Are we all just far too interested in "clean"?

In My Humble Opinion
41

We are descendents of people who bathed once a week (or less often) sometimes using the same tub of water for a large family.

I’m happy to live in an age where I can bathe daily if I choose to (and I do!), but obviously if you look at the generations before us you’ll see that it’s not deadly to walk around filthy and germ covered for a few days.

I once worked in an assisted living facility. Our main clientale were well-off, prissy little ladies in fine clothes & fine jewelry. Some of them were at the point that they need assistance with bathing. You wouldnt beleive the fuss they put up on shower day! We required in our care plans that they bathe a MINIMUM of 3 times a week. They would kick up their heels & squawk the whole time about being washed entirely too much.

And think about this; Before indoor plumbing I’m sure we’re all aware that the outhouse was the place to go. Have you ever heard of an outhouse with a sink??
I would assume that handwashing after bathroom time was very rare then.
I wash my hands MANY times a day because I work in a nursing home where conditions are ripe to spread icky germs, but I don’t stress about germs past that.

So, while I love feeling clean and do my best to stay that way, I do think there is a huge overemphasis on keeping ourselves germ free.

42

Where I work, there are a couple of guys who are germophobes. One of them, when in the bathroom, will go through an elaborate ritual involving pushing the lever on the paper towel dispenser with his elbow, propping to door open with his foot, and generally doing everything possible to avoid touching any surface in the bathroom with his hands. He also has a bottle of hand sanitizer at his desk. I’m surprised that he doesn’t have a box of latex gloves for his bathroom trips. He considers me to be a slob because I’m not afraid of touching the sink knobs, the doorknob or the paper towel lever. I wash my hands after using the bathroom, but that’s pretty much the extent of my germ paranoia.

Which one of us suffers because of his sanitary habits? I rarely get colds (I don’t think I caught one this winter, despite several going through my building) and when the flu came through here, I felt somewhat under the weather for a day or two, but I didn’t even miss any work (no, I wasn’t vaccinated; since there was a shortage, and I didn’t consider myself to be “high risk,” I skipped it). In four years on this job, I’ve probably only taken about two sick days, and even those weren’t terribly serious.

I definitely believe that it’s possible to be too clean, and that your immune system gets weaker if you’re obsessive about avoiding contact with germs.

43

You cook in the bathroom?

44

Bah. Not precisely; occasionally I have to commandeer the bathroom sink for a cooking-related use. The other day, I had to cool the starter for homemade yogurt down, so the pot of milk with attached thermometer got plopped into the bathroom sink full of cold water, until it fell to a proper temperature for adding the starter. I’ve also gone in there with a pot full of pasta and water and the strainer, when the sink’s full of soapy water and soaking dishes. Typically when anything edible is going into that room, it’s because the kitchen sink is either full of dishes and thus inaccessible, or too small for the purpose I require.

45

After watching myth busters regarding bathroom “cleaniness” I really don’t see why anyone really bothers. Even their control group had human fecal waste germs on them (in the kitchen or where ever). I guess that’s a good thing though. If you weren’t resistant to natural “human germs” you’d probably get sick just walking to work. I think as long as you’re not getting bacteria inside your body (as in, a dirty needle or open heart surgery with used equipment) you’re pretty much fine.

I don’t worry about being clean and I’m happy to see my sister isn’t raising her kid as a “clean freak”.

46

Good comment. Skin does in fact do its intended job pretty well.

47

Thanks, and I accept the apology. It’s just really irritating when people get smug about their children’s good health and implicity blame other parents’ abilities, when in fact such things have little to do with good or bad parenting. Don’t feel superior about your kid’s lack of allergies–be thankful. And try speculating on the environmental damage we’ve done, and what effect that might have on our health…

Dairy allergies are interesting. After all, many of the non-Caucasian peoples of the world do not consume dairy and are frequently lactose-intolerant. I wonder if dairy consumption is not quite what the human body is designed for (though I love me my dairy!). Dairy allergies also seem to be some of the easiest to grow out of; many children who are sensitive to milk as babies outgrow it by age 2. And for some reason many children who can’t eat cheese or milk can happily eat yogurt. And there are different elements to the sensitivities; it might be lactose, or the milkfat, or some other part of the dairy that’s a problem. (Dangerdad spent a year of his childhood allergic just to milkfat–non-fat milk was fine.)

However, in the US the main problem seems to be nut allergies, which are often serious enough to be potentially fatal. I am lucky that my daughter so far only gets sick when she runs into a nut, but since nut allergies are often cumulative, worsening with each exposure, there is every possibility that she will have problems with anaphylaxis later on. This is why parents with nut-allergic children are so paranoid; every exposure makes it worse.

48

Well, not precisely. The Boyer excerpt I posted above is only a small piece of his discussion of the contagion inference system; he describes it further and connects it to a bunch of other behaviors (including, given the title of the book, religious belief). And in so doing, he makes it clear that, according to the best interpretation of the anthropological and neurological evidence, while this is one of many pre-wired inference systems in the brain, it does have to be “activated” in some manner. In other words, a hypothetical child-in-a-box may or may not invent the contagion idea entirely on its own, but it will be predisposed to recognize the concept when introduced and latch strongly onto it, more so than if it were nothing more than an entirely learned piece of behavior (like driving or playing baseball or whatever).

49

Same here. I’ve seen too many times the leavings of the hoverers who are so afraid to get their delicate bum anywhere close to the toilet seat that they spray their piss all over the place. I don’t think it’s even remotely OCD that I don’t want somebody else’s urine on my ass; I wipe the seat with TP and put down an ass-gasket or some TP, and plop my butt down.

50

Urine is sterile, though, isn’t it? {Just playing devil’s advocate here; I wouldn’t want someone else’s piss on my arse either}.

Ferret Herder, do you ever piss in the sink? :slight_smile:

51

That’d be a bit difficult, considering I’m lacking the usual equipment used when depositing urine anywhere other than in a toilet (and while sitting). My bathroom sink is also regularly scrubbed pretty darned clean as such things go. (I’d worry more about something dropped on my kitchen floor. At the moment, that floor is nearly adhesive in addition to dirty, as I spilled a fair amount while making last night’s batch of beer.)

52

I used to work for an guy who was really allergic to dairy, and a TON of processed foods. I had a list of his dietary restrictions in my desk (I was his assistant). He was born and raised in a little village near Chennai in India, and could drink the tap water over there (or in Mexico, for that matter). He really got me wondering about the sheer volume of chemicals we westerners injest on a daily basis, and how that relates to the rise in allergies.

53

Pure urine is sterile. However, bladder and urinary tract infections aren’t too uncommon (mild ones, anyway), and urine that passes through an infected bladder or urethra will pick up some of the bacteria.

54

D’oh! Sorry - with the whole home-brewing thing I assumed you were a guy. Too bad you’ll never know the sinful pleasure.

55

Pure urine is sterile. However, bladder and urinary tract infections aren’t too uncommon (mild ones, anyway), and urine that passes through an infected bladder or urethra will pick up some of the bacteria.

56

When I see a urine splattered seat (oddly, never with the prevalance of some of you guys), I just grab a single square of TP and wipe the seat down. Voila, clean seat.

57

One thing some of you might be interested in is one contributing factor for a lot of aggravated asthma or breathing allergies: modern houses and dust. Our homes are now much more efficient, keeping out drafts (aka fresh air) and keeping in warmth and humidity–which makes a wonderful breeding ground for dust mites. We also have wall-to-wall carpets, lovely and comfortable, and full of dust and dust mites. Most people are sensitive to dust mites and their feces in some degree.

Many people find that their dust allergies lessen considerably when they start airing out their houses (especially bedrooms) and opening windows, keeping the house cool and aired, and when they dust more frequently and change sheets more often. And hard flooring harbors about a tenth of the dust that carpet does.

Until fairly recently, people lived in cooler, draftier, and less carpet-y homes–which made for a far less hospitable home for dust mites, and fewer breathing problems. Of course, they also had to contend with fleas and bed bugs…

58

Exactly. Plus, even leaving aside the issue of bacteria, the idea of sitting in somebody else’s waste is simply gross–even if I wipe the seat, if the person before me was a particularly egregious hoverer, it’s hard to get it entirely dry, so I put down a seat cover so as to avoid it entirely. I still don’t see why anybody thinks this is so OCD-ish. I flush with my hand rather than my foot, touch the faucet handles and even the door handle, I just prefer not to put my bare ass on a dirty surface. Big deal.

59

[George Carlin] When I was a kid, we never got sick. Polio was around when I was a kid and none of the kids on my block ever got sick. You know why? 'Cause we swam in raw sewage. Our immune systems were tough, tough. Polio never even had a chance. [/George Carlin]

I think people do think about “clean” too much sometimes. A certain standard of cleanliness is nice though. If you travel, you’ll find that your standards and the native people’s are different.

When I first came to Japan, I had two “gross” reactions. One was that a lot of people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom, even after taking a dump. Even if they wash, there is almost never any soap in the bathroom, and most people wash by running water over their hands for a few seconds. Have I mentioned that I like the Japanese custom of bowing to greet people instead of shaking hands?

The other one was that I taught English to a lot of elementary school kids. (That’s not the gross part). The kids would almost always want to shake my hand, since that’s something they’ve learned that foreigners do and so they think it’s cool. Classes usually consist of about 40 kids. I taught 4-5 classes a day. I taught at a different school almost every day since I had about 35 on my roster. That’s 160-200 kids per day, about 1000 a week. Many of my classes were for first or second graders.

Guess how many times I had to shake grubby, sticky, snotty hands.

I can’t remember how many times kids had snot running down their faces, that they wiped using their hand, and then offered said appendage to me. I had kids cough or sneeze into their hand and then want to shake on it.

I got sick about once a month, and no wonder considering that I was probably fighting off dozens or hundreds of viruses and other gunk every week. Two years later, when I moved to another position where I taught high school kids, I didn’t get sick once for a whole year. I think I probably had encountered every single contagion I could possibly come into contact with in this area and my immune system was so on top of things that it laughed at the pitiful efforts of a single disease trying to invade where armies of germs had been routed.

Just to be fair, I should mention that Japanese think it’s completely disgusting to wear shoes indoors (and I agree) and in my experience normal people bathe at least once a day; some people take a bath in the morning and at night.

60

Same here, although your immune system was stronger than mine. When I started teaching kids, I wound up with a new cold every week for a month. The kids’ classes were on Thursdays, and every Thursday night I’d feel my sinuses start to swell up. By Friday night I’d have a raging fever, by Monday I’d be stuffed solid, by Wednesday I’d be starting to recover, and then Thursday those little bastards would start the cycle all over again.