Hmm, I also use hand sanitizer to disinfect my hands after I’ve been out in public, touching things like doorknobs, bathroom fixtures, escalator handrails, etc. You need gentle immune challenges, not a never-ending, full frontal assault from the germs of the unwashed masses.
Doctors on board, can you weigh in on this? Is there a place for judicious use of anti-bacterials and rigorous hand-washing, or am I just being paranoid with my desire to wash my hands after touching anything out in public?
Who knew that Dr. Bronner was a Doper?
shrug I rarely wash my hands and it’s even more rare that I use soap…I don’t get sick
I wash my hands after using the bathroom, but otherwise I’ll only wash my hands if I need to get dirt or something off them.
I rarely get sick, and in fact it often seems like it’s the people who are obsessive about washing their hands and using hand sanitizers who are constantly getting sick.
I’ve made my own cosmetics for a while, for fun and also to get a feel for the most common ingredients. I mail-ordered various detergents, scents, aloe-vera, conservation-agents, thickening agents etc and mixed them according to the recepies. It was fun to do, actually less expensive then buying them in a healthfood store, and I could tailor-make my own products. So I could add anti-bacterial stuff or not.Shampoo, selftanner, make-up, cold cream… all can be made that way.
here’s an American site that sells ingredients for making your own consmetics. basically, there are two kinds of recepies: the all natural ones using natural oils beeswax, herbs and stuff, and the more technical ones using detergents, emulsifiers, emolliefiers etc. I preferred the technical ones, as they yield much better usable products (texture, preservability).
Yup, I asked about this in GQ.
The mechanical action of ordinary soap is enough to kill off most household germs, germs that we’ve been accustomed to so to speak over the years. All this high intensity cleaning is just training up the germs to slap us down again harder than before.
It’s not Dr. Bronner, actually, that’s regular soap. And regular soap dries me out too much. Glycerin seems to do the same job without drying my skin to that extent. But I will say that the Dr. Bronner stuff is good soap, it’s just that regular soap is a bit harsh for me. And of course the labels make for fascinating reading.
Well, it’s because I am aware that there are a lot of people like you in the world that I feel the need to wash my hands after being out in public. I do get sick occasionally, and I’m sick of getting sick, so I’m trying to reduce the number of pathogens I introduce into my body.
Forgive me for my small smile. 
I am amused at the thought of asking doctors about handsoap and handwashing.
If there is a single category of health care personnel who does NOT wash hands consistently and rigorously, it is doctors.
I will ask around at my nursing bb, to see if there are studies out there regarding this issue.
Meh - I think it’s all part of a long-term plot to have us all so paranoid we would be willing to invest 90% of our disposable income to encase ourselves in sterile bubbles.
I saw an advert the other week for some sort of holder thing using disposable sterilizing tissue-wad efforts to clean toilet bowls. Why? Are there people out there who use their toilets to mix salads in? Or perhaps regular toilet brushes are intended for brushing teeth with or something? I’m baffled.
Bog Brush + Bleach = Clean enough to shit in.
What’s wrong with that equation?
That’s always been my thought too.
The anti-bacterial hype is more about selling products than killing germs and keeping people healthy.
I read an article in a Swedish newspaper back in 1996, that showed that after careful research, the cleanest place in the home turned out to be exactly that … the toilet. So when Fido goes to drink there, it just shows that he knows better than we do.
The least hygienic spot in the house? The kitchen. More specifically, the kitchen cleaning cloth, being almost permanently moist and continuously in renewed contact with bacteria from food. Cause, apparently, of nearly every case of food-poisoning.
These things need to be boiled to be competely cleaned, and while using need to be hung to dry right after use as much as possible - preferably NOT on the tap.
Well, that’s a little frightening.
I was going to post a sardonic response, because your post sounded like a personal attack against me, but I decided that it would go against the “don’t be a jerk” rule.
Instead, I’m going to explain why.
This is how I understand what you said: “There are people in the world who don’t wash their hands. This spreads pathogens. Therefore, I am going to wash mine, so I don’t pickup pathogens.” Because the conclusion does not follow logically from the premises (I’m not going to wash mine so I don’t spread pathogens would), it seemed like the purpose of the first argument was to in some way refute my post.
The second part of your argument makes logical sense to me, but is not related to your first argument. “I do not want to be sick. Reducing the number of pathogents I come into contact with reduces the number of times I get sick. Washing my hands reduces the number of pathogens I come into contact with. Therefore, I will wash my hands” Now, the validity of the various premises can be debated, but if they are all accepted then it would be logical.
There’s a girl in my dorm who disinfects the toilet seat before she uses it. She also wanted to segregate the two bathrooms by sex–thereby putting 20 girls in one bathroom and three guys in the other. Apparently boys are dirty or something. 
I don’t get people.
I seem to remember reading recently (sorry, no cite) about people who develop MS in early adulthood. They said that there seems to be a link between MS and not having siblings. The thinking is that kids with (younger?) siblings have more exposure to germs from social contacts and develop a stronger, more resilient immunue system than their “only child” counter parts. The onset of MS is possibly the result of, or contributed to by, the only childs sheltered existance, much like being discussed here.
This is an interesting thread because for years my husband’s mother has done nothing but protect him and make him afraid of the world. Now every time he buys soap “it HAS to be antibacterial!”
He practically lays an egg over raw meat because “it’s going to make you sick!”
His incessant whining had me thinking on the same level almost, up until this thread. I learned way back in highschool that a person’s body needs bacteria, inside and out. Thanks for the reminder!
Interesting tidbit: your body contains roughly 10 pounds worth of bacteria, according to my professor anyway.
You’re going to get along just fine here. 
(Yeah, I know, you can’t join up because you don’t want to leave a written trail, etc.)
By the way, by my understanding, I didn’t violate the “personal attack” rule, either - my argument is with people who do things similar to what you do, not you yourself. If I had posted “You make me sick, nilor,” that would have been a personal attack. When I post “People who don’t wash their hands and therefore spread germs make me sick,” I don’t believe that can be construed as a personal attack. You do raise an interesting point, however - when a group is attacked, and a poster self-identifies with that group, does that constitute a personal attack?
I started an ATMB thread here regarding that question.