Wash Your Hands

A column by Supervisor Alex Gromack

 

 

I don’t think there’s a kid alive who hasn’t heard those words over and over. It is one of the mantras of growing up in America. Next to “Wait until your father comes home,” it’s got to be on the top ten list of the most heard momisms.

 

Many of us have grown up in a culture where ‘cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness’ and the ‘road to hell’ is paved with dirt.

 

Our supermarkets and drug stores are packed with personal hygiene products that promise to get and keep us clean. There are solids, soaps, gels, liquids, sprays and wipes. They are packed with chemicals that are as gentle to our skin as sandpaper but supposedly that’s the price we pay to stay clean and healthy.

 

Almost every day a new product comes on the market; clinically tested to wipe out any single celled creature unfortunate enough to be hanging around, on or in our bodies.

 

The ‘green’ conscience that we’ve developed lately has modified some of this approach and unfriendly, harsh chemicals have been replaced by more natural agents, like citrus juices, vinegar, baking soda, sea salt, borax, tea leaves and hot water.  The recipes for making these homemade alternative cleansers sound like something our grandmothers would cook up to bring down the swelling on a twisted ankle.

 

Despite the best efforts of the ‘green clean team’, it will likely be some time before the majority of us switch from our industrial strength hygiene products to the natural more gentle agents. Apparently, we don’t, as yet, believe that anything that is natural can clean as well as some bubbling, toxic compound a chemist dreams up in the lab.

 

As yet, that is.

 

We’ve already heard that the overuse of antibacterial hand wash products and antibiotics can actually increase the presence of ‘drug resistant’ bacteria on our hands, in our bodies and in our hospitals.

 

Now a recent theory being proposed by groups such as The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and The New England Journal of Medicine suggest that ‘exposure to bacteria, dirt, dust, animals and day care centers during childhood can contribute to lower incidences of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disorders.’

 

The idea was simply stated by a Nora Sarvetnick, a Scripps Research Immunology Professor, “The cleaner everyone is, the less stimulation their immune system gets. Their immune system tends to be incomplete.”

 

Incomplete immune systems are not effective and have difficulty separating what is good from what is bad. As a result they sometimes even pick fights with our own bodies.

 

Now no one I know is suggesting we stop washing our hands, taking showers, or cleaning our homes but maybe we’ve gone a little over the edge on this whole cleanliness thing.

 

A little dirt on our hands and a couple of pounds of bacteria on and in our bodies may, after all, be the best way to stay healthy, wealthy and wise.