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Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

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341–350 of 420 posts

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#341

Why is anyone surprised by any of this ? I don't mean to sound like a pleb, but the biggest lesson of the past two centuries is how much people bluff, use the name of 'science, progress, blah blah' to push for their own profits, regardless of actual consequences (bodily or environmentally or ecologically). I generally stick to old-school goods that are totally natural, cheap and are still massively produced in India.…

There is nothing about something being "natural" that makes it inherently safer. Indeed there is nothing that is not natural in fact. Wood ash soap is no different than any other soap you may buy in the market. It only differs in the way that potassium hydroxide, that is used to make soap, is obtained. It doesn't matter whether you obtain potassium hydroxide from wood ash or other industrial methods, it still is potassium hydroxide! Of course in older times burning wood was the only known method of obtaining potassium hydroxide. It doesn't mean it's the best method not does it change the overall outcome in any way.

You seem to be taking a diss at science. The point of science is to learn more about things, whether they are old school or modern. Science does not discriminate. People of course bluff in the name of profits for their own gain, but if you do not have knowledge about the things, you won't be able to call out the bluff.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas stoves exhaust right into the house. Besides raising the CO2 level, they produce CO, carbon monoxide, and smoke from whatever impurities come with the gas, that vary according to where it comes from. I doubt anybody bothers to get the radon out. That would cost money. Propane is probably purer than straight-up NG, but it's exhaust is still exhaust.

>Gas stoves exhaust right into the house Best case you have a hood that vents to the outside. Hoods really work

Restaurants commonly have such hoods. I don't know of any private homes that do, though I don't doubt a few exist.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marketing side of the market has spoken. Fixed serving sizes force over-use. Lots of included water means extra volume and weight (perceived value) on the shelf. While powders allow measured use, and reduce turnover. I buy 20lb boxes of cheap powder and they last for months. Hot water just doesn’t need that much help if you put some in the pre-wash too.

20 years ago in my country overuse of powder detergents was well known by all the manufacturers; this is when fixed serving sizes were developed as a way to contain the problem and they are also considered more convenient by most consumers. I was working in one of these companies at that time, so I know the subject pretty well.

I would have assumed that overuse was a desirable outcome for the manufacturer.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fill the salt? I'm not sure all dishwashers have a receptacle for that. Ours doesn't, and I'm pretty confident that I've never had one that did across several states in the US and one place in Belgium. Is the salt for doing a softening process that substitutes for a whole house softener if you don't have one? We live in a place with hard water and have no softener in the house (you should see our electric kettle when…

> and one place in Belgium. You might not have paid attention to it because your didn't know about it, but I don't think there are any dishwashers in Belgium that don't use salt, at least for the last twenty years or so.

1) Thanks for the reminder that I'm getting old :-)

2) IIRC, that house had a whole house softener.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#345

Why is anyone surprised by any of this ? I don't mean to sound like a pleb, but the biggest lesson of the past two centuries is how much people bluff, use the name of 'science, progress, blah blah' to push for their own profits, regardless of actual consequences (bodily or environmentally or ecologically). I generally stick to old-school goods that are totally natural, cheap and are still massively produced in India.…

> torture-filled cows

I think other animals are used just as much (if not more) in industrial processes, I assure you there's no conspiracy to specifically oppress cows.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#346
post #78

I suffered from chronic diarrhea for years which I attributed to Crohn's disease. This seemed obvious since diarrhea is a very common symptom of Crohn's, but its onset had been several years after I was diagnosed and prior to that I had tended more towards the opposite problem (constipation). I was thus always suspicious that the root cause lay elsewhere. After much experimenting I found that if I ran my dishwasher t…

This post is incredible. How did you get the idea to experiment with your dishwasher? Another question: If you wash dishes by hand, is everything OK?

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#347
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas stoves exhaust right into the house. Besides raising the CO2 level, they produce CO, carbon monoxide, and smoke from whatever impurities come with the gas, that vary according to where it comes from. I doubt anybody bothers to get the radon out. That would cost money. Propane is probably purer than straight-up NG, but it's exhaust is still exhaust.

radon decays into dust in a couple of days, but natural gas deposits are tens of millions of years old and have been out of touch with potential radon-generating rocks for weeks or months by the time they reach your stove burner getting radon out does not cost money

In a week or three, anyway. Anywhere somebody has bothered to liquify the NG, the radon will have decayed before it gets vaporized again. Where pipelines lead straight to gas wells, the dwell time in the pipeline before it is burnt could be quite short. But there might be negligible radon even at the wellhead, as it would need to be picked up from surrounding rock on the way out, unlike e.g. helium which accumulates.

Probably other toxins are more important: mercury vapor and hydrogen sulfide are usually mentioned. Hydrocarbons other than methane may burn to carbon monoxide or soot. Gas is said to get much less processing before delivery than it used to.

SpaceX will probably purify theirs before pumping it aboard, just to increase the useful life of their Raptor engines.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#348
post #266

I wash dishes by hand with hot water and a Korean abrasive cloth using no soap ... It's quicker and easier than anything else

Have a link to the Korean abrasive cloth you recommend? Would like to try it.

google this ... Crown Choice Heavy Duty Dish Scrubbers for Cleaning Dishes & Pots ... its a slightly abrasive cloth

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#349
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about sulfates, specifically SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate - which has many whack-a-mole names). SLS is a surficant, and although not named in this study, it has been shown in other studies to interfere with mucous membranes (canker sores, etc) I would wonder if that happens in the gut too. It is in many things. toothpaste, shampoo, dishwasher and laundry detergents, and lots more Since people are trying to avo…

I used to get canker sores every once in a while. I cut out SLS by purchasing Toms toothpaste, and that helped a lot. I would still get them though, maybe twice a year. The thing that finally fixed it was almonds. I stopped eating almonds and I’ve never had a canker sore since.

No idea about canker sores but cold sores outbreaks (caused by the herpes virus) are linked to almonds consumption because they are heavy in arginine and don't have much lysine.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#350
The news around this, this thread, and similar on Reddit seem to be assuming a jump that isn't supported in this paper.

  "The residue remaining after the rinse cycle varies between 1:250 to 1:667 for the dishwasher detergent and 1:2,000 to 1:10,000 dilutions for the rinse aid."
This is actually an uncited claim in the paper, and the paper authors did not test it.

  "In the present study, we hypothesized that if the detergent and rinse aid residues are not completely removed, once dry, they may remain on the surface of the dishware."
But then they go on to only test what would happen to gut lining cells if most dishes most of the time had residue on them in such concentrations as they assume would be present, transfer to the food, and make it past the stomach.

This line of research really should have started with something like,

  "we swabbed 50 recently washed and dried dishes from 25 different restaurants using different dish-washing machines. Here is the average concentration of detergent and rinse aid residue on the dry dishes".
I get that's not the study they wanted to do, of course; who wants to spend hours and days swabbing dry dishes when you have a decent reason to play with new biotech?

But that means the only thing this paper actually looked at is: IF there is residue on the dry dishes, and IF that remains in the assumed concentrations by the time you eat off of it, and IF all of that residue ends up attached to your food, and IF all those chemicals make it past your stomach, let's see what that might do to your gut lining.

Not a bad idea for a study, but definitely not what people on the internet are taking this to be.

The news articles are promoting that unsupported claim to an assumed fact that there is chemical residue on all the dishes people are eating from and that this is destroying people's gut lining. Most of the headlines around this are something to the effect of: "Commercial Dishwashers Destroy Protective Layer in Gut".

Which is pure sensationalism, the paper authors never claim this and this idea is not supported by present evidence.

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