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Getting your hands dirty is good for you

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Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#111

Post by p_j_w »

JTbane wrote: post #104
doubled112 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along? Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it? Too many questions. I'm going outside.

I have some beef with the sunscreen people, mostly because of 3 things: - Skin cancer is by far the least deadly type of cancer and nearly always just requires some low-risk skin removal. - Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer. - Vitamin D.

Skin cancer may be less deadly than other types of cancer, but it is still far more deadly than not having cancer. Rattlesnake bites in the US have a lower mortality rate than skin cancer, are you gonna go trying to handle rattlesnakes without protection or safety measures?

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#112

Post by kuerbel »

jacobrast wrote: post #95
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #85

Not just your hands. Walking barefoot, over all manner of surfaces, feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down. I've done it lots, both in the countryside and in the city. You have to watch out for spiky plants and fox shit in the country, and in the city you soon learn which surface textures require more care :-) "Where would I find enough leather to cover the entire surface of th…

Did you know that walking barefoot in the Southern US was how most people contracted hookworm? At is height an estimated 40% of the population in certain regions had the parasite which was know to cause a "mental haze". Some historians attribute the disease (again, contracted by walking barefoot outdoors) to have caused the stereotype of the "lazy slow southerner" [1]. Do you feel walking barefoot is worth the risk o…

One could wear barefoot shoes. Not that they are exactly the same as walking barefoot. They are still shoes! But a good compromise.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#114

Post by Marha01 »

JTbane wrote: post #104
doubled112 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along? Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it? Too many questions. I'm going outside.

I have some beef with the sunscreen people, mostly because of 3 things: - Skin cancer is by far the least deadly type of cancer and nearly always just requires some low-risk skin removal. - Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer. - Vitamin D.

> Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.

You know what feels even better? Not getting skin cancer.

> Vitamin D

Easily obtained from supplements.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#115

Post by scottLobster »

LiamPowell wrote: post #98
jackschultz wrote: post #81

Curious what people's thoughts here are on grounding as another benefit. Article talks about benefits of bacteria on the skin, but I'd say the other and maybe bigger benefit is discharge of electrical energy in our bodies to the ground. Which, can sounds weird depending. Some papers on the subject[0] talking about similar results as this article, almost implying that it's not the microbes, but grounding making the di…

Note that all of the authors of this paper work for a company that sells this snake oil. This entire idea of charging or discharging your body for some physiological effect is fundamentally flawed. It is indeed true that touching the ground will change your electrical potential to that of the ground, however that's as far as it goes, the rest is just nonsensical. Let's start with the very first part of that, specific…

To play devil's advocate, as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground. It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface vs ensconced in synthetic materials above it.

Granted there's no evidence for that as of yet, but there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste that couldn't be digested and so had no benefit, that's part of how we got Wonder Bread and the obesity epidemic.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#116

Post by enaaem »

stevekemp wrote: post #43
nxobject wrote: post #18

I look forward to seeing a lifehacking hyper-optimizer streamline this to a polished daily workflow... "I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning. Every weekend, I inoculate at a 1:5:5 ratio with biologically active stream dirt (after petri-dishing to check for activity), and a mix of poor-quality soil cover, and some compost; I finish by adding a 10-10-10 balanced fertilizer. Rec…

I made the mistake of looking at /r/sauna on Reddit once or twice recently, and there was a lot of people doing very similar things. "I take my preworkout, do my exercise, then I sit for 12 minutes at 90 degrees in sauna, before three minutes in the cold plunge-pool at 8 degrees, before going to sauna again for 19 minutes and I finish with a seven minute warm shower". Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna…

Sounds like typical geek stuff you see on any enthousiast forum. You should check the coffee forums.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#117

Post by dd8601fn »

howunfortunate wrote: post #90
nxobject wrote: post #18

I look forward to seeing a lifehacking hyper-optimizer streamline this to a polished daily workflow... "I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning. Every weekend, I inoculate at a 1:5:5 ratio with biologically active stream dirt (after petri-dishing to check for activity), and a mix of poor-quality soil cover, and some compost; I finish by adding a 10-10-10 balanced fertilizer. Rec…

There's something very sad about all these people spending so much energy on crazy intensive n of 1 experiments. If we could only get them to collaborate, we could get some real knowledge out of it!

I blame Mythbusters!

Kidding… I love them.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#118

Post by dd8601fn »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #56
Tepix wrote: post #28

> Those using the microbially-diverse soil saw an increase in the diversity of bacteria on their skin, and on the number of anti-inflammatory cytokines in their blood – while the other group didn't. That's really remarkable.

Yeah, getting the immune system to tone down the responses is probably the best one can do for oneself health. Our body didn't get the memo that for the last 200 years water and food are clean now and bacteria is fought with antibiotics. Getting the immune system to not freak out at everything it detects via just touching grass is the best news I've read today.

The next fad… microdosing immunosuppressants? We could get in early.

Nevermind. Just saw people are already doing it.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#119

Post by keybored »

nxobject wrote: post #18

I look forward to seeing a lifehacking hyper-optimizer streamline this to a polished daily workflow... "I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning. Every weekend, I inoculate at a 1:5:5 ratio with biologically active stream dirt (after petri-dishing to check for activity), and a mix of poor-quality soil cover, and some compost; I finish by adding a 10-10-10 balanced fertilizer. Rec…

Holy heck, ain’t this the truth.

Really it’s the logical conclusion of living your whole life by studies-show. Studies show that friends are good for you. That’s why I have friends. Studies show that laughing is good for you. That’s why I indulge in merry company. Studies show that dirt is good for you. That’s why I go off the beaten asphalt.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#120

Post by jan_m_savage »

This is just how anti-fragility works. Getting your hands 'dirty' is what's known as introducing turbulence and chaos in order to achieve true stability/robustness.

Conversely, trying to keep your hands too clean might create more severe bacteria problems--which is known as: system blow-up.

A good layperson-friendly example of such blow-ups (that are inevitable, due to avoidance of small 'failures') was masterfully depicted in Matthew Lewis's 'The Monk'-- in which he shows how a pious, religious abbot whose piety was not earned (but merely guarded), descends into the worst possible outcomes because his piety and morality was not antifragile (and hence blew up). A fascinating read.

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