Think Louis Pasteur and what comes to mind is his famous discovery about germs being the cause of some diseases. I don’t know whether he foresaw what his discovery would mean to us. On the one hand, we have reaped great benefits on account his discovery. This has led to an increase in the number of turnarounds in the medical field and probably saved a lot more lives where hygiene made a difference. Unfortunately, on the other hand what has happened on the home front has been appalling. Goaded on by the pharma companies and other businesses who have jumped on to the anti-germ bandwagon, a terror of germs, and an obsession with extreme cleanliness and with maintaining a germ free environment -where everything has to be sparkling and spotlessly clean has overtaken the general populace. It has also given birth to a strange new term called mysophobia (also known as germaphobia )

Probably the seeds of mysophobia were sown sometime during my parents generation, for even as a kid, between the lessons on cleanliness in school and on TV -Those black & White documentaries by Films Division… I remember seeing advertisements  targeted at kids like me in the Phantom comics (By Indrajal) that we used to read. The most memorable as it was oft repeated, -apart from the Ad for Parle poppins was the Ad for Binaca Toothpaste, where Killer COOH (The leader of the germs) and his red tipped cronies would use various strategies to attack Toothsville, but would always be repelled by Binaca-F with his cannon sized tube of toothpaste. Similar Ad’s on TV were being aired by another rival toothpaste manufacturer showing a wrestler wincing in pain while biting into a sugarcane (or was it corn on the cob?) and attributing his decayed teeth to using a local tooth powder which allegedly could not keep the germs at bay. Unfortunately it didn’t stop with teeth -they were just an indicator of things to come… Suddenly germs became enemy No.1 and responsible for all sorts of real & imagined ailments. The chemical companies who probably also had a part in sowing the seeds, were quick to capitalize and jump onto the bandwagon to make a quick buck and so began the big chemical invasion into our lives. Dangerous toilet cleaners, hand washes, Phenyl’s and germicidal soaps. People would not even stop to think about the side effects of indiscriminate use of chemicals. For that matter, even an excess/unbalanced use of a natural product would have its own side effects… Balance IS the key!

Practicing germicidal precautions in a hospital is perfectly understandable, but bringing it home and using it regularly in the hope that you and your loved ones would be better protected? It is at best advertising based deception and will only set you up for long time trouble. Why would a healthy person need to be dabbed with an antiseptic or taped over with a band-aid every time he gets a scratch? Unfortunately there  are so many other sources of chemical contaminants – in our food, cosmetics, household consumables, mosquito repellents, toilet/drain/floor cleaners etc.. There are also some really sick contaminants like those filthy cistern blocks which you drop into your flush tank which unnecessarily pollutes the water by coloring it blue or green. Some of us are proud of buying products made of recycled material, yet even the process of recycling itself adds more toxins to the environment and to our bodies as they come into contact with these strange new materials.  Reduce must come before Reuse  and go hand in hand with products sourced from natural materials...Germs the body can deal with if you are healthy and your immune system is working well -your body was created/designed to live with germs! But alien man made materials? The body hasn’t a clue how to defend itself against these strange poisons. Coming back to recycling…

If we look closely at how nature recycles stuff we see that anything that nature breaks down (recycles) is available for all creatures/organisms. Our selfish recycling programs recycle products so that only man can use it again… this will NEVER work out!

In one particular season in Delhi, you get a lot of these small brownish grasshoppers every where. I often find them in my kitchen sink. Since at that time I used to be scared of insects, I’d just rub the wet scotchbrite scourer on a very popular green colored detergent cake (which we have been using at home for as long as I can remember after Biz stopped production) and squeezed the now liquid soap onto the grasshopper. -The grasshopper died instantly without even a twitch of its leg! I tried it a few times over the years with the same result and finally got so freaked out that I stopped buying any kind of dish washing cake and switched to Amway’s organic coconut oil based dish washing liquid. I don’t know how much poisonous residual dish washing soap I have ingested over the years as no one will be able to wash off detergent (used in a loose sense) from utensils (or clothes) completely. The best option still is ash! Ash when it combines with water and the fat or grease left on a utensil, forms a natural biodegradable soap and the traces that are ingested are not as harmful as the horrible detergents (again used in a loose sense) available in the market.

[Ash + Water = Lye (Potassium hydroxide) + edible grease or fat from the Plate = Natural soap]*

Unfortunately most of us Indians always go for things that “work well” (Consumables) (even if it ultimately reduces the life of the object in concern) and costs less -regardless of the cost to our health and environment and to those around us, whereas for products that we should be buying which work well -like good quality equipment which lasts, -we buy the cheapest, justifying that it still cheaper to discard and buy a new one. I was a victim of the former when I supposed that buying cheap detergent powder was ok as it was a consumable. However when I saw the leather patch on my Levi’s jeans shrivel and crumble in a few washes, I realized how dangerous and caustic the product was even though it washed cleaner and brighter than the more expensive powders.

As a believing Christian, I believe God created the world and everything in it and is concerned even about the dust mites that live on the floor of my house. So it was obvious to me right from the start -even before the greenies shouted themselves hoarse about habitat destruction, chemical contamination and the loss of bio diversity that all of creation complements/supports each other. When people speak of Bio diversity, they automatically think animals and plants and forget that insects and micro organisms are part of creation and an integral part of the food chain! Since modern science has left God out of the picture and believe that such stupendously complex things such as the human body and the rest of creation just happened or was just a coincidence, scientists try to find solutions from their own finite knowledge and “intelligence” fooling themselves that because they have some half answers, sooner or later they will have all the answers.

Even if you don’t believe in God, it still doesn’t make any sense to go to these extremes. If we believe that vaccination can give us enough immunity to protect us from dangerous diseases like small pox (Thanks Edward Jenner), we also must realize that when we get nicks and scratches (or even wounds) and our bodies are invaded by foreign hosts, antibodies will be produced. I always believed that animals have special immunity because of which they can feed off the ground and eat stuff in various states of freshness without getting sick (Mind you! Some animals CAN eat things which are poisonous to us) until one day near Paschim Vihar I observed a man picking up discarded food from the municipal dust bin and eating it without any ill effects! I observed him every Sunday on the way to Church!!! After conducting experiments on myself for over 3 years. I came to the conclusion that at animals too have achieved immunity -natural vaccination! I have also totally stopped taking any kind of medication -giving my body enough time to recover before consulting a doctor. I don’t avoid going to a Doctor -I just give my body a fair chance to do what God designed it to do. I prefer natural stuff like Homoeopathic or ayurvedic medicines, but at the same time am not averse to getting myself admitted to a hospital and consuming chemical based medicines in an emergency situation or say in course of a surgery. The doctor would know my body a hundred times better than I would myself. There are just three things I’m scared of in conventional medicine, -being treated for symptoms rather than the cause, being poisoned by chemical medicines and suffering their side effects. It is at best a compromise which I will opt for only in the circumstances mentioned above. Hospitals ARE scary places!

“Antibiotics kill “good” (beneficial) bacteria along with the bacteria that cause illness.” source www.webmd.com

The next area the ghost of Louis invades is our food -boil water for 20 minutes to be safe say the textbooks. One of the main reasons that our immune system is so weak is because our terror of germs causes us to over boil and over cook everything. (destroying nutrients in the food) Drinking sterile water weakens our immune system because we do not allow natural immunization to occur, and in the case of RO (Reverse Osmosis) based water filters, robs us of essential minerals that are part of water.  Besides most water filters cannot get rid of chemical contaminants! Just a few days back my friend had a case of loose bowels by eating (or drinking) from a roadside vendor. He swore that he would not patronize the stall again. (I’m sure this has further bolstered his faith in the bad effects of unsterilized water) It seems highly likely though that he had lost his immunity by regularly drinking sanitized bottled water or by using one of those super seven stage UV water filters. Sometimes we do need to be safe though, like when we are traveling and we can’t risk diarrhoea and the accompanying dehydration. So for those who need to boil -like when you are camping or those who boil regularly out of habit or because they are unsure of water quality, some advice from the wilderness medical society… but remember, along with the “bad” organisms, you also destroy the good organisms and probably other minerals also which are affected by heat. (I do take special precautions during the rains though when there are usually outbreaks of water borne diseases)

“Water temperatures above 160° F (70° C) kill all pathogens within 30 minutes and above 185° F (85° C) within a few minutes. So in the time it takes for the water to reach the boiling point (212° F or 100° C) from 160° F (70° C), all pathogens will be killed, even at high altitude.”

If you Google solar water purification, you will find instances of solar disinfection -fill a bottle with water, place it on its side on a dark surface on your roof and by evening your water is safe to drink. But beware of using plastic bottles in the sun as the plastic will leech toxins into the water! At the time of writing, I have been drinking tap water (unfiltered, unboiled and without any additives) for quite some time. The only time I would boil water would be when I am camping in a remote area by myself. I’m not very happy about the fact that I paid Rs.7000/- for a popular 7 stage water purifier with UV and have given it away to friend who was contemplating to buy one.

Recently I was reading a magazine which had a write-up on one of the most famous cheese makers around, -their secret? In their own words “we don’t use dead milk!” i.e. milk that is pasteurized or heated -they use only raw milk as pasteurization destroys/modifies essential nutrients/micro organisms in the milk. This is further confirmed by Dr. Price** in his research on why certain communities like the Swiss residing in the Loetschental valley in Switzerland had almost no cavities -one of the ingredients of their diet was -fresh, raw milk from free range pasture fed cows! I extend this principle to water too. Google hexagonal water to find out the difference between water that is alive and water that is dead and why some Koreans climb the hills for a couple of hours each morning just to drink from fresh, oxygenated mountain streams. For me if fish can’t live in the water I drink, it is unfit to drink simply because that is how water is found in nature and that is the way God intended it to be.

“The normal human digestive tract contains about 400 types of probiotic bacteria that reduce the growth of harmful bacteria and promote a healthy digestive system. The largest group of probiotic bacteria in the intestine is lactic acid bacteria, of which Lactobacillus acidophilus, found in yogurt, is the best known. Yeast is also a probiotic substance.” source www.webmd.com

Yeah, some of the business tycoons have jumped onto all of these bandwagons. I find someone selling organically grown produce wrapped in clingfilm! (Plastic) Some grocery stores not giving out plastic grocery bags anymore (on account of the government banning them), but still selling polished rice, refined sugar etc. Others selling “probiotic” curd and other probiotic potions laced with a lot of refined sugar. preservatives and artificial colours and flavours… they cannot see the whole picture, because they don’t want to, they are just doing it because that is what sells.. if anything sells (preferably for more) then that is exactly what is sold. Recently the retail chain that I used to shop from stopped selling brown sugar (unbleached sugar) -because it did not sell as they expected it too… (I had already switched to Jaggery by then) so that is the long and short of it. Thanks to businesses and manufacturers, governments and corporations we will continue to receive unnecessarily high doses of chemicals -as germicides, cleanliness aids, added to our food (either to add attractive unnatural tastes, give it a more pleasing appearance/consistency or to increase their shelf lives), from our dear modes of conveyance and last but not least from Chemically derived medicines.

As I was writing this the power failed. My poorly ventilated house being on the top floor is like an oven in the now 43 degree Delhi heat. I went for a drink of water and realized that water was over. I went downstairs and instead of buying a bottle of water packed in plastic and “fortified” with sodium chloride and magnesium something, I went to the nearby juice wala and ordered a tall glass of sweetlime juice for the same cost of that of a bottle of water. I saw an AIIMS doctor ordering the same -however, she wanted it in a plastic glass -probably due to the probability of micro organisms breeding in improperly washed glasses or transfer of some disease from the guy who used it before her. Then just as she was walking away, she turned back and demanded a square of aluminum foil as “there were flies around” and another plastic straw to pierce through the foil. I looked around and with great difficulty found a single juvenile fly hopping from spot to spot. If I was her, I’d be worried more about the unwashed plastic glass, aluminum foil & straw -right from the time of manufacture and the leeching of chemicals from the plastic into the juice, and lastly the quality of the water used to make the ice which was grated and added into the juice. What would happen to the square of aluminum foil, plastic glass and straw after she chucked it into the dust bin would also weigh heavily on my mind! Sigh!

Towards the end of Louis Pasteur’s life, he confessed that germs may not be the cause of disease after all, but may simply be another symptom of disease. He had come to realize that germs seem to lead to illness primarily when the person’s immune and defense system (what biologists call “host resistance”) is not strong enough to combat them. The “cause” of disease is not simply a bacteria but also the factors that compromise host resistance, including the person’s hereditary endowment, his nutritional state, the stresses in his life, and his psychological state. ****

Quotes

“For many of us it comes as as surprise to learn that bacteria are highly intelligent and adaptable. We have been taught from birth that they are pretty dumb and that, through the use of antibiotics, we are winning a war against them, a war that will end all disease. In fact the opposite is true. Bacteria show behaviour that indicate intelligence and they are acting together throughout the world to counter the antibiotics we have invented to kill them off. Bacteria, it turns out, are inextricably intertwined with the formation of the human species and the health of the Earth. One to two pounds of our body weight are bacteria and over eons we have developed a crucial and important symbiosis with them.” ***

Alexander Fleming, the scientist who discovered penicillin, cautioned against the overuse of antibiotics. Unless the scientific community and the general public heed his warning, Harvard professor Walter Gilbert, a Nobel prizewinner in chemistry, asserted, “There may be a time down the road when 80% to 90% of infections will be resistant to all known antibiotics.” The scientific community and the general public have ignored the insights of the late Pasteur and have ignored the importance of host resistance in preventing illness. ****

Comment on this post

If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.