A Little Dirt Goes a Long Way

Recent studies indicate that efforts to sterilize the body and the things it comes in contact with are abnormal and may sometimes carry possible harmful consequences.

Your body is host to a microbiome; single-celled organisms called archaea that have naturally inhabited your gut, your respiratory tract, your skin, and other organs since the beginning of time. Click HERE to read a TED article on the benefits of microbes

According to some estimates there are ten times as many foreign microbes in your body as there are of your own cells and all together these microbes weigh several pounds. We have evolved over the years with these microbes as well as many other species of worms. The process has been in action since millions of years, which explains why most of your microbiomes are either harmless or they perform important functions in the body as well as help you digest the food and clean your skin and scalp.

You depend on these critters as much as they depend on you to survive. Fortunately most of the antibiotics and anti-parasitic drugs we use don’t kill the entire microbiome; however, excessive use of these harmful medications does eliminate some helpful microbes whose absence may actually contribute to new diseases.



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