Nobody wants to be dirty. The idea of being that person who is smelling up the room, or to have a dust cloud following you around like you are Pigpen from Peanuts is not a good look. However, did you ever stop for a minute and think that maybe you are just too clean?
It may sound crazy, but before you scrub all that “dead skin” off of your body with the harshest loofah you can find, you might want to ease up on the exfoliation. Before you douse your hands with sanitizer for the 30th time today because somebody else hiccuped in your direction, you might want to hold off. Before you dry your scalp out by shampooing your hair every single day, give your cranium a rest. You skin has it’s own microbiome and being too clean with upset the balance.
We have become a society of clean freaks, and it might just blow up in our faces! Bacteria…It’s Everywhere!
I don’t know any other way to break this to you. You are riddled with bacteria. Your sheets are. Your children are. Your pets are. The patches of grass outside your front steps are . Bacteria is looming everywhere. And guess what? It’s okay!
Not all microbes are the bad guys (or gals). Sure, bacteria can turn into crippling and even deadly infections, but there are many beneficial bacteria as well. In fact, we even consume some of these bacteria willingly. Probiotics in yogurt, and live, sugar-eating bacteria in fermented foods all promote good gut health and they are marketed for doing such.
When our body ingests “good bacteria,” it teams with the immune system to clean out dead cells, debris, bad bacteria, and inflammation that can lead to stomach pain, digestive issues, a weakened immune system, and even cancer. As the bad bacteria and inflammation are eliminated, “good bacteria” flourishes. Taking up residency in your gut, the good bacteria allows for other good bacteria to plant itself in the gut and grow as well.
Benefits of healthy bacteria include:
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Precursor to Vitamin Creation
Good bacteria is essential in the formation of biotin, folic acid, riboflavin, and Vitamin K, among others
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Boosts Immune System
Good bacteria makes for a natural increase in antibodies. In turn, the body is susceptible to less infections.
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Regulates Bowels
Bacteria helps the body break down human waste and relieves constipation pain.
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Balances Hormones
When bad bacteria outweighs the beneficial, hormones become unregulated. In turn, a number of things may happen to the body from weight gain, breast enlargement or shrinking, and hair loss or growth.
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Keeps Cholesterol in Check
As mentioned, bacteria helps regulate bowel movements by assisting the waste out. It does the same for residual cholesterol left in the bloodstream.
How Being Too Clean Leads to Allergies
Back in 1989, a British epidemiologist named David Strachan came up with the scientific theory known as the “Hygiene Hypothesis.” In his conclusion, the doctor stated that exposing children to infections earlier in their lifetimes will provide a stronger defense against allergies later in life.
This falls much in line with recent research showing that having a pet can boost your child’s immune system. The reason being that surrounding your child with a bunch of foreign germs will make their antibodies stronger, especially since a human is highly unlikely to catch any viruses or illnesses that their pet has. See, introducing germs to your system can be a good thing.
Truth of the matter is, we’ve put ourselves in a cleanly bubble and now we are paying dearly for it. Due to our obsession with cleanliness and some other factors, allergies have skyrocketed. After all, in today’s day and age almost half of American adults have developed an allergy throughout their lifetime.
Cleaning Kills
As humans evolved, we started taking more showers. We began using harsh chemical products that clean our hair, scrub our body, and help us shave. From there, we started purchasing hand sanitizers and antibacterial soaps. We have disinfected our external lives, which effectively has disinfected our internal lives as well. Harming the good bacteria that makes us flourish and reducing our microbe diversity.
What causes an allergy attack is our body’s overreaction to what it perceives as foreign microbes. However, these microbes have been living in the air this whole time. We just trained our body not to coexist with them by scrubbing them to smithereens. Now, our body doesn’t know how to handle them.
We have also killed off our own natural microbiota, which are the microorganisms living on our body. Scrubbing microorganisms off our skin numerous times a day and not eating foods rich in bacteria for our gut, weakens our body’s defense both inside and out. This has lead to the allergy boom.
How to Get Dirtier
Sure, you should shower. If you touch something disgusting, you should wash your hands. If you use a porto-loo, by all means- wash your hands! However, there are ways we can get dirtier in our everyday lives that will benefit our overall health.
We can:
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Eat a Varied Diet
Most notably, farm produce. You want the widest variety of colors and foods in your diet to get as many unique vitamins…and bacterias… as possible. And don’t over wash your organic veggies, you can ingest some or that wholesome dirt and treat your gut bugs.
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Exercise Outside
Exercise is important. Don’t do it in a gym. Do it in nature. Hike in the woods. Go for a bike ride. Swim in the ocean. Get outside and get dirty.
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Cuddle With Your Pets
The safest form of foreign germs you can have that will boost your immune system.
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Shower Less
Take shorter showers or shower every other day, and wash your hair every few days. The less chemically-made ingredients we use to kill good bacteria, the healthier we will be, so switch to an all natural range of personal hygiene products like those from MINATURAL NEST or DIRTY HIPPIE.
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Houseclean
Do a little everyday. You don’t need a once-a-week scrub-a-thon using hospital grade disinfectants. If you are a little scrub-happy, than be sure to use safe and natural cleaning products. There are plenty of D-I-Y recipes using vinegar, lemon juice, clove oil or bi-carb. Just do a search on Pinterest.
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Eat a Little Dirt
Maybe you yourself don’t find the idea of eating dirt appealing, but rest assured your children sure do. While it may be a nightmare for your washing pile to have them rolling around in muddy puddles, it’s great for their immune system. In fact, one study with 467 children found that exposing a child to as much dirt as possible in the first year will greatly reduce their chance of contracting allergies in their lifetime.
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Walk Around Barefoot
There is no medication in this world like Mother Nature. That is why a great treatment for the soul is to get your soles a little dirty. A holistic healing approach called “earthing” or “grounding” (I know, sounds a little hippie) may be the answer to ongoing bouts of depression. Scrubbing our bodies clean, riding in cars from Point A to Point B, and sitting indoors at work all day has been cutting us off from the earth we belong to. It can leave us lost, lonely, and depressed.
Research has found that when we step barefoot onto the earth (grass, sand or soil, not asphalt) it can positively charge our immune system. It’s like plugging a battery into the wall. The electrons generated from the earth contain a negative electrical output on the surface. When you stand on bare earth, the same electrical current is sent through your body. With our charges going bonkers inside our system, this negative charge from the earth helps evens things out. It’s the whole yin to the yang thing. This helps ground you further into the earth, allowing it to charge you physiologically. In doing this, the earth sanitizes you from disruptive electromagnetic pollution and dirty electricity.
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Gardening
What better way to get dirty than to actually get into the dirt? Gardening is beneficial for humans because it’s a moment for us to become one with nature. When we are gardening, we find ourselves touching the dirt, nurturing the dirt, feeding the dirt, and then hoping for something to grow in it. I always feel on a high after a day in the my garden or veggie patch.
Not only are we getting the dirt on us, but if we are eating our homegrown fruit and veggies, they are less likely to go through a rigorous cleansing process, so we can consume a little more dirt this way too. This is great for increasing our gut microbe diversity and in turn our overall health. So again, don’t over wash your organic veggies and eat a little dirt!.
Get a Little Dirty
Now that you know the down and dirty of getting dirty, it’s time to do just that. Go outside and boost that immune system. Put in some outdoor cardio, breathe in some fresh (germy) air, and get some good bacteria into that body.
Obsessively cleaning yourself is not healthy for your skin, the bacteria that lives on it, and the body that holds it all in place. Exposing yourself to other microbes is beneficial in boosting your overall health. I’m not saying to go completely feral, but hey, it’s okay to get a little dirty!
