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So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you. Soap a

by jrabone 12y ago

So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you. Soap and water have saved more lives than any medication, ever. I now have no spleen (6 months ago I lost spleen, gallbladder and half my stomach as well as sundry peritoneal membranes to cancer) and nearly died as a result of post-operative infections. I take daily antibiotics, possibly forever. As a society, we don't just cleanse ourselves for our own well-being, we wash for others.

Steer 12y ago
I am sorry that you got cancer and had to remove those parts of your body. I am also happy that you now seem better (and I am guessing and being hopeful here). That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health. If you had provided links to research that proved that soap and shampoo use in the larger population made people with a defective immune system safer I would not have a problem with your comments, but I am just not sure that is the case. If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite this, allow peanuts in our society? It is not a necessity. Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing.
- edoloughlin 12y ago
  That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health There is a case to be made for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    No, Herd Immunity is for infection risks which are SHARED across the whole herd. The point is to prevent the infection from reaching "critical mass". What we're talking about here is different, it's a risk which applies to a small minority of specific individuals.
  - criley2 12y ago
    Herd Immunity has nothing to do with our personal bacteria cultures! We are bacteria through and through! So much of our bodies and lives are dependent on bacteria. You can't get herd immunity to a building block of our existence. You shouldn't want it.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    The key point for herd immunity is epidemiological - keep resistance high so that most people will never encounter the bad pathogen even if they may be unusually weak against it. That doesn't apply to bacteria that are already prevalent everywhere and known to be less bad than other bacteria they're likely to replace.
- jrabone 12y ago
  I'm still alive, that's as far as it goes. 30% + chance of recurrence and it's not like I can have those organs removed a second time. However, it's an improvement on the initial diagnosis which was stage 4 adenocarcinoma with peritoneal metastasis (ie. a Kaplan-Meyer survival of about 5 years max). It's not just immuno-suppressed people, it's everyone, and a risk/benefit comparison with peanut allergies is spurious. If everyone smeared themselves in peanut butter before they left the house each morning, you'd have a closer comparison. Plenty of studies at http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html - click on "Improved Health".
  - rosser 12y ago
    You're creating a false dilemma between not washing your hands and destroying your skin biome. TFA is about the latter, but you're citing studies about the former.
    - jrabone 12y ago
      TFA doesn't contain enough detail about hand-washing as opposed to body & hair, in much the same way that most people don't like talking about wiping their backsides vs washing them after defecating.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - Steer 12y ago
    I must say that I feel bad discussing this with you, I do not enjoy trying to be objective when discussing with someone stricken by cancer like you. You have obviously been through a trauma and you are still living it. If I were religious I would pray for your recovery, but since I am not I will just say that I do hope that you live and prosper. I am not convinced that an increased use of soap and shampoo would lead to a healthier society overall, much like an increased use of antibiotics does not seem to make a healthier society overall.
- Fomite 12y ago
  "Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing." Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health. While I might disagree with the OP, the principle looks pretty similar.
  - bmelton 12y ago
    > Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health. Because, as has been posted above, one's personal biome is never going to be aided by herd immunity. In short, if I have Polio, the chances of it spreading to a mostly vaccinated society is lessened because any immunized individual breaks the infection chain. They're slightly similar in concept, but not really. Beyond that, the argument seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding that has persisted beyond its correction. Not washing skin and hair with soap and shampoo is a dramatically different matter than not washing one's hands with soap and water.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite this, allow peanuts in our society? Because the combination of decent emergency response and site-specific limitations on peanuts in places where there is a particular likelihood of them affecting someone who is hyper-allergic is currently viewed as an effective- enough mitigation to the hazard posed, not because people have an unrestrained entitlement to act as they want even when it is harmful to other's health.
- dublinben 12y ago
  >we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing Why is it so different? They both contribute to societal health, and personal hygiene is much less painful than getting your complete battery of vaccines.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    Vaccines are specifically targeted. General hygeine practices can impact benign or neutral species as much as the pathogens, whether the latter are present or not.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  I also find the argument to be spurious. Indiscriminate disinfectants kill benign microbes as well as pathogenic microbes, leaving a clean surface to be colonized by the first species that land on it, whether good or bad. The fine article details a practice wherein rather than apply a scorched-earth policy to all microbes, known good species are intentionally cultivated to both deny a beachhead to invading pathogenic microbes, and for other benefits, such as removal of unpleasant body wastes. Centuries of scientific inquiry has shown that there really is no such thing as a clean and sterile surface outside of certain specially-constructed rooms with carefully managed airflows. Soaps and shampoos simply favor species able to spread and multiply quickly. when used frequently enough, they also prevent humans from becoming a disease vector. That frequency is a matter for investigation. It may be that only physicians, nurses, and hospital staff who always wash thoroughly before each and every patient contact are actually contributing to public health, and that people who wash every time they pass a sink during the day--maybe once per 3 hours--are simply breeding for triclosan resistance and favoring the tenacious and rapidly multiplying species.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    That isn't how resistance works. Resistance to anything has an evolutionary cost - the most resistant species tend to breed slowest, the hardiest environmentals even slower. Organisms which can live in volcanoes usually die when given mild conditions but competitor species instead. Your statement also begs the question: given we're assuming you can reasonably disinfect yourself, why not simply re-innoculate with an optimum colony of bacterial species and short-circuit the negative effects?
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      Leaving aside my pet peeve of people using "begs the question" inappropriately, your question is answered by the article. An optimum colony of bacteria is hard to maintain and propagate outside the optimum environment--namely, on your skin. The colony also reacts negatively to being disinfected. The experiment is to establish such a microbiome and then leave it the hell alone.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
FreedomFiber 12y ago
When you have a population of beneficial microbes, they push the harmful ones out. The ones that cause acne, odor, etc... When you take antibiotics it kills bacteria nonselectively, good and bad. This can lead to an overgrowth of harmful bacteria when you stop taking the antibiotics. Also good luck when the strain of bacteria you're fighting become resistant to the antibiotic you're taking... Maybe then you'll reconsider microbiomics.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > When you have a population of beneficial microbes, they push the harmful ones out. The ones that cause acne, odor, etc... What is your basis to say that the ones that cause odor are harmful ? It's a pure hypothesis.
  - FreedomFiber 12y ago
    Define harmful however you like. Some people might think smelling bad is detrimental to their well-being.
- jrabone 12y ago
  Your fecal coliforms will kill other people, simply because they're yours, not theirs. They'll kill you if they don't stay in the gut (mine tried, along with a carbapenem-resistant strain of streptococcus introduced via a central line).
  - jrabone 12y ago
    I can't reply directly to "rosser" due to max comment depth, but fecal transplants don't generally involve introducing gut bacteria to anywhere other than the gut.
  - rosser 12y ago
    Then why are physicians performing fecal transplants?
    - 12y ago
ufo 12y ago
Fair enough. However, it is possible that the microbiome that results from showering could be more deadly than the one that results from not showering - its not only a matter of how many bacteria there are but also what kind of bacteria they are.
- pinko 12y ago
  This is the key point many people miss. Assuming a basic level of sanitation, less faecal contamination (there is never zero) + less bacterial competition may be worse in practice than more faecal contamination + more bacterial competition. The key advance in urban human sanitation, as I understand it, was not the use of surfectants so much as getting the open sewers off of the streets. But I am not an expert on such things. I'd be grateful to be corrected by anyone who is.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rsync 12y ago
"So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally?" Yes, and that is true ipso facto whether they are using soap or not. You will also be fighting the microbes of school aged children (a preschool is one hell of a petri dish), animals (domestic and wild), as well as the entire biosphere you inhabit in general. If you have a compromised immune system, your neighbors decision to follow a soap-free cleansing regime (which is NOT appealing to me, btw) is the very least of your worries.
- jrabone 12y ago
  Soap and water is very good at removing faecal contamination. In the absence of small children and pets, and the taking of a prophylactic dose of antibiotics daily, my main concern is whether the people I share work and living space with are spreading their own faeces over surfaces I interact with. If their cleansing regime is as effective as soap and hot water, all is well.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    CDC say soap and not hot water is fine too. They prefer running water.
jerf 12y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Nitrosomonas+eutropha+infection%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Nitrosomonas+eutropha+inf... Note how first Google can't find any results, then redirects you, and how none of the redirects I see are talking about any infection either. I doubt an ammonia-eater is very long for the inside of our bodies, regardless of the status of the immune system. The whole "life will find a way" concept is really a horrible way to understand bacteria. Bacteria are, in fact, incredibly fragile, almost incomprehensibly so. They gain strength both in their sheer numbers, which makes it hard to get all of them off or out of something, and the sheer diversity of the various species (and to a lesser extent, within species), which means that for any given condition, there's probably some species that can survive or thrive there. Bacteria in general are extraordinarily powerful and resilient... but those properties do not extend to bacteria in specific. In specific, I see no reason to suspect this species even shows on the threat meter, as compared to any ol' cold virus or conventional bacteria infection. I reserve the right to change that assessment if someone provides more evidence.
- jrabone 12y ago
  Not talking about the bacteria in the product, I'm talking about the faecal bacteria (your own personal gut microbes) that are still stuck to the skin afterwards due to not using a surfactant-based washing product. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7785997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7785997 further down the thread.
  - jerf 12y ago
    Touche.
dbingham 12y ago
There are many bacteria that are not the sort that are going to attack your immune system, defective or not. No matter how much you wash or use antibiotics you never eradicate bacteria from your environment. Rather, you select for the bacteria most resistant to the chemicals you apply to them. The bacteria in the sorts of microbiomics discussed in this article are (usually) totally symbiotic. They aren't going to harm you, they are going to help you. They are going to be a secondary immune system and provide you a layer of protection. Removing them is actually more dangerous for you than encouraging them. In removing them, you create a vacuum that is easier for harmful and parasitic organisms to invade. Edit: I haven't actually seen the research (and it might not have been done yet) on the specific species mentioned in the article. So I edited to speak more generally. The idea many of us have been indoctrinated with that all microorganisms are potentially harmful invaders is not only completely false, that belief has lead us as a society to take action that was potentially very harmful to us. There's an entire ecosystem down there, and much of it evolved in symbiosis with us. We provide them a home, and in return they protect and clean us. They don't want to destroy their home, they would die, too. We could learn a thing or two from them in that regard.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  I don't think this is accurate. Many bacteria that are symbiotic with immuno-normal humans are parasitic and harmful to immunocompromised humans. That said, it's unclear that regular washing with soap removes the kinds of bacteria that have the potential to be harmful -- I know for sure that skin is constantly covered with bacteria, with and without washing. So I don't know if GP's objection is realistic.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - dbingham 12y ago
    Yes, there are some species that are only symbiotic in the right circumstances, but are very harmful if they escape their niches. But there are also thousands of species that are evolved for very specific niches with in our bodies and cannot survive outside of those niches. When in those niches, they are helpful. When outside of them, they are harmless. Immunocompromised or not. But you're right, I don't actually have the evidence to say whether the bacteria discussed with in the article are of the sort that are always harmless or of the sort that can be very harmful in the wrong circumstance. I'll edit the comment. I do think it is likely that they are largely harmless, because of the ammonia based metabolism. That would be pretty limiting. Also, their apparent fragility.
msandford 12y ago
I didn't see anything in the article that said "I stopped washing my hands after I used the bathroom" but I did see plenty about "I stopped using soaps and shampoos and other SHOWER related items". I think you misunderstood the goal of the experiment and the method by which she did so. Culturing less-harmful bacteria which might crowd out more-harmful bacteria is actually a great thing. The ultimate situation is where we're all covered in incredibly weaksauce bacteria that can be killed quite easily if need be, but in the meantime they out-compete all the truly nasty ones which are antibiotic-resistant. That way if someone gets an infection antibiotics (or scrubbing) will go a long way towards curing it in the rapidly-post-antibiotic era that some doctors think we are entering.
- pbnjay 12y ago
  There's a blog post with more quotes: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-going-suds-free-for-28-days/ http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-... Specifically, she did wash her hands with soap: > Every time I touched my hair, I had to wash my hands (I did wash my hands with soap).
jessaustin 12y ago
I haven't had a spleen in over twenty years. In my experience, asplenia has not led to sickness any greater than the norm. I have kept up with recommended vaccinations, but I'm personally not a very "clean" person. I get sick a couple of times a year, which seems typical, and I've only been memorably sick a couple of times since I lost my spleen. Certainly you and others have different experiences. Perhaps your antibiotic requirements are more related to surgical wound healing?
- jrabone 12y ago
  No, it's standard UK practice, especially for the first 2 years after splenectomy. It does seem to vary around the world though.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Hmmm, it seems there is a nation even nuttier about antibiotics than we Americans. I've taken antibiotics twice, for a few days each time, since I lost my spleen: wisdom teeth and a three-week sickness. Perhaps for that reason, I completely recovered from my three-week sickness within hours of taking the first pill. IANAP, but I really wonder about a standard of care that includes two years of antibiotics for a common, uncomplicated condition. What if the newly-asplenic actually got an infection while on that regimen? How would they be treated then?
criley2 12y ago
"So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you." What a sadly unscientific and ignorant answer. There are literally MILLIONS of types of bacteria. We REQUIRE millions of bacteria to simply exist and live as human beings. Not all bacteria is evil and will kill you. Most won't! In fact, if you kill all of your personal awesome bacteria, the harmful stuff can move in because you don't have any anymore. (Well if you "killed all of your own bacteria", you'd very likely be dead as well...) You get to fight my bacteria, and every humans bacteria, every day of your life. It's as normal as breathing air and eating food. Your mother colonizes you with bacteria at birth and through feeding. Our foods help us build immunities. Our friends and being outside and playing and working and everything we do exposes us to bacteria. Being exposed to bacteria isn't evil or wrong. Being weak to bacterial exposure is like being weak to sunlight-- it is going to dramatically change your life and make you very "abnormal" as a human. That's not our fault. "Soap and water have saved more lives than any medication, ever." Proper hygiene has saved those lives, of which soap and water played a role. You put the cart before the horse. HYGIENE saved lives -- soap and water was the mechanism used to achieve hygiene. " I take daily antibiotics, possibly forever. As a society, we don't just cleanse ourselves for our own well-being, we wash for others." This article isn't about giving yourself leprosy and then infecting immunocompromised people. For you to conflate "bad" bacteria with "good" bacteria is ignorant and massively hurtful to the cause of human health. If you had read the article, you would know that they're supplementing personal flora with Nitrosomonas eutropha. If Nitrosomonas eutropha can hurt you, you need to be in a bubble and NEVER exposed to any air, or the outside, or dirt, or any other humans. Herd immunity won't save you from something so common, normal and helpful to humanity. And hurting all of us just to help you, denying us the necessary and amazing flora that makes our lives possible, is selfish and Darwinian in it's own way. PLEASE respect that bacteria is ESSENTIAL to human life, and managing our own flora is ESSENTIAL to health and thriving. Just because someone wants to be healthy doesn't mean you have a right to accuse them of attacking you. If you're that sensitive, you need to protect yourself with heavy isolation. We're humans, not hermetically sealed robots. We are alive because of bacteria. Period.
- XorNot 12y ago
  The article is about surface external bacteria - which are very, very different to the bacterial colonies which live inside your digestive system (and also only there - if any of those get inside your circulatory system that's where most "flesh eating bacteria" horror stories start from). There's a naturalistic fallacy heavily at play here, because humans have never before lived in such close proximity in such high density dwellings as they do today. The idea that this doesn't merit some forward thinking on how we manage personal hygiene standards is ridiculous.
Periodic 12y ago
There is apparently problems with the opposite that may be occurring now in our society. The bacterial ecosystem of our guts is very poorly understood. However, we are starting to discover that some forms of obesity, irritable bowl and related disorders such as Crohn's Disease may be linked to an imbalance of gut bacteria. Possible culprits include overuse of antibiotics particularly in milk and meat; extreme cleanliness; and Cesarean sections as your gut bacteria is inherited from your mother during birth. We also know that there are some bacteria which have very positive effects, the so-called probiotics. We need these things to survive properly and in a lot of cases it is more about having the right balance than getting rid of them. I speak as a spouse of someone with Crohn's Disease who has been largely treated through diet and bacterial management. I don't have quite the grounding in the science as she does, but we have seen the effects. In short, excessive cleanliness in our modern society may actually be making people ill. We need to find the right balance.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Crohn's disease is an autoimmune condition. It's managed through diet and fauna control, but it sure as heck isn't caused by bacterial imbalance. It's also worth noting that bacterial imbalance is usually treated with gut-balanciing antibiotics, which a single course of did wonders for me when I used to suffer severe gutache nearly daily. Articles like the one here though sound far more ideological then scientific though. EDIT: Also worth noting, there's scant scientific evidence that probiotics do anything. Near as anyone can tell the only effective things have been antibiotics, or faecal transplants.
  - gwern 12y ago
    > Crohn's disease is an autoimmune condition. It's managed through diet and fauna control, but it sure as heck isn't caused by bacterial imbalance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
headShrinker 12y ago
I'm really sorry to hear of your condition and hope you recoup as much as possible. Without being cruel, I would like to point out the irony that it is likely antibiotics that will do us in and not lack of hand washing. Really hope you get better.

by jrabone 12y ago

Steer 12y ago

I am sorry that you got cancer and had to remove those parts of your body. I am also happy that you now seem better (and I am guessing and being hopeful here). That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health. If you had provided links to research that proved that soap and shampoo use in the larger population made people with a defective immune system safer I would not have a problem with your comments, but I am just not sure that is the case. If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite this, allow peanuts in our society? It is not a necessity. Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing.

edoloughlin 12y ago
That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health There is a case to be made for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
- Terr_ 12y ago
  No, Herd Immunity is for infection risks which are SHARED across the whole herd. The point is to prevent the infection from reaching "critical mass". What we're talking about here is different, it's a risk which applies to a small minority of specific individuals.
- criley2 12y ago
  Herd Immunity has nothing to do with our personal bacteria cultures! We are bacteria through and through! So much of our bodies and lives are dependent on bacteria. You can't get herd immunity to a building block of our existence. You shouldn't want it.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  The key point for herd immunity is epidemiological - keep resistance high so that most people will never encounter the bad pathogen even if they may be unusually weak against it. That doesn't apply to bacteria that are already prevalent everywhere and known to be less bad than other bacteria they're likely to replace.
jrabone 12y ago
I'm still alive, that's as far as it goes. 30% + chance of recurrence and it's not like I can have those organs removed a second time. However, it's an improvement on the initial diagnosis which was stage 4 adenocarcinoma with peritoneal metastasis (ie. a Kaplan-Meyer survival of about 5 years max). It's not just immuno-suppressed people, it's everyone, and a risk/benefit comparison with peanut allergies is spurious. If everyone smeared themselves in peanut butter before they left the house each morning, you'd have a closer comparison. Plenty of studies at http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html - click on "Improved Health".
- rosser 12y ago
  You're creating a false dilemma between not washing your hands and destroying your skin biome. TFA is about the latter, but you're citing studies about the former.
  - jrabone 12y ago
    TFA doesn't contain enough detail about hand-washing as opposed to body & hair, in much the same way that most people don't like talking about wiping their backsides vs washing them after defecating.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- Steer 12y ago
  I must say that I feel bad discussing this with you, I do not enjoy trying to be objective when discussing with someone stricken by cancer like you. You have obviously been through a trauma and you are still living it. If I were religious I would pray for your recovery, but since I am not I will just say that I do hope that you live and prosper. I am not convinced that an increased use of soap and shampoo would lead to a healthier society overall, much like an increased use of antibiotics does not seem to make a healthier society overall.
Fomite 12y ago
"Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing." Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health. While I might disagree with the OP, the principle looks pretty similar.
- bmelton 12y ago
  > Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health. Because, as has been posted above, one's personal biome is never going to be aided by herd immunity. In short, if I have Polio, the chances of it spreading to a mostly vaccinated society is lessened because any immunized individual breaks the infection chain. They're slightly similar in concept, but not really. Beyond that, the argument seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding that has persisted beyond its correction. Not washing skin and hair with soap and shampoo is a dramatically different matter than not washing one's hands with soap and water.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite this, allow peanuts in our society? Because the combination of decent emergency response and site-specific limitations on peanuts in places where there is a particular likelihood of them affecting someone who is hyper-allergic is currently viewed as an effective- enough mitigation to the hazard posed, not because people have an unrestrained entitlement to act as they want even when it is harmful to other's health.
dublinben 12y ago
>we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing Why is it so different? They both contribute to societal health, and personal hygiene is much less painful than getting your complete battery of vaccines.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Vaccines are specifically targeted. General hygeine practices can impact benign or neutral species as much as the pathogens, whether the latter are present or not.
logfromblammo 12y ago
I also find the argument to be spurious. Indiscriminate disinfectants kill benign microbes as well as pathogenic microbes, leaving a clean surface to be colonized by the first species that land on it, whether good or bad. The fine article details a practice wherein rather than apply a scorched-earth policy to all microbes, known good species are intentionally cultivated to both deny a beachhead to invading pathogenic microbes, and for other benefits, such as removal of unpleasant body wastes. Centuries of scientific inquiry has shown that there really is no such thing as a clean and sterile surface outside of certain specially-constructed rooms with carefully managed airflows. Soaps and shampoos simply favor species able to spread and multiply quickly. when used frequently enough, they also prevent humans from becoming a disease vector. That frequency is a matter for investigation. It may be that only physicians, nurses, and hospital staff who always wash thoroughly before each and every patient contact are actually contributing to public health, and that people who wash every time they pass a sink during the day--maybe once per 3 hours--are simply breeding for triclosan resistance and favoring the tenacious and rapidly multiplying species.
- XorNot 12y ago
  That isn't how resistance works. Resistance to anything has an evolutionary cost - the most resistant species tend to breed slowest, the hardiest environmentals even slower. Organisms which can live in volcanoes usually die when given mild conditions but competitor species instead. Your statement also begs the question: given we're assuming you can reasonably disinfect yourself, why not simply re-innoculate with an optimum colony of bacterial species and short-circuit the negative effects?
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    Leaving aside my pet peeve of people using "begs the question" inappropriately, your question is answered by the article. An optimum colony of bacteria is hard to maintain and propagate outside the optimum environment--namely, on your skin. The colony also reacts negatively to being disinfected. The experiment is to establish such a microbiome and then leave it the hell alone.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

FreedomFiber 12y ago

When you have a population of beneficial microbes, they push the harmful ones out. The ones that cause acne, odor, etc... When you take antibiotics it kills bacteria nonselectively, good and bad. This can lead to an overgrowth of harmful bacteria when you stop taking the antibiotics. Also good luck when the strain of bacteria you're fighting become resistant to the antibiotic you're taking... Maybe then you'll reconsider microbiomics.

ekianjo 12y ago
> When you have a population of beneficial microbes, they push the harmful ones out. The ones that cause acne, odor, etc... What is your basis to say that the ones that cause odor are harmful ? It's a pure hypothesis.
- FreedomFiber 12y ago
  Define harmful however you like. Some people might think smelling bad is detrimental to their well-being.
jrabone 12y ago
Your fecal coliforms will kill other people, simply because they're yours, not theirs. They'll kill you if they don't stay in the gut (mine tried, along with a carbapenem-resistant strain of streptococcus introduced via a central line).
- jrabone 12y ago
  I can't reply directly to "rosser" due to max comment depth, but fecal transplants don't generally involve introducing gut bacteria to anywhere other than the gut.
- rosser 12y ago
  Then why are physicians performing fecal transplants?
  - 12y ago

ufo 12y ago

Fair enough. However, it is possible that the microbiome that results from showering could be more deadly than the one that results from not showering - its not only a matter of how many bacteria there are but also what kind of bacteria they are.

pinko 12y ago
This is the key point many people miss. Assuming a basic level of sanitation, less faecal contamination (there is never zero) + less bacterial competition may be worse in practice than more faecal contamination + more bacterial competition. The key advance in urban human sanitation, as I understand it, was not the use of surfectants so much as getting the open sewers off of the streets. But I am not an expert on such things. I'd be grateful to be corrected by anyone who is.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rsync 12y ago

"So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally?" Yes, and that is true ipso facto whether they are using soap or not. You will also be fighting the microbes of school aged children (a preschool is one hell of a petri dish), animals (domestic and wild), as well as the entire biosphere you inhabit in general. If you have a compromised immune system, your neighbors decision to follow a soap-free cleansing regime (which is NOT appealing to me, btw) is the very least of your worries.

jrabone 12y ago
Soap and water is very good at removing faecal contamination. In the absence of small children and pets, and the taking of a prophylactic dose of antibiotics daily, my main concern is whether the people I share work and living space with are spreading their own faeces over surfaces I interact with. If their cleansing regime is as effective as soap and hot water, all is well.
- DanBC 12y ago
  CDC say soap and not hot water is fine too. They prefer running water.

jerf 12y ago

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Nitrosomonas+eutropha+infection%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Nitrosomonas+eutropha+inf... Note how first Google can't find any results, then redirects you, and how none of the redirects I see are talking about any infection either. I doubt an ammonia-eater is very long for the inside of our bodies, regardless of the status of the immune system. The whole "life will find a way" concept is really a horrible way to understand bacteria. Bacteria are, in fact, incredibly fragile, almost incomprehensibly so. They gain strength both in their sheer numbers, which makes it hard to get all of them off or out of something, and the sheer diversity of the various species (and to a lesser extent, within species), which means that for any given condition, there's probably some species that can survive or thrive there. Bacteria in general are extraordinarily powerful and resilient... but those properties do not extend to bacteria in specific. In specific, I see no reason to suspect this species even shows on the threat meter, as compared to any ol' cold virus or conventional bacteria infection. I reserve the right to change that assessment if someone provides more evidence.

jrabone 12y ago
Not talking about the bacteria in the product, I'm talking about the faecal bacteria (your own personal gut microbes) that are still stuck to the skin afterwards due to not using a surfactant-based washing product. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7785997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7785997 further down the thread.
- jerf 12y ago
  Touche.

dbingham 12y ago

There are many bacteria that are not the sort that are going to attack your immune system, defective or not. No matter how much you wash or use antibiotics you never eradicate bacteria from your environment. Rather, you select for the bacteria most resistant to the chemicals you apply to them. The bacteria in the sorts of microbiomics discussed in this article are (usually) totally symbiotic. They aren't going to harm you, they are going to help you. They are going to be a secondary immune system and provide you a layer of protection. Removing them is actually more dangerous for you than encouraging them. In removing them, you create a vacuum that is easier for harmful and parasitic organisms to invade. Edit: I haven't actually seen the research (and it might not have been done yet) on the specific species mentioned in the article. So I edited to speak more generally. The idea many of us have been indoctrinated with that all microorganisms are potentially harmful invaders is not only completely false, that belief has lead us as a society to take action that was potentially very harmful to us. There's an entire ecosystem down there, and much of it evolved in symbiosis with us. We provide them a home, and in return they protect and clean us. They don't want to destroy their home, they would die, too. We could learn a thing or two from them in that regard.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
I don't think this is accurate. Many bacteria that are symbiotic with immuno-normal humans are parasitic and harmful to immunocompromised humans. That said, it's unclear that regular washing with soap removes the kinds of bacteria that have the potential to be harmful -- I know for sure that skin is constantly covered with bacteria, with and without washing. So I don't know if GP's objection is realistic.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dbingham 12y ago
  Yes, there are some species that are only symbiotic in the right circumstances, but are very harmful if they escape their niches. But there are also thousands of species that are evolved for very specific niches with in our bodies and cannot survive outside of those niches. When in those niches, they are helpful. When outside of them, they are harmless. Immunocompromised or not. But you're right, I don't actually have the evidence to say whether the bacteria discussed with in the article are of the sort that are always harmless or of the sort that can be very harmful in the wrong circumstance. I'll edit the comment. I do think it is likely that they are largely harmless, because of the ammonia based metabolism. That would be pretty limiting. Also, their apparent fragility.

msandford 12y ago

I didn't see anything in the article that said "I stopped washing my hands after I used the bathroom" but I did see plenty about "I stopped using soaps and shampoos and other SHOWER related items". I think you misunderstood the goal of the experiment and the method by which she did so. Culturing less-harmful bacteria which might crowd out more-harmful bacteria is actually a great thing. The ultimate situation is where we're all covered in incredibly weaksauce bacteria that can be killed quite easily if need be, but in the meantime they out-compete all the truly nasty ones which are antibiotic-resistant. That way if someone gets an infection antibiotics (or scrubbing) will go a long way towards curing it in the rapidly-post-antibiotic era that some doctors think we are entering.

pbnjay 12y ago
There's a blog post with more quotes: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-going-suds-free-for-28-days/ http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/julia-scott-on-... Specifically, she did wash her hands with soap: > Every time I touched my hair, I had to wash my hands (I did wash my hands with soap).

jessaustin 12y ago

I haven't had a spleen in over twenty years. In my experience, asplenia has not led to sickness any greater than the norm. I have kept up with recommended vaccinations, but I'm personally not a very "clean" person. I get sick a couple of times a year, which seems typical, and I've only been memorably sick a couple of times since I lost my spleen. Certainly you and others have different experiences. Perhaps your antibiotic requirements are more related to surgical wound healing?

jrabone 12y ago
No, it's standard UK practice, especially for the first 2 years after splenectomy. It does seem to vary around the world though.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Hmmm, it seems there is a nation even nuttier about antibiotics than we Americans. I've taken antibiotics twice, for a few days each time, since I lost my spleen: wisdom teeth and a three-week sickness. Perhaps for that reason, I completely recovered from my three-week sickness within hours of taking the first pill. IANAP, but I really wonder about a standard of care that includes two years of antibiotics for a common, uncomplicated condition. What if the newly-asplenic actually got an infection while on that regimen? How would they be treated then?

criley2 12y ago

"So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you." What a sadly unscientific and ignorant answer. There are literally MILLIONS of types of bacteria. We REQUIRE millions of bacteria to simply exist and live as human beings. Not all bacteria is evil and will kill you. Most won't! In fact, if you kill all of your personal awesome bacteria, the harmful stuff can move in because you don't have any anymore. (Well if you "killed all of your own bacteria", you'd very likely be dead as well...) You get to fight my bacteria, and every humans bacteria, every day of your life. It's as normal as breathing air and eating food. Your mother colonizes you with bacteria at birth and through feeding. Our foods help us build immunities. Our friends and being outside and playing and working and everything we do exposes us to bacteria. Being exposed to bacteria isn't evil or wrong. Being weak to bacterial exposure is like being weak to sunlight-- it is going to dramatically change your life and make you very "abnormal" as a human. That's not our fault. "Soap and water have saved more lives than any medication, ever." Proper hygiene has saved those lives, of which soap and water played a role. You put the cart before the horse. HYGIENE saved lives -- soap and water was the mechanism used to achieve hygiene. " I take daily antibiotics, possibly forever. As a society, we don't just cleanse ourselves for our own well-being, we wash for others." This article isn't about giving yourself leprosy and then infecting immunocompromised people. For you to conflate "bad" bacteria with "good" bacteria is ignorant and massively hurtful to the cause of human health. If you had read the article, you would know that they're supplementing personal flora with Nitrosomonas eutropha. If Nitrosomonas eutropha can hurt you, you need to be in a bubble and NEVER exposed to any air, or the outside, or dirt, or any other humans. Herd immunity won't save you from something so common, normal and helpful to humanity. And hurting all of us just to help you, denying us the necessary and amazing flora that makes our lives possible, is selfish and Darwinian in it's own way. PLEASE respect that bacteria is ESSENTIAL to human life, and managing our own flora is ESSENTIAL to health and thriving. Just because someone wants to be healthy doesn't mean you have a right to accuse them of attacking you. If you're that sensitive, you need to protect yourself with heavy isolation. We're humans, not hermetically sealed robots. We are alive because of bacteria. Period.

XorNot 12y ago
The article is about surface external bacteria - which are very, very different to the bacterial colonies which live inside your digestive system (and also only there - if any of those get inside your circulatory system that's where most "flesh eating bacteria" horror stories start from). There's a naturalistic fallacy heavily at play here, because humans have never before lived in such close proximity in such high density dwellings as they do today. The idea that this doesn't merit some forward thinking on how we manage personal hygiene standards is ridiculous.

Periodic 12y ago

There is apparently problems with the opposite that may be occurring now in our society. The bacterial ecosystem of our guts is very poorly understood. However, we are starting to discover that some forms of obesity, irritable bowl and related disorders such as Crohn's Disease may be linked to an imbalance of gut bacteria. Possible culprits include overuse of antibiotics particularly in milk and meat; extreme cleanliness; and Cesarean sections as your gut bacteria is inherited from your mother during birth. We also know that there are some bacteria which have very positive effects, the so-called probiotics. We need these things to survive properly and in a lot of cases it is more about having the right balance than getting rid of them. I speak as a spouse of someone with Crohn's Disease who has been largely treated through diet and bacterial management. I don't have quite the grounding in the science as she does, but we have seen the effects. In short, excessive cleanliness in our modern society may actually be making people ill. We need to find the right balance.

XorNot 12y ago
Crohn's disease is an autoimmune condition. It's managed through diet and fauna control, but it sure as heck isn't caused by bacterial imbalance. It's also worth noting that bacterial imbalance is usually treated with gut-balanciing antibiotics, which a single course of did wonders for me when I used to suffer severe gutache nearly daily. Articles like the one here though sound far more ideological then scientific though. EDIT: Also worth noting, there's scant scientific evidence that probiotics do anything. Near as anyone can tell the only effective things have been antibiotics, or faecal transplants.
- gwern 12y ago
  > Crohn's disease is an autoimmune condition. It's managed through diet and fauna control, but it sure as heck isn't caused by bacterial imbalance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

headShrinker 12y ago

I'm really sorry to hear of your condition and hope you recoup as much as possible. Without being cruel, I would like to point out the irony that it is likely antibiotics that will do us in and not lack of hand washing. Really hope you get better.