Walking barefoot, over all manner of surfaces, feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down.
I've done it lots, both in the countryside and in the city. You have to watch out for spiky plants and fox shit in the country, and in the city you soon learn which surface textures require more care :-)
"Where would I find enough leather to cover the entire surface of the earth? But with leather soles beneath my feet, it's as if the whole world has been covered." - Shantideva, 8th century Buddhist monk
Did you know that walking barefoot in the Southern US was how most people contracted hookworm? At is height an estimated 40% of the population in certain regions had the parasite which was know to cause a "mental haze". Some historians attribute the disease (again, contracted by walking barefoot outdoors) to have caused the stereotype of the "lazy slow southerner" [1].
Do you feel walking barefoot is worth the risk of catching this and other potentially hazardous diseases?
Are you walking on human feces a lot? Hook work was a problem because of a huge lack of sanitary conditions. Less about being barefoot. Would I walk around barefoot in my yard? Absolutely.
I live in a city and I cannot tell you how often I see dogshit on the sidewalk, like just in the middle of the sidewalk
the only neighborhoods where I don't see this are the ones where there's some nice retired older person who diligently cleans the shit up. but it's not like they bleach the spot, they just pick up most of the poop. so yeah, there's feces everywhere
From being barefoot? I think it’s pretty low on the risk list. There is absolutely an animal hookworm but it does not have the some risk as human hookworm.
Sure if you eat the poop in your backyard you might get something so that is always important to think about!
You can get most of the benefits of walking barefoot without the hookworm by wearing a good pair of barefoot shoes. I personally love my Xero Prios. If you want the full experience at the expense of looking like a freak, you can get those Vibram Five Fingers toe shoes.
Why would that give you the benefits of walking barefoot? If the point is to pick up bacteria, shoes are shoes. It doesn't matter if the toes are separated or not.
GP said the benefits of walking barefoot are "feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down."
In that context it seems like barefoot shoes would still work. They are essentially foot condoms, so you get most of the same sensation without the potential ickiness.
Those are other benefits but the literal topic at hand--and the reason going barefoot was brought up in the first place--is to have contact with the earth.
One could simply use ballet shoes, instead of that overpriced stuff. They come in different styles, colors, materials, are foldable(ususally), and can be considered disposable.
But also, hookworm infections are known to suppress allergies and asthma, help inflammatory bowl disease, and improve insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes.
Just because your immune system is fighting for your life against a parasite and doesn't have time for side quests doesn't make contracting a parasite good for you
Just because you call something a parasite doesn't make it bad for you. It might be bad, or good, or some of both, or depend on other factors at different times.
If you count cells and genes instead of mass, every human hosts more non-human life than human. Call them parasites and delete them and die.
Given that you know these terms you must be aware we have invented different words for organisms that have mixed effects (positive and negative) on the host organism. Parasite, commensalist and symbiote. If you don't want folks who know these words to argue with you you should not use the wrong ones.
Those people were walking barefoot near an unsanitary latrine. Is there a lot of human feces where you might walk barefoot? If not, you don't really have to worry about hook worm.
How did the southern US solve this issue? They just started building their latrines deeper.
I think I can live without my connection to asphalt, concrete, dirt, broken glass and literal shit while living in the city, which has nothing to do with nature.
> Those using the microbially-diverse soil saw an increase in the diversity of bacteria on their skin, and on the number of anti-inflammatory cytokines in their blood – while the other group didn't.
It's more of "getting the immune system to respond appropriately" and it's difficult to achieve that balance. The immune system isn't a one-size fits all monolithic entity. For example, inflammation in appropriate levels is beneficial for you because it allows your body to heal; long term sustained inflammation is not.
Too often there is this black-white level of thinking (not pointed at you) in health that causes people to act against their self-interest.
edit: the fact that this type of paper is coming from an ecologically-focused study, rather than a medical journal-based study gives me pause, too.
Yeesh. That’s not even the one I saw from my edit.
> Rapamycin, an organ-transplant drug, has become popular after research found it could extend lifespans in other species. The longevity biohacker community uses rapamycin at substantially lower intermittent doses (3 to 8 mg once weekly), versus transplant doses (typically 2 to 5 mg daily).
I finally feel justified! Not only do I get my hands dirty, but I also don't use soap unless water alone can't get them clean. Most of the time, our great universal solvent does a fine job without stripping my good bacteria.
I have read but not verified that washing with water is about as effective as with soap at removing bacteria from hands. Having soap on your hands forces you to get all the soap off, which requires touching more skin surface.
I also remember reading this - that unless there is oil and grease which requires soap to remove, then water alone is effective. At the time it seemed to me it was somewhere fairly reputable. From memory, the idea was that soap reduced the friction, and actually might lessen the effectiveness. I think it wasn't comparing best-practice handwashing with and without soap, but focused instead on the kind of handwashing that people actually do.
Hard to find anything on it now, and I understand soap was particularly effective against SARS-CoV-2 compared to water alone (can I just call it the COVID-19 virus?) so it looks like the idea is mostly gone now.
I look forward to seeing a lifehacking hyper-optimizer streamline this to a polished daily workflow...
"I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning.
Every weekend, I inoculate at a 1:5:5 ratio with biologically active stream dirt (after petri-dishing to check for activity), and a mix of poor-quality soil cover, and some compost; I finish by adding a 10-10-10 balanced fertilizer.
Recently, I've been seeing if there are any additional benefits to smearing all over my arms; I'm conducting a 3 month/3 month comparison experiment, with a washout period in-between...
I made the mistake of looking at /r/sauna on Reddit once or twice recently, and there was a lot of people doing very similar things.
"I take my preworkout, do my exercise, then I sit for 12 minutes at 90 degrees in sauna, before three minutes in the cold plunge-pool at 8 degrees, before going to sauna again for 19 minutes and I finish with a seven minute warm shower".
Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.
I assume going to sauna takes an hour, it might be I leave it on for a couple of hours, but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery and I like it like that. Same story with being outdoors in a cabin/cottage. I might dig up some plants, or move the hammock around, but whether I get (literally) dirty is just down to whatever random things I've done that day!
> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna
You don't take your watch into the sauna! It's way too hot! I use a plain mechanical kitchen timer (outside the sauna). I've seen hourglasses that are designed to withstand the heat inside the sauna, but they're obviously not configurable to various increments.
More seriously: apparently studies show that using a Finnish (dry) sauna 5-7 times a week is good for longevity. You don't have to use them that way, but if that's your goal, it probably makes sense to fit it into your routine, and it's tough to do that without planning how long it will take.
I have a dodgy thermometer on the wall, and I tend to enter the sauna when it shows 80, by the time I leave it's usually been showing 90 for half the time. Celcius.
Right you are. It's little a bit warm for my personal taste, but sure, for a 10 to 15 minute session, ok. It was late, and I was thinking more of the 90F as not even as hot as normal outdoors for many parts of the globe.
I'm not subject to the whims of anything except what I just asked for.
I can also cancel it just as easily, if it's exhausting. Which--I'm finding it hard to understand why it would be.
I don't schedule my life like that at all, I kinda wander around all day. But the idea of a reminder that I specifically asked for? It's the only kind of reminder I want, actually. It'll keep me from the actually-exhausting habit of checking my watch or wondering how long it's been.
I said "was" because 2010 was, in fact, the last edition of the event:
> On 7 August 2010, two competitors were removed from the sauna and brought to the hospital in critical condition after six minutes of 110 °C (230 °F) heat
I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.
Just this summer I was at a cottage by Vänern (the largest lake in Sweden), the sauna was built right at the lake with a pier setup for jumping into it, we had a party going late into the night where you constantly moved from the sauna into the lake, out of the lake, have chats, a beer, into the sauna again, rinse and repeat for some 8-10 hours. I have no idea exactly how long I was in the sauna but it was definitely more than a couple of hours in the whole affair :)
>I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.
Yes, I definitely do agree with that. I too love what you're describing - we have some of that in Poland too :)
However, I was not sure if we're talking about it - or some American version I know only from various memes - where people are coming in with phones and in shoes.
Generally I assume "sauna" will take an hour, or ninety minutes, but the process is pretty much:
1. Have a shower.
2. Sit in the sauna, and throw water on the stones. Stay there for 5-15 minutes, drinking a beer and sometimes listening to music. Depends on the mood what kind of duration I enjoy, and what kind of music I have. If alone music is nice, if with a friend or two then we have silence and conversation instead.
3. Come out and sit on the balcony, to have a little break.
4. If I still feel like it go back to step one, and have a quick shower before going back. Otherwise have a longer shower, and check that the heater is going to shut down soon.
> I assume going to sauna takes an hour, [...] but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery...
I understand that as the general act of getting up, starting the sauna, going for your clothes change, resting a couple times, going to the kitchen for water, shower, switch off, kitchen again, whatever... you've filled an hour of your time.
It probably just comes from tweaking the routine. Maybe they started out at 15 minutes in the sauna and 5 minutes in the cold plunge, but found they were getting too hot in the sauna and too cold in the cold plunge.
You forgot the app! You can connect our app to your smart dirt bucket so you can track that the correct composition of bacteria reaches your hands at all time! Collect points by completing challenges and watch a few ads for premium guides!
Skin cancer may be less deadly than other types of cancer, but it is still far more deadly than not having cancer. Rattlesnake bites in the US have a lower mortality rate than skin cancer, are you gonna go trying to handle rattlesnakes without protection or safety measures?
I find this amusing. We know that light has an impact on the body - so they make/sell lamps that emit light similar to sunlight, red light therapy, circadian smart bulbs...
Washing in the river used to be normal + good for the body - we do cold plunges now.
Probiotic supplements exist, we used to get those for free.
We're gamifying nature. Not saying it's a bad thing, just amusing to me that it used to be our entire lives and we're using technology to get it into our lives in smaller amounts.
I'm sure the comments will be full of detractors scoffing at this claiming that all one needs is not to wash their hands. Or just go outside to handle that mud. With luck you might come across the king of Briton.
If you're the CEO of company, like me, you do a lot of sitting and talking. And all the evidence points to sitting being a disaster health-wise. As a father it's my responsibility to take care of my health over the long term so that my kids, Dagwood and Spaniel, have their father around for a long time. Sure, they don't see much of me because I'm building Yellow Yellow, but I want to be there when we can all enjoy the fruits of my labors.
So, I looked into the current fads running through Silicon Valley. NoSitting has displaced NoSQL as the current buzzword and there are two current solutions: standing up and walking.
At Yellow Yellow we like to blaze our own trail and in NoSitting we're no exception. But rather than standing up all day (which kills your legs and leads to varicose veins---a major problem if you plan on spending your retirement years in the Caribbean on the beach) or walking on a treadmill (which causes wear and tear on your ankles, knees and hips) I've come up with a far better solution.
The Treadwater Desk.
In our basement we had a disused well from back before our brownstone had municipal water. It didn't take much to fill the well with water and a bit of carpentry later and I had my laptop and an Apple Magic Mouse (wrapped in Saran wrap).
Now my day starts by changing into a suit (in this case a wet suit) and plunging into the chilly waters of my treadwater desk. That blast of icy water is better than any espresso from the Daily Grind and really gets me in the mood for work. Also, the vasoconstriction of most of my body means more blood for my brain to keep Yellow Yellow running.
Then it's treading water while Skyping with my team. I've found that using Siri I can dictate emails without a problem and the Magic Mouse is working well.
And let's face it, we all came from the sea originally and so treading water is natural for us all. It's also aerobic and far easier on the joints than walking. It's also a full body workout. Rather than just working on my legs I get every muscle moving. And the health benefits of that are well known.
It's also a metaphor for what it's like to be a startup CEO: I'm literally keeping my head above water all day long and if I don't keep making an effort I (and Yellow Yellow) would go under.
Finally, I'm planning to add Epsom salts to the water to increase buoyancy and help keep my skin in tip top condition.
Lucky for you, you can buy a subscription to DirtPlus™, which has the proper ratio of Earthzymes™ to organic material to make sure you get your hands properly dirty, instead of just dirty.
Really it’s the logical conclusion of living your whole life by studies-show. Studies show that friends are good for you. That’s why I have friends. Studies show that laughing is good for you. That’s why I indulge in merry company. Studies show that dirt is good for you. That’s why I go off the beaten asphalt.
Curious what people's thoughts here are on grounding as another benefit. Article talks about benefits of bacteria on the skin, but I'd say the other and maybe bigger benefit is discharge of electrical energy in our bodies to the ground. Which, can sounds weird depending. Some papers on the subject[0] talking about similar results as this article, almost implying that it's not the microbes, but grounding making the difference.
I also got a $30 "grounding mat" that you plug into the ground part of electrical socket, and I dunno, it feels amazing to have skin touching it. I put it in bed and literally slept the best I have in years in the last two night, by far. Comments online generally are snake oil, but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them. (I have theories that the people who it does nothing for are those who already have an outlet. Like a dog where you're in nature and on walks, and also a dog can do the discharge for you). Other comments online are stories of how when the mat is plugged to ground, their cats love sitting on it, but if unplugged, the mats are ignored. That seems like some study that would be interesting at animal shelter, seeing if animals can tell and prefer.
But anyway, wondering what others opinions on this topic are.
Note that all of the authors of this paper work for a company that sells this snake oil.
This entire idea of charging or discharging your body for some physiological effect is fundamentally flawed. It is indeed true that touching the ground will change your electrical potential to that of the ground, however that's as far as it goes, the rest is just nonsensical.
Let's start with the very first part of that, specifically changing your electrical potential to match the ground. The problem with this is that the ground is 0V because we define it as 0V, not because of any sort of fundamental property. Between two points on the Earth you can see hundreds of kilovolts. So the obvious question is why should the electrical potential of a particular piece of soil where your grounding rod is installed be physiologically preferable to whatever potential your body happened to be at before?
Now lets go on to the next part of what these scam artists usually claim. That is that the Earth's electrons enter your body and do good things of some description. When you touch the ground some small charge does enter or leave your body, however that stops nearly instantly when the potentials equalise[1]. How is the Earth meant to to keep putting electrons into your body if there's no voltage? That's just simply not how electricity works.
As an aside, note that I said enter or leave. A positive static charge and a negative static charge can both easily build up in your body. Therefore any claims that specify that electrons enter your body (or leave you body) is immediately nonsensical because it could go either way.
I'll leave it to someone else to explain all the nonsensical biological claims that follow on from the already fundamentally wrong electrical side since that's not my area. I will however note that none of these sponsored papers actually show and measurable biological effect, they all just hand-wave about redox reactions.
[1]: Yes, you're coupled to mains wiring and other changing fields that are around, however that's getting too far into the weeds for a short comment. If the claim made by the snake oil salesmen was that a current going through your body is good then they'd also suggest wrapping yourself in an electrical cord to maximise the effect, or just taping batteries to your skin.
To play devil's advocate, as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground. It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface vs ensconced in synthetic materials above it.
Granted there's no evidence for that as of yet, but there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste that couldn't be digested and so had no benefit, that's part of how we got Wonder Bread and the obesity epidemic.
> as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground
This isn't true, though. For the majority of human history, humans set up grass and leaf bedding atop campfire ash, using animal furs for additional insulation when needed. Ash and leaves are electrical insulators.
All those materials with the exception of animal furs are commonly found on or in the ground. Given the relative lack of multistory buildings throughout our history, that's basically just making the ground a few inches taller. The ground itself is highly varied as well, with various combinations of rock, dirt, sand, etc.
I was thinking more that in the developed world most people have much more separation from anything resembling the ground, both in terms of materials and physical distance that would substantially alter any electrical characteristics.
In the off chance I win the lottery I intend to fund serious robust studies of minor stuff like this. Would be the easiest placebo ever, just internally disconnect some of the mats.
Yeah, because sleeping directly on the ground leaches heat from your body too fast, because of said lack of insulation. Sleeping too directly on the ground is also particularly dangerous in survival scenarios, doubly so if you are cold or wet. A common mistake when assembling a temporary shelter is to spend all your time on the “roof” but very little on the “floor”.
The only possible way for this to do anything measurable if it somehow reduces the 50/60Hz AC hum impressed on your body. But either way with the wavelength of 60Hz in meat being like earth sized I dont think any significant electric fields will arise within two points of your body to do anything meaningful (as long as you stay AC coupled, if you DC couple to mains health effects are guaranteed).
> It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface
This is like saying it’s plausible that wearing a bracelet with a small magnet in it will have health benefits. It’s pure woo. There’s no reason to believe this from a scientific angle. It’s perhaps not impossible but it is certainly not plausible.
> there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste
No, it fits an existing pattern. Something commonplace in our natural environment that we adapted to over millions of years and exerted a non-obvious influence that wasn't scientifically verified until recently. Dietary fiber is but one example.
I'm not saying that's "evidence", or that the posted study is valid, but I'm also not aware of any robust studies demonstrating no difference from placebo. A lack of good data is neither positive nor negative.
As for dietary fiber, it wasn't broadly seen as useful for anything other than constipation until the 1970s when it was shown that increased fiber intake reduced colon cancer risk
It's important to distinguish between spiritual energy like prana/chi and electricity.
Science will never show that grounding has any measurable effect on the chemistry of the human body. But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.
In other words, magic only doesn't exist if you don't believe in it.
> But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.
That’s true. Science can’t show a lot of things that aren’t real.
I'm a barefooter and the grounding thing sounds like bunk to me.
Now, my big caveat here would that one shouldn't confuse effects with explanations. Even if the explanations are pseudoscience, it could still work. But... you really do need to rule out placebo if you want to claim there's an effect.
(The other caveat is that if it's otherwise harmless, and works for you, then it doesn't actually matter if it's "just" the placebo effect.)
If you live with someone, have them flip a coin every night to decide if your mat should be plugged in or not and log it in a private journal. Record your feelings in the morning. After a month, compare your reports to the state of the plug each night.
If you live alone, get 2 more identical cord. Have your mats cord and the unconnected ones going into a box. Blindly label the cords a b and c.
The unconnected ones end there, the real one continues to the mat. Cycle through your cords every evening. In the morning log your feelings and the cord used. After a month see which cord was the connected one and whether your feelings were correlated with that
after i switched to washing my hands with antibacterial soap (the orange kind they use in hospitals), i've gone from a bimonthly cold-analog disease to maybe being sick twice a year
That GenZ and Gen Alpha have started doing this thing they call “private podcasting”. Where they invite a friend over and discuss topics like one of those podcasts where dudes just talk about stuff…but they don’t record it or post it anywhere.
I was stunned. Is this generation really so socially starved by the attention parasites that human beings are starting to reinvent “hanging out” or “just having a conversation”.
It’s so ridiculous I just refuse to believe this is how they actually think and this has to be some kind of rage bait. I pray that it’s rage bait because if it isn’t we failed our children badly.
All that to say that I get similar vibes from the “grtting your hands dirty is actually good for you” thing. It just screams that entire generations of people have been stunted by helicopter parenting that this just seems like novel information. It seems we’ve completely abdicated our duty as parents and dumped our responsibility to educate our children onto profit seeking media companies. And that terrifies me.
When you get older you've seen a lot of people who do things like that and are serious about it. Of course we haven't seen the podcast angle exactly but plenty of other things and it's common enough to make you cynical and so then you would fall for such jokes. assuming it is really joke which isn't clear
Part of getting older is you leave the civilized bubble you were raised in and witness literal crazy.
I was walking down the bike path outside my apartment complex some years ago and a lady started a conversation, which started off normal but quickly turned to Reiki and after a few minutes she ignored every social hint to change the subject and just REALLY wanted to talk about energy pathways, life force and other woo-woo shit until I had to physically cut off the conversation by awkwardly walking away.
Also Steve Jobs died because he tried to cure his cancer with fucking fruit.
So yes, I have zero problem believing a minority of sheltered, internet-brained GenAlphas out there are doing "private podcasting". Statistically every adult has met at least one person who secretly enjoys eating literal shit.
There's absolutely no reason to assume that getting your hands dirty would be "good for you". Playing outside and getting dirty is fun and is arguably great for enrichment and character building, but I think it would come as a surprise to just about anyone that it has health benefits.
When I say "come as a surprise" I mean they would be unable to articulate the exact mechanisms behind the health benefits before being told what they are or that they exist. Liking a thing and presuming it must have health benefits aren't the same.
Well... Book clubs, study groups, fraternal organizations, etc. have agendas that structure conversation. I've found this useful for even 1:1 conversations with friends.
Naturally, it's possible to take this too far; letting the conversation flow naturally before occasionally snapping back to the agenda is both more enjoyable and often more productive.
...this is also a common podcast format.
I have never heard the phrase "private podcast" used in this sense before (vs the group / company internal sense), but... I kinda like it; sets up some potential useful expectations!
The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale.
I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible herbs so when she would muck around at five to six months she could do it in there on the balcony of our San Francisco apartment and she enjoyed destroying the plants so at the worst she got some fun out of it.
Ecosystems have niches for aggressive behavior against participants that reduce diversity. It's why you find higher concentrations of Lyme disease in new housing developments than you do in the deep woods: it's the activation of a defense mechanism (in the Lyme disease case it has to do with there being a higher proportion of competent hosts for the pathogen: mice, but in general evolution has myriad ways if implementing this pattern).
If it's just you and one species of bacteria, you're closer to a circumstance that would call for the activation of such behavior than if diversity is high.
So it's not that the bacteria are intrinsically good or bad, but that the different circumstances call for calm or aggressive behavior, and all your friends going missing cues aggressiveness in species who have evolved by filling that niche in the past.
For one it's just competition.
If you have regular contact to a diverse set of microorganisms chances are higher that they will keep each other populations in check. The dose makes the poison applies here too in some narrow sense.
Additionally (or even mainly) our immune system always on guard (me/not me) gets to play around with the obvious stuff and not be overwhelmed or be "bored" but constantly trained/tamed. We have evolved to have constant contact to a diverse set of microorganisms which modulate our immune system e.g. through toll-like receptors.
As an extreme case some people develop some natural immunity to the tetanus toxin through regular exposure to a extreme variety of microorganisms, obviously this isn't reliable nor a gamble remotely worth the risk.
Edit: don't know why OP gets downvoted it's a perfectly fine entrance question/bafflement to motivate some deeper digging into microbiology/immunology.
Your insides are different from your outsides. Your skin has a different microbiome than your gut. Hyper cleanliness on your skin kills beneficial microbes that maintain an equilibrium when they're alive.
My partner is an estate gardener; early on in our relationship she came home with a green thumb. Apparently, the adage is about getting fungus under your nail beds and not keeping plants alive
Yeah, as someone who fairly recently discovered that the reason I always feel so uncomfortable out in nature is because I am severely allergic to almost all grasses and most trees, I think we need to put some caveats on these statements.
I grew up playing outside in the dirt a lot, but as I got older I liked it less and less because I always felt so itchy when i would go outside, and my nose would get stuffy and my eyes would water.
I am doing weekly shots trying to make it better, but I always get frustrated whenever everyone acts like I should just go out and 'touch grass'
Can I send off my garden soil samples to learn what sorts of bacteria and microbial life it is hosting? I do go outside and touch grass and dirt daily, it does make me feel good, but I always thought it was the sunlight and the beauty not the bacteria.
This is just how anti-fragility works. Getting your hands 'dirty' is what's known as introducing turbulence and chaos in order to achieve true stability/robustness.
Conversely, trying to keep your hands too clean might create more severe bacteria problems--which is known as: system blow-up.
A good layperson-friendly example of such blow-ups (that are inevitable, due to avoidance of small 'failures') was masterfully depicted in Matthew Lewis's 'The Monk'-- in which he shows how a pious, religious abbot whose piety was not earned (but merely guarded), descends into the worst possible outcomes because his piety and morality was not antifragile (and hence blew up). A fascinating read.
My experience with gardening is that you also get bitten and stung all the time by a range of bugs and plants so you get resistance training, too ;) British false widow spiders have nothing on me at this point...
My point was more that articles like the one on the BBC (or the Guardian for that matter) just contradict themselves every year. I completely stopped reading those "pop science" takes that are only there for clicks.
(To its credit, the Guardian makes place for long form articles that go more in-depth on known knowns and known unknowns.)
Maybe there's a benefit to having diverse natural memetic microflora on your cognitive convolutions. Like it could innoculate you against aggressive viral ideological infection.
I use a bidet because I’m not disgusting. Wiping shit with paper does not clean your stinky arse cracks. Fucking gross people walk around with dried shit smeared on their body all day.
There are zero cogent arguments for using toilet paper over a bidet.
Not just your hands.
Walking barefoot, over all manner of surfaces, feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down.
I've done it lots, both in the countryside and in the city. You have to watch out for spiky plants and fox shit in the country, and in the city you soon learn which surface textures require more care :-)
"Where would I find enough leather to cover the entire surface of the earth? But with leather soles beneath my feet, it's as if the whole world has been covered." - Shantideva, 8th century Buddhist monk
Did you know that walking barefoot in the Southern US was how most people contracted hookworm? At is height an estimated 40% of the population in certain regions had the parasite which was know to cause a "mental haze". Some historians attribute the disease (again, contracted by walking barefoot outdoors) to have caused the stereotype of the "lazy slow southerner" [1].
Do you feel walking barefoot is worth the risk of catching this and other potentially hazardous diseases?
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...
Are you walking on human feces a lot? Hook work was a problem because of a huge lack of sanitary conditions. Less about being barefoot. Would I walk around barefoot in my yard? Absolutely.
I live in a city and I cannot tell you how often I see dogshit on the sidewalk, like just in the middle of the sidewalk
the only neighborhoods where I don't see this are the ones where there's some nice retired older person who diligently cleans the shit up. but it's not like they bleach the spot, they just pick up most of the poop. so yeah, there's feces everywhere
it also doesn't help that we have bottom tier public restrooms available on a per-capita basis, at least here in the US: https://thronelabs.co/blog/where-have-all-the-public-restroo...
Honestly that sounds horrible. In most of the civilized modern world that problem is solved tho and people pick up after their dogs
I live in a city too but don’t share the same problem as you in my yard! Sorry about that!
You can get parasites from animal faeces too.
From being barefoot? I think it’s pretty low on the risk list. There is absolutely an animal hookworm but it does not have the some risk as human hookworm.
Sure if you eat the poop in your backyard you might get something so that is always important to think about!
You can get most of the benefits of walking barefoot without the hookworm by wearing a good pair of barefoot shoes. I personally love my Xero Prios. If you want the full experience at the expense of looking like a freak, you can get those Vibram Five Fingers toe shoes.
Why would that give you the benefits of walking barefoot? If the point is to pick up bacteria, shoes are shoes. It doesn't matter if the toes are separated or not.
GP said the benefits of walking barefoot are "feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down."
In that context it seems like barefoot shoes would still work. They are essentially foot condoms, so you get most of the same sensation without the potential ickiness.
Those are other benefits but the literal topic at hand--and the reason going barefoot was brought up in the first place--is to have contact with the earth.
One could simply use ballet shoes, instead of that overpriced stuff. They come in different styles, colors, materials, are foldable(ususally), and can be considered disposable.
It still squeezes your toes into a narrow toe box, which is pretty much the opposite of barefoot shoes.
But also, hookworm infections are known to suppress allergies and asthma, help inflammatory bowl disease, and improve insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes.
Just because your immune system is fighting for your life against a parasite and doesn't have time for side quests doesn't make contracting a parasite good for you
Just because you call something a parasite doesn't make it bad for you. It might be bad, or good, or some of both, or depend on other factors at different times.
If you count cells and genes instead of mass, every human hosts more non-human life than human. Call them parasites and delete them and die.
Calling a symbiot a parasite does not make it a parasite.
Given that you know these terms you must be aware we have invented different words for organisms that have mixed effects (positive and negative) on the host organism. Parasite, commensalist and symbiote. If you don't want folks who know these words to argue with you you should not use the wrong ones.
It's also a likely contender for contributing to the spread of what people thought was smallpox after the arrival of Europeans to what became the U.S
Those people were walking barefoot near an unsanitary latrine. Is there a lot of human feces where you might walk barefoot? If not, you don't really have to worry about hook worm.
How did the southern US solve this issue? They just started building their latrines deeper.
I don't live in San Francisco, but I've heard stories...
The streets are power washed often enough that it's usually fine, at least if you're careful where you step.
Only when it comes to bulk piles of feces.
That powerwashing sprays it around everywhere though, and the contamination surface is massive.
One could wear barefoot shoes. Not that they are exactly the same as walking barefoot. They are still shoes! But a good compromise.
Yeah, it did wonders for my mood when I started walking to work barefoot. Something about the varying textures, I think? And the extra stimulation.
Doesn't take long to build up a good enough callus that even sharp gravel is tolerable.
I think I can live without my connection to asphalt, concrete, dirt, broken glass and literal shit while living in the city, which has nothing to do with nature.
Yeah, where I live there's constantly shattered glass, other people's dog's poo they don't pick up, etc.
Last week I was walking my dog and he stepped on glass or something that gashed open part of his paw pad.
> Those using the microbially-diverse soil saw an increase in the diversity of bacteria on their skin, and on the number of anti-inflammatory cytokines in their blood – while the other group didn't.
That's really remarkable.
Yeah, getting the immune system to tone down the responses is probably the best one can do for oneself health.
Our body didn't get the memo that for the last 200 years water and food are clean now and bacteria is fought with antibiotics.
Getting the immune system to not freak out at everything it detects via just touching grass is the best news I've read today.
It's more of "getting the immune system to respond appropriately" and it's difficult to achieve that balance. The immune system isn't a one-size fits all monolithic entity. For example, inflammation in appropriate levels is beneficial for you because it allows your body to heal; long term sustained inflammation is not.
Too often there is this black-white level of thinking (not pointed at you) in health that causes people to act against their self-interest.
edit: the fact that this type of paper is coming from an ecologically-focused study, rather than a medical journal-based study gives me pause, too.
The next fad… microdosing immunosuppressants? We could get in early.
Nevermind. Just saw people are already doing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy
Yeesh. That’s not even the one I saw from my edit.
> Rapamycin, an organ-transplant drug, has become popular after research found it could extend lifespans in other species. The longevity biohacker community uses rapamycin at substantially lower intermittent doses (3 to 8 mg once weekly), versus transplant doses (typically 2 to 5 mg daily).
Well, that's some wacky way of releasing some built up tension in the immune system.
I finally feel justified! Not only do I get my hands dirty, but I also don't use soap unless water alone can't get them clean. Most of the time, our great universal solvent does a fine job without stripping my good bacteria.
I have read but not verified that washing with water is about as effective as with soap at removing bacteria from hands. Having soap on your hands forces you to get all the soap off, which requires touching more skin surface.
I'm sure the behavioural point is correct, but surfactants effect oils in a way that water does not. Water will not be as effective
I also remember reading this - that unless there is oil and grease which requires soap to remove, then water alone is effective. At the time it seemed to me it was somewhere fairly reputable. From memory, the idea was that soap reduced the friction, and actually might lessen the effectiveness. I think it wasn't comparing best-practice handwashing with and without soap, but focused instead on the kind of handwashing that people actually do.
Hard to find anything on it now, and I understand soap was particularly effective against SARS-CoV-2 compared to water alone (can I just call it the COVID-19 virus?) so it looks like the idea is mostly gone now.
I look forward to seeing a lifehacking hyper-optimizer streamline this to a polished daily workflow...
"I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning.
Every weekend, I inoculate at a 1:5:5 ratio with biologically active stream dirt (after petri-dishing to check for activity), and a mix of poor-quality soil cover, and some compost; I finish by adding a 10-10-10 balanced fertilizer.
Recently, I've been seeing if there are any additional benefits to smearing all over my arms; I'm conducting a 3 month/3 month comparison experiment, with a washout period in-between...
Don't forget to buy my exclusive eBook!"
I made the mistake of looking at /r/sauna on Reddit once or twice recently, and there was a lot of people doing very similar things.
"I take my preworkout, do my exercise, then I sit for 12 minutes at 90 degrees in sauna, before three minutes in the cold plunge-pool at 8 degrees, before going to sauna again for 19 minutes and I finish with a seven minute warm shower".
Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.
I assume going to sauna takes an hour, it might be I leave it on for a couple of hours, but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery and I like it like that. Same story with being outdoors in a cabin/cottage. I might dig up some plants, or move the hammock around, but whether I get (literally) dirty is just down to whatever random things I've done that day!
Your comment reminds me of
The Hustle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
Saunas have hourglasses (usually a multiple of 5 mins)?
> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna
You don't take your watch into the sauna! It's way too hot! I use a plain mechanical kitchen timer (outside the sauna). I've seen hourglasses that are designed to withstand the heat inside the sauna, but they're obviously not configurable to various increments.
More seriously: apparently studies show that using a Finnish (dry) sauna 5-7 times a week is good for longevity. You don't have to use them that way, but if that's your goal, it probably makes sense to fit it into your routine, and it's tough to do that without planning how long it will take.
If it's 90 degrees Celcius, I don't think you could sit there for an hour. If it's 90 american degrees, what kind of sauna is that?
I have a dodgy thermometer on the wall, and I tend to enter the sauna when it shows 80, by the time I leave it's usually been showing 90 for half the time. Celcius.
Perhaps we are missing some details with respect to humidity?
If it's a very humid sauna at 90°F, then your body can't regulate itself with sweat evaporation.
weird huh, in neither system does 90 degrees make for a useful sauna. that's either lukewarm, or cooking temp.
90C is a normal sauna temperature. It's on the hot side, but normal.
Right you are. It's little a bit warm for my personal taste, but sure, for a 10 to 15 minute session, ok. It was late, and I was thinking more of the 90F as not even as hot as normal outdoors for many parts of the globe.
> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.
"Hey <smartwatch>, set a timer for 12 minutes" doesn't sound very exhausting.
If your smartwatch doesn't burn your wrist in the sauna, it's not hot enough ;)
You will now be subject to the whims of a timer in the future. If that's not exhausting for you, go for it.
I'm not subject to the whims of anything except what I just asked for.
I can also cancel it just as easily, if it's exhausting. Which--I'm finding it hard to understand why it would be.
I don't schedule my life like that at all, I kinda wander around all day. But the idea of a reminder that I specifically asked for? It's the only kind of reminder I want, actually. It'll keep me from the actually-exhausting habit of checking my watch or wondering how long it's been.
I don't use a sauna. In my imagination some people might prefer to stop their sauna usage when it feels right. That doesn't require checking a timer.
That's certainly how it is for me; mentally I think sauna is an hour, of 5-15 minute chunks inside the warm room, but sometimes it might be more.
There are days when I walk in and immediately nope-out after a couple of minutes, and that's usually a sign that I'm getting sick.
But when it stops feeling good that's the time to leave, or stop for the evening.
Do you mean you literally sit in the sauna for hour?
No, you would be cooked, but I had a hunch that obviously people already tried to see how long you could stay inside and yes there was a competition in Finland exactly for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships#2010...
I said "was" because 2010 was, in fact, the last edition of the event:
> On 7 August 2010, two competitors were removed from the sauna and brought to the hospital in critical condition after six minutes of 110 °C (230 °F) heat
And one of them died.
> His death was aided by his use of strong painkillers and local anesthetic grease on his skin.
I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.
Just this summer I was at a cottage by Vänern (the largest lake in Sweden), the sauna was built right at the lake with a pier setup for jumping into it, we had a party going late into the night where you constantly moved from the sauna into the lake, out of the lake, have chats, a beer, into the sauna again, rinse and repeat for some 8-10 hours. I have no idea exactly how long I was in the sauna but it was definitely more than a couple of hours in the whole affair :)
>I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.
Yes, I definitely do agree with that. I too love what you're describing - we have some of that in Poland too :)
However, I was not sure if we're talking about it - or some American version I know only from various memes - where people are coming in with phones and in shoes.
If you ever basta in winter, try bringing ice into the sauna. Smearing yourself with ice while in the heat is really nice :)
Generally I assume "sauna" will take an hour, or ninety minutes, but the process is pretty much:
1. Have a shower.
2. Sit in the sauna, and throw water on the stones. Stay there for 5-15 minutes, drinking a beer and sometimes listening to music. Depends on the mood what kind of duration I enjoy, and what kind of music I have. If alone music is nice, if with a friend or two then we have silence and conversation instead.
3. Come out and sit on the balcony, to have a little break.
4. If I still feel like it go back to step one, and have a quick shower before going back. Otherwise have a longer shower, and check that the heater is going to shut down soon.
> I assume going to sauna takes an hour, [...] but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery...
I understand that as the general act of getting up, starting the sauna, going for your clothes change, resting a couple times, going to the kitchen for water, shower, switch off, kitchen again, whatever... you've filled an hour of your time.
That interpretation does make sense. Just heating the sauna can take even longer.
I don't know about you guys but if I started timing my sauna visits, I would get MORE stressed out.
Sounds like typical geek stuff you see on any enthousiast forum. You should check the coffee forums.
It probably just comes from tweaking the routine. Maybe they started out at 15 minutes in the sauna and 5 minutes in the cold plunge, but found they were getting too hot in the sauna and too cold in the cold plunge.
You forgot the app! You can connect our app to your smart dirt bucket so you can track that the correct composition of bacteria reaches your hands at all time! Collect points by completing challenges and watch a few ads for premium guides!
There’s a startup opportunity: a body cream with concentrates of beneficial microorganisms.
“Pair it with our full spectrum sun lamp and you can have all the benefits of playing outside from the comfort of your standing desk”.
FDA: “You’ve got E. coli in here.”
“Yes.”
I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along?
Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it?
Too many questions. I'm going outside.
> I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along?
It's good as long as you don't get sunburn or skin cancer...
> Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it?
That's the sort of thinking we need, champ - you just earned yourself a promotion to Chief Product Officer. :)
I have some beef with the sunscreen people, mostly because of 3 things:
- Skin cancer is by far the least deadly type of cancer and nearly always just requires some low-risk skin removal.
- Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.
- Vitamin D.
Skin cancer may be less deadly than other types of cancer, but it is still far more deadly than not having cancer. Rattlesnake bites in the US have a lower mortality rate than skin cancer, are you gonna go trying to handle rattlesnakes without protection or safety measures?
Maybe if handling rattlesnakes regularly was associated with improved mental and physical health, the way regular sun exposure is.
> Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.
You know what feels even better? Not getting skin cancer.
> Vitamin D
Easily obtained from supplements.
You folks are having fun with the idea, but, well, in 2026 there’s absolutely a viable market for this.
and now i'm bummed out
I find this amusing. We know that light has an impact on the body - so they make/sell lamps that emit light similar to sunlight, red light therapy, circadian smart bulbs...
Washing in the river used to be normal + good for the body - we do cold plunges now.
Probiotic supplements exist, we used to get those for free.
We're gamifying nature. Not saying it's a bad thing, just amusing to me that it used to be our entire lives and we're using technology to get it into our lives in smaller amounts.
There should be a remake of American Psycho where he's a tech VC and has this sort of biohacking routine.
You beat me to it: https://youtu.be/RjKNbfA64EE?si=dhk2K17kMndcTXT_&t=34
I'm sure the comments will be full of detractors scoffing at this claiming that all one needs is not to wash their hands. Or just go outside to handle that mud. With luck you might come across the king of Briton.
GTD, lifehacking, quantified self... all coolness of the 2000s biting us hard now
I parodied this sort of thinking via my alter-ego, Brad Bradstone [1], in a post called "My Treadwater Desk" (https://web.archive.org/web/20190802085907/http://doublestea...).
--- My Treadwater Desk
If you're the CEO of company, like me, you do a lot of sitting and talking. And all the evidence points to sitting being a disaster health-wise. As a father it's my responsibility to take care of my health over the long term so that my kids, Dagwood and Spaniel, have their father around for a long time. Sure, they don't see much of me because I'm building Yellow Yellow, but I want to be there when we can all enjoy the fruits of my labors.
So, I looked into the current fads running through Silicon Valley. NoSitting has displaced NoSQL as the current buzzword and there are two current solutions: standing up and walking.
At Yellow Yellow we like to blaze our own trail and in NoSitting we're no exception. But rather than standing up all day (which kills your legs and leads to varicose veins---a major problem if you plan on spending your retirement years in the Caribbean on the beach) or walking on a treadmill (which causes wear and tear on your ankles, knees and hips) I've come up with a far better solution.
The Treadwater Desk.
In our basement we had a disused well from back before our brownstone had municipal water. It didn't take much to fill the well with water and a bit of carpentry later and I had my laptop and an Apple Magic Mouse (wrapped in Saran wrap).
Now my day starts by changing into a suit (in this case a wet suit) and plunging into the chilly waters of my treadwater desk. That blast of icy water is better than any espresso from the Daily Grind and really gets me in the mood for work. Also, the vasoconstriction of most of my body means more blood for my brain to keep Yellow Yellow running.
Then it's treading water while Skyping with my team. I've found that using Siri I can dictate emails without a problem and the Magic Mouse is working well.
And let's face it, we all came from the sea originally and so treading water is natural for us all. It's also aerobic and far easier on the joints than walking. It's also a full body workout. Rather than just working on my legs I get every muscle moving. And the health benefits of that are well known.
It's also a metaphor for what it's like to be a startup CEO: I'm literally keeping my head above water all day long and if I don't keep making an effort I (and Yellow Yellow) would go under.
Finally, I'm planning to add Epsom salts to the water to increase buoyancy and help keep my skin in tip top condition.
[1] The inventor of double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183
> "I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning.
Not quite but close enough :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWzWwx8T3nE
Lucky for you, you can buy a subscription to DirtPlus™, which has the proper ratio of Earthzymes™ to organic material to make sure you get your hands properly dirty, instead of just dirty.
There's something very sad about all these people spending so much energy on crazy intensive n of 1 experiments.
If we could only get them to collaborate, we could get some real knowledge out of it!
I blame Mythbusters!
Kidding… I love them.
N of 1 is actually pretty decent for physics type stuff, which is mostly what they do.
For medicine and nutrition...not so much.
Reminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg?is=HpS4BWeDbVRsnBPI
They'd be copying the greats! I have seen a distinct pattern of artists and photographers doing self portraits while rolling around in shit or mud.
Celebrities and influencers will be selling their own brand of mud, with their own special flavor!
Mud/Clay baths are a real thing in fancy spas
Followed by HN readers asking for it in supplement/pill form.
"sign up now and get free peptides your macrocolony needs to immunemogg those bacteria!"
So if I sign up for like 6 months, could I get 25% off?
Holy heck, ain’t this the truth.
Really it’s the logical conclusion of living your whole life by studies-show. Studies show that friends are good for you. That’s why I have friends. Studies show that laughing is good for you. That’s why I indulge in merry company. Studies show that dirt is good for you. That’s why I go off the beaten asphalt.
Studies show that researchers are the last ones to learn what everyone already knew. That happens too.
We have this already: "touch grass" for the normies and "grounding" (standing barefoot on the earth) for the more hacker inclined
Curious what people's thoughts here are on grounding as another benefit. Article talks about benefits of bacteria on the skin, but I'd say the other and maybe bigger benefit is discharge of electrical energy in our bodies to the ground. Which, can sounds weird depending. Some papers on the subject[0] talking about similar results as this article, almost implying that it's not the microbes, but grounding making the difference.
I also got a $30 "grounding mat" that you plug into the ground part of electrical socket, and I dunno, it feels amazing to have skin touching it. I put it in bed and literally slept the best I have in years in the last two night, by far. Comments online generally are snake oil, but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them. (I have theories that the people who it does nothing for are those who already have an outlet. Like a dog where you're in nature and on walks, and also a dog can do the discharge for you). Other comments online are stories of how when the mat is plugged to ground, their cats love sitting on it, but if unplugged, the mats are ignored. That seems like some study that would be interesting at animal shelter, seeing if animals can tell and prefer.
But anyway, wondering what others opinions on this topic are.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4378297/
Note that all of the authors of this paper work for a company that sells this snake oil.
This entire idea of charging or discharging your body for some physiological effect is fundamentally flawed. It is indeed true that touching the ground will change your electrical potential to that of the ground, however that's as far as it goes, the rest is just nonsensical.
Let's start with the very first part of that, specifically changing your electrical potential to match the ground. The problem with this is that the ground is 0V because we define it as 0V, not because of any sort of fundamental property. Between two points on the Earth you can see hundreds of kilovolts. So the obvious question is why should the electrical potential of a particular piece of soil where your grounding rod is installed be physiologically preferable to whatever potential your body happened to be at before?
Now lets go on to the next part of what these scam artists usually claim. That is that the Earth's electrons enter your body and do good things of some description. When you touch the ground some small charge does enter or leave your body, however that stops nearly instantly when the potentials equalise[1]. How is the Earth meant to to keep putting electrons into your body if there's no voltage? That's just simply not how electricity works.
As an aside, note that I said enter or leave. A positive static charge and a negative static charge can both easily build up in your body. Therefore any claims that specify that electrons enter your body (or leave you body) is immediately nonsensical because it could go either way.
I'll leave it to someone else to explain all the nonsensical biological claims that follow on from the already fundamentally wrong electrical side since that's not my area. I will however note that none of these sponsored papers actually show and measurable biological effect, they all just hand-wave about redox reactions.
[1]: Yes, you're coupled to mains wiring and other changing fields that are around, however that's getting too far into the weeds for a short comment. If the claim made by the snake oil salesmen was that a current going through your body is good then they'd also suggest wrapping yourself in an electrical cord to maximise the effect, or just taping batteries to your skin.
To play devil's advocate, as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground. It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface vs ensconced in synthetic materials above it.
Granted there's no evidence for that as of yet, but there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste that couldn't be digested and so had no benefit, that's part of how we got Wonder Bread and the obesity epidemic.
> as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground
This isn't true, though. For the majority of human history, humans set up grass and leaf bedding atop campfire ash, using animal furs for additional insulation when needed. Ash and leaves are electrical insulators.
All those materials with the exception of animal furs are commonly found on or in the ground. Given the relative lack of multistory buildings throughout our history, that's basically just making the ground a few inches taller. The ground itself is highly varied as well, with various combinations of rock, dirt, sand, etc.
I was thinking more that in the developed world most people have much more separation from anything resembling the ground, both in terms of materials and physical distance that would substantially alter any electrical characteristics.
In the off chance I win the lottery I intend to fund serious robust studies of minor stuff like this. Would be the easiest placebo ever, just internally disconnect some of the mats.
Yeah, because sleeping directly on the ground leaches heat from your body too fast, because of said lack of insulation. Sleeping too directly on the ground is also particularly dangerous in survival scenarios, doubly so if you are cold or wet. A common mistake when assembling a temporary shelter is to spend all your time on the “roof” but very little on the “floor”.
The only possible way for this to do anything measurable if it somehow reduces the 50/60Hz AC hum impressed on your body. But either way with the wavelength of 60Hz in meat being like earth sized I dont think any significant electric fields will arise within two points of your body to do anything meaningful (as long as you stay AC coupled, if you DC couple to mains health effects are guaranteed).
To play devil's prosecutor, charge resides on the surface of an object, and the electric field inside is zero.
> It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface
This is like saying it’s plausible that wearing a bracelet with a small magnet in it will have health benefits. It’s pure woo. There’s no reason to believe this from a scientific angle. It’s perhaps not impossible but it is certainly not plausible.
> there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste
When was this?
No, it fits an existing pattern. Something commonplace in our natural environment that we adapted to over millions of years and exerted a non-obvious influence that wasn't scientifically verified until recently. Dietary fiber is but one example.
I'm not saying that's "evidence", or that the posted study is valid, but I'm also not aware of any robust studies demonstrating no difference from placebo. A lack of good data is neither positive nor negative.
As for dietary fiber, it wasn't broadly seen as useful for anything other than constipation until the 1970s when it was shown that increased fiber intake reduced colon cancer risk
> taping batteries to your skin
Don’t give them more ideas. Someone will be selling bracelets with batteries in them soon.
This study had no control group and they didn't check for a placebo effect. Pretty big red flags.
It's important to distinguish between spiritual energy like prana/chi and electricity.
Science will never show that grounding has any measurable effect on the chemistry of the human body. But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.
In other words, magic only doesn't exist if you don't believe in it.
> But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.
That’s true. Science can’t show a lot of things that aren’t real.
You're not wrong, but it's worth doing a deep dive into recent papers on multidimensional time and its relation to consciousness and free will.
> but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them.
We know the reason, and it has been studied extensively.
The placebo effect is very strong.
I'm a barefooter and the grounding thing sounds like bunk to me.
Now, my big caveat here would that one shouldn't confuse effects with explanations. Even if the explanations are pseudoscience, it could still work. But... you really do need to rule out placebo if you want to claim there's an effect.
(The other caveat is that if it's otherwise harmless, and works for you, then it doesn't actually matter if it's "just" the placebo effect.)
Do the people walking their dogs do it barefoot?
Wouldn't shoes ruin the effect?
It is 100% snake oil. No scientific basis whatsoever.
If you live with someone, have them flip a coin every night to decide if your mat should be plugged in or not and log it in a private journal. Record your feelings in the morning. After a month, compare your reports to the state of the plug each night.
If you live alone, get 2 more identical cord. Have your mats cord and the unconnected ones going into a box. Blindly label the cords a b and c.
The unconnected ones end there, the real one continues to the mat. Cycle through your cords every evening. In the morning log your feelings and the cord used. After a month see which cord was the connected one and whether your feelings were correlated with that
after i switched to washing my hands with antibacterial soap (the orange kind they use in hospitals), i've gone from a bimonthly cold-analog disease to maybe being sick twice a year
If you're getting colds that often (and you're not immuno-compromised) then it might be worth getting checked out.
I was getting sick constantly, and it turned out I had chronic sinusitis, and surgery made it much much better.
(Just friendly advice, I know nothing about your situation).
doctors kept pitching tonsillectomy to me; i'm just hesitant of the knife :(
glad it was just poor hygiene :P
If you have tonsilitis / tonsil stones, that means you have a biofilm there and it’s a very common place for that to happen.
Regular mouthwash and even antibiotics won’t get rid of it, but a solution of vinegar, lemon juice and salt will.
https://youtu.be/0he8BCs8VD0
It helps, but it is a very painful recovery
Washing your hands is not only about your own health, it is also about other people's health.
Maybe you could get the same quality of life improvement without decreasing other's.
I heard the most ridiculous thing the other day:
That GenZ and Gen Alpha have started doing this thing they call “private podcasting”. Where they invite a friend over and discuss topics like one of those podcasts where dudes just talk about stuff…but they don’t record it or post it anywhere.
I was stunned. Is this generation really so socially starved by the attention parasites that human beings are starting to reinvent “hanging out” or “just having a conversation”.
It’s so ridiculous I just refuse to believe this is how they actually think and this has to be some kind of rage bait. I pray that it’s rage bait because if it isn’t we failed our children badly.
All that to say that I get similar vibes from the “grtting your hands dirty is actually good for you” thing. It just screams that entire generations of people have been stunted by helicopter parenting that this just seems like novel information. It seems we’ve completely abdicated our duty as parents and dumped our responsibility to educate our children onto profit seeking media companies. And that terrifies me.
There is a certain style of trolling that isn’t as obvious to older people.
When you get older you've seen a lot of people who do things like that and are serious about it. Of course we haven't seen the podcast angle exactly but plenty of other things and it's common enough to make you cynical and so then you would fall for such jokes. assuming it is really joke which isn't clear
Part of getting older is you leave the civilized bubble you were raised in and witness literal crazy.
I was walking down the bike path outside my apartment complex some years ago and a lady started a conversation, which started off normal but quickly turned to Reiki and after a few minutes she ignored every social hint to change the subject and just REALLY wanted to talk about energy pathways, life force and other woo-woo shit until I had to physically cut off the conversation by awkwardly walking away.
Also Steve Jobs died because he tried to cure his cancer with fucking fruit.
So yes, I have zero problem believing a minority of sheltered, internet-brained GenAlphas out there are doing "private podcasting". Statistically every adult has met at least one person who secretly enjoys eating literal shit.
I mean it was so ridiculous that I do think it was trolling.
But more like…what if this is actually true.
Well, what if it is? Hanging out with a whimsical premise? Oh the horror!
If we’ve fallen so far that talking to eachother is now whimsical we’re in serious trouble as a civilization.
private podcasting is right up there with using ChatGPT in your head.
I often hit my brain token limit
I hope you've banked plenty of resets
It sounds more like a joke or a lampoon of always-connected culture.
There's absolutely no reason to assume that getting your hands dirty would be "good for you". Playing outside and getting dirty is fun and is arguably great for enrichment and character building, but I think it would come as a surprise to just about anyone that it has health benefits.
When I say "come as a surprise" I mean they would be unable to articulate the exact mechanisms behind the health benefits before being told what they are or that they exist. Liking a thing and presuming it must have health benefits aren't the same.
Well... Book clubs, study groups, fraternal organizations, etc. have agendas that structure conversation. I've found this useful for even 1:1 conversations with friends.
Naturally, it's possible to take this too far; letting the conversation flow naturally before occasionally snapping back to the agenda is both more enjoyable and often more productive.
...this is also a common podcast format.
I have never heard the phrase "private podcast" used in this sense before (vs the group / company internal sense), but... I kinda like it; sets up some potential useful expectations!
It's a joke poking fun at podcast bros.
Yeah I definitely hope so lol
https://archive.ph/MWUcR
Not going to lie, I was a bit confused at first (before visiting the link), why would BBC publish an anti-AI post for software developers.
The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale.
I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible herbs so when she would muck around at five to six months she could do it in there on the balcony of our San Francisco apartment and she enjoyed destroying the plants so at the worst she got some fun out of it.
Ecosystems have niches for aggressive behavior against participants that reduce diversity. It's why you find higher concentrations of Lyme disease in new housing developments than you do in the deep woods: it's the activation of a defense mechanism (in the Lyme disease case it has to do with there being a higher proportion of competent hosts for the pathogen: mice, but in general evolution has myriad ways if implementing this pattern).
If it's just you and one species of bacteria, you're closer to a circumstance that would call for the activation of such behavior than if diversity is high.
So it's not that the bacteria are intrinsically good or bad, but that the different circumstances call for calm or aggressive behavior, and all your friends going missing cues aggressiveness in species who have evolved by filling that niche in the past.
To keep it simple:
For one it's just competition. If you have regular contact to a diverse set of microorganisms chances are higher that they will keep each other populations in check. The dose makes the poison applies here too in some narrow sense.
Additionally (or even mainly) our immune system always on guard (me/not me) gets to play around with the obvious stuff and not be overwhelmed or be "bored" but constantly trained/tamed. We have evolved to have constant contact to a diverse set of microorganisms which modulate our immune system e.g. through toll-like receptors.
As an extreme case some people develop some natural immunity to the tetanus toxin through regular exposure to a extreme variety of microorganisms, obviously this isn't reliable nor a gamble remotely worth the risk.
[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3980089/
[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6827147/
Edit: don't know why OP gets downvoted it's a perfectly fine entrance question/bafflement to motivate some deeper digging into microbiology/immunology.
It’s not dirt, it’s soil. Soil is a living ecosystem.
So is my gut but if I smeared my insides on my body I would likely fall ill. Even pathogens form a living ecosystem.
Or, to put it a different way,
> Cars have windows and can go. Houses have windows and can’t go. So it’s not the windows that make the car go
Speak for yourself. I know this guy called Howl...
Your insides are different from your outsides. Your skin has a different microbiome than your gut. Hyper cleanliness on your skin kills beneficial microbes that maintain an equilibrium when they're alive.
The Simpsons explained this one a while back, funnily enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8
Dirt is good to prevent you from getting sick easily.
I have gotten weird rashes on my hands after working in the garden, so maybe it's not all good all the time.
My partner is an estate gardener; early on in our relationship she came home with a green thumb. Apparently, the adage is about getting fungus under your nail beds and not keeping plants alive
Yeah, as someone who fairly recently discovered that the reason I always feel so uncomfortable out in nature is because I am severely allergic to almost all grasses and most trees, I think we need to put some caveats on these statements.
I grew up playing outside in the dirt a lot, but as I got older I liked it less and less because I always felt so itchy when i would go outside, and my nose would get stuffy and my eyes would water.
I am doing weekly shots trying to make it better, but I always get frustrated whenever everyone acts like I should just go out and 'touch grass'
Can I send off my garden soil samples to learn what sorts of bacteria and microbial life it is hosting? I do go outside and touch grass and dirt daily, it does make me feel good, but I always thought it was the sunlight and the beauty not the bacteria.
Not about soil specifically, but even something as trivial as a prick can kill you -- because, bacteria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Alexander_(police_offic....
This is just how anti-fragility works. Getting your hands 'dirty' is what's known as introducing turbulence and chaos in order to achieve true stability/robustness.
Conversely, trying to keep your hands too clean might create more severe bacteria problems--which is known as: system blow-up.
A good layperson-friendly example of such blow-ups (that are inevitable, due to avoidance of small 'failures') was masterfully depicted in Matthew Lewis's 'The Monk'-- in which he shows how a pious, religious abbot whose piety was not earned (but merely guarded), descends into the worst possible outcomes because his piety and morality was not antifragile (and hence blew up). A fascinating read.
My experience with gardening is that you also get bitten and stung all the time by a range of bugs and plants so you get resistance training, too ;) British false widow spiders have nothing on me at this point...
lindy
Ohhhh... that's why Indian poop festivals?!
... Wasn't there papers and articles showing getting in contact with soil was causing Parkinson's?
Feeling some pâro, again:
https://youtu.be/w7l2hUp0CkQ
I thought that was related to the insecticides/herbicides, not soil itself.
It's unclear.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/sep/23/medicalscience.wo...
My point was more that articles like the one on the BBC (or the Guardian for that matter) just contradict themselves every year. I completely stopped reading those "pop science" takes that are only there for clicks.
(To its credit, the Guardian makes place for long form articles that go more in-depth on known knowns and known unknowns.)
And no one has dirtier hands than the BBC
Maybe there's a benefit to having diverse natural memetic microflora on your cognitive convolutions. Like it could innoculate you against aggressive viral ideological infection.
So much dumb stuff in your brain that you are just immune to propaganda as you can't take it seriously (it's just as dumb as the other stuff)
Think of this next time your finger pops through the toilet paper and you get a little dab of shit on your hand.
Nasty!!
Nastiest thing that’s ever happened!
Is what I usually think.
But next time I’ll think “This is good for me”.
I imagine some of you fold your toilet paper into perfect little squares like Mr. Bean preparing the perfect wiping session.
Not me. I move fast and break things
Some cultures clean without paper, with their hands
I use a bidet because I’m not disgusting. Wiping shit with paper does not clean your stinky arse cracks. Fucking gross people walk around with dried shit smeared on their body all day.
There are zero cogent arguments for using toilet paper over a bidet.