Do you think Americans are destroying its immune systems by using too many disinfecting and cleaning products?

As far as soap for the skin….Various studies suggest that antibacterial soaps can be harmful and may lead to problems like super bugs, dry skin, and hand eczema. According to current research antibacterial soaps are no better than traditional soaps when it comes to house hold use.

check this out

Yep, I do. I am obsessive about using the wipes they provide at the grocery store for your carts, ever since I saw a program that investigated exactly what lives on those things. Yikes!

I actually thought that too much cleaning actually makes our immune systems hyper-sensitive. So when we DO come in contact with a virus/bacterium, there is a big immune response…? Also contributes to crazy food allergies in children?

That’s what I think I read. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I do know that too much antibacterial products are bad. Some bacteria can easily become resistant to the products through mutations, and then you get these nasty “super germs” that are extremely difficult to get rid of…esp when you get sick with them.

And no, I don’t clean too much…too much effort. ugh.

Probably – in India in China I saw some pretty gross things and guess what? Nobody was dropping down dead in the streets, which made me realize we are WAY too clean in the US….Now, if food falls on the floor, I eat it. I sit on toilet seats, I use environmentally-friendly cleaning products…the cleaning industry has made a fortune off of germphobia, if you ask me, and now people are allergic to everything under the sun and dying of super bugs.

Nope. We don’t clean our apartment too much, my roomies and I. I’m not very dirty. However, the bathroom must be cleaned daily because there are three of us and the guy roomie is really lackadaisical. I don’t think we use anti-bacterial anything. White vinegar, ammonia and regular Comet is the most we use for anything.

I shower daily (Dr. Bronner’s OK!), I’ll wash my hands before and after cooking or after going to the toilet, but other than that, I don’t go nuts about it. My aunt was a white glove-wielding clean freak, and my roomies’ father was pretty close to that himself, so we’re more laid back. Maybe, we each get a stomach bug or one bad cold a year.

There is a “Hygeine Hypothesis” that increasingly hygeinic conditions lead to an increasing incidence of auto-immune diseases.

Check out all the toxins in our air, water, food and soil and weep.

http://www.scorecard.org/ranking/rankings-explanations.tcl

Well the germophobia is definitely overboard. “This product kills 99.9% of bacteria!” Many people don’t realize that most of the bacteria in their environment are not harmful to humans. Not only that, but bacteria cover almost every surface of everything and reproduce at an alarming rate. When you use your cleaning products to kill all of those bacteria they quickly grow back.

Did you know that your body is full of helpful bacteria? Sometimes when these benign bacteria are killed off, it frees up real estate for pathogenic strains.

@Vinifera7: Adding on to your point, another thing people don’t always realize is that even if the product kills 99.9% of bacteria, there are millions of bacteria, and the .1 percent of the bad bacteria that aren’t killed are enough to make you sick anyway.

Yep. I quit using anti-bacterial hand soap long ago. Study after study have shown that it’s not only unnecessary it’s causing more problems! The only thing I’m kind of nuts about is food safety. Other than that, I say let the weakest bacteria live rather than killing the weak only to have the strong survive and create super bugs.

What you say is true to a certain extent. There is a theory known as “hygiene hypothesis” which supports your statement. Just google this word to find about more about this….....According to this theory by being too clean, you might be making your immune system less competent to fight against immune system

Besides the overcleaning, the development of supergerms by not taking all antibiotics prescribed and dumping unused pharms down the toilet and into the ecosystem is setting us up for a pandemic.

You do know we have had fast moving, population destroying diseases every 100–200 years. Most recently Spanish influenza lasted from 1918–1920 and killed more Americans than WWI. It spread to the remotest parts of the world and they still haven’t identified the bacteria or germ.

@galileogirl You said “Most recently Spanish influenza lasted from 1918–1920 and killed more Americans than WWI. It spread to the remotest parts of the world and they still haven’t identified the bacteria or germ.” That “germ” was, in fact, influenza virus. The virus has actually been isolated.

Well according to my information it has been isolated in bodies from the Arctic Circle but has not been definitivly identified nor has any way to “cure” it been found.(PBS)

I guess my resources (actual primary scientific journals, as opposed to PBS) are wrong then… The entire genome of the Spanish Influenza virus has been sequenced. That is as definitive an identification as it gets. As for a cure, you are correct, there is no cure for influenza, but then, that is true for most viruses.

Stop trying to pick a fight kiddo. I gave my source so that nobody would think I was trying to play a scientist. Chill and get back to your research. LOL

@galileogirl I’m going to go ahead and edit out some of the needless passive aggression in your last comment.

[Let’s not] Stop trying to pick a fight kiddo. I gave my source so that nobody would think I was trying to play a scientist. Chill and get back to your research. LOL

Better, right?

@Nimis: Seems to be a trend.

@shilolo: I appreciate your primary sources. I definitely learned a lot!

Yes. I think we’ve overused antibiotics as well.