161–170 of 216 posts
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…
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Why would that give you the benefits of walking barefoot? If the point is to pick up bacteria, shoes are shoes. It doesn't matter if the toes are separated or not.
GP said the benefits of walking barefoot are "feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down." In that context it seems like barefoot shoes would still work. They are essentially foot condoms, so you get most of the same sensation without the potential ickiness.
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…
Washing in the river used to be normal + good for the body - we do cold plunges now.
Probiotic supplements exist, we used to get those for free.
We're gamifying nature. Not saying it's a bad thing, just amusing to me that it used to be our entire lives and we're using technology to get it into our lives in smaller amounts.
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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 dige…
> It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface This is like saying it’s plausible that wearing a bracelet with a small magnet in it will have health benefits. It’s pure woo. There’s no reason to believe this from a scientific angle. It’s perhaps not impossible but it is certainly not plausible. > there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just in…
I'm not saying that's "evidence", or that the posted study is valid, but I'm also not aware of any robust studies demonstrating no difference from placebo. A lack of good data is neither positive nor negative.
As for dietary fiber, it wasn't broadly seen as useful for anything other than constipation until the 1970s when it was shown that increased fiber intake reduced colon cancer risk
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…
Doesn't take long to build up a good enough callus that even sharp gravel is tolerable.
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…
Now, my big caveat here would that one shouldn't confuse effects with explanations. Even if the explanations are pseudoscience, it could still work. But... you really do need to rule out placebo if you want to claim there's an effect.
(The other caveat is that if it's otherwise harmless, and works for you, then it doesn't actually matter if it's "just" the placebo effect.)
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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 dige…
This isn't true, though. For the majority of human history, humans set up grass and leaf bedding atop campfire ash, using animal furs for additional insulation when needed. Ash and leaves are electrical insulators.
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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…
Are you walking on human feces a lot? Hook work was a problem because of a huge lack of sanitary conditions. Less about being barefoot. Would I walk around barefoot in my yard? Absolutely.