends to clear up a germ phobia.” So does going to medical school, lol!
Tom!
Thanks for that interesting comment, Tom! I guess there is dirt, and there is DIRT!
I grew up in a vet clinic with slobbery animals all around me, playing in the dirt, and my body is really healthy. And I know so many people who didn’t grow up around animals and were always kept indoors etc and they’re allergic to everything. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I say!
We all end up as dirt in the end.
Dr. J.,
Nice post.
Thanks to our germ-phobia, there are now these freakazoid anti-biotic resistant stains of “germs”.
You can’t outsmart nature, but you can strengthen your immune system.
Ruth
Sagan!
LOL! Good saying!
POD!
I plan on being top soil, although I always did fancy that red Georgia clay :-)
Ruth!
Thanks. I for one, have always kept my use and prescribing of antibiotics to a minimum. Sadly, I am in the minority of doctors on that one.
I agree totally Dr. J. Reminds me of a post I have been meaning to do on over protective parents.
I like to get them sick early and build up that immune system. Continue to feed them garlic and OJ. Well…kinda anyway! :)
Dirt fan here.
Was raised to “go out and play” and we lived at the end of a fire trail, so that almost always involved dirt. I feel actually pretty lucky that my family was not fanatical about hygiene!
I really do think our immune systems need a little poking and prodding when we’re young for optimal health.
I love this topic. I see freaky people all day who carry hand sanitizer, talk about germs (fear), and worry too much abut receiving the germs of others. When I express my lack of concern for such things, they view me as somewhat of an idiot — an idiot that has spent less then a (combined) week of his 48 years in bed sick.
I don’t actively chase germs, ala licking the toilet seat or anything like that, but bare feet is a the rule for me, no hand sanitizers ever, I usualy just rinse my dishes and put them away when done, and you will not find a bigger fan of the 10-second food rule than me. My dogs kiss me on the mouth for a reason, and I’m okay with that (TMI?). Seriously, there isn’t a germ out there who’s ass I can’t kick — I hope.
I am totally ANTI anti-bacterial products. That whole market is insane! I only buy regular soaps. Then there’s the whole antibiotics issue…
Dr. Hubbard!
I look forward to reading your post on that one!
Mark!
Your own home version of a vaccination, no doubt :-)
Crabby!
I’m with you! The studies seem to support your view.
Roy!
LOL!! You are too much!! Even Pasteur realized in the end that the body (the terrain) was the real weak link, and could become the strong link :-)
Sahar!
I agree that antibiotics are way over used. They have been saying it for years, but do not make any changes in spite of the concerns. Doctors need to stop prescribing them just to palliate concerned parents when they are not indicated. When I worked in France we very rarely gave antibiotics before an operation. When we had that very rare post-op infection, it always responded to first line antibiotic therapy. If we had used antibiotics pre-op and the patient then had an infection, it is much harder to treat as it’s already resistant to the antibiotics that we had used!
This very topic came up on Monday while I was lunching with a couple of other moms…ones who use bacterial soap, bleach, and are obsessive about a clean house and floors, etc. I offered basically the same thing to them…a little dose of germs and bugs are necessary for a good immune system. I know this from my own childhood….and I know it’s one of the main reasons we weren’t sickly kids and my kids aren’t sickly kids. Interestingly, those two other moms have kids with reoccuring colds and sore throats that are constantly on antibiotics…another BIG problem! Thanks Dr. J!
Kami!
Glad I could be of help! I mentioned my feelings about the overuse of antibiotics in earlier replies. With our litigious society, it takes a bit of courage to make the “do not use” decision, but then “do not cause harm” is the profession’s motto, isn’t it?
dude, i ate a rock from the playground when i was a kid (okay, just had it in my mouth for a while; didn’t actually SWALLOW it), played outside all the time, fell down a lot (the secretary nicknamed me little miss hurt), probably got dirt in a lot of those cuts … and you know what? i’m fine.
i never caught on with the antibacterial craze that came about in the mid-90s and probably never will. i wash my hands at the proper times for health and safety reasons (particularly at work), but i don’t go out of my way to sanitize crap.
i think that’s one reason i have a pretty good immune system. okay, i have the never-ending mucus issue, but the family thinks that’s due to being born c-section (dad read some study).
I’m a big opponent of antibacterial products for the home. In fact I’m planning to wrote about it on MomGrind. I think we are slowly killing ourselves by using them. Or at least encouraging superbugs that are resistant to current antibiotics. It’s crazy.
T!
You had the pet rock before it became the thing :-) \
Vered!
When I learned now many bacteria it takes (for most diseases) to cause an infection, I understood that diluting the exposure with water is all that’s really necessary. It works too :-)
I loooove the dirt :-) I grew up on a farm so there was lots of dirt to go around. For whatever that’s worth, I’ve never had a major illness or even been an over night hospital patient. Dirt exposure? maybe, but I appreciate my farm upbringing now more than ever!
Jolene!
That’s great!
Like you, when it comes to hospitals, I’ve only been an over night doctor! There are many variables, but I put effort into leading a healthy lifestyle, and am grateful for the results!.
I hope the weekend was awesome!