Are we all growing sicker?

It's safer eating food that's touched the ground than it is shaking hands with a saleman that doesn't wash his hands before touching the bathroom door handle.

Great topic. I rarely get sick as well, despite my regular occupations requiring me to touch lots of money and hands. I was never vaccinated against the measles/mumps/rhuebella, and about three years ago, I cought the measles. It really wasn't too bad, like a regular flu, yet it lasted about five weeks. This past spring, I caught something awful at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show. It MUST have been something international, that my immune system has not encountered before. But it only lasted a week. Both of my parents rarely get sick, maybe once in every 8-10 years, but this past month my father caught cold, which even he thought was unusual.

I really do think it's something to do with being overly santized. Those hand sanitizers drive me crazy, never used it, never will. Some people are almost religously using it. When i was cleaning with bleach alot, i noticed i would get acne, once i stopped, my acne went away. And has been gone for awhile, and it's nothing to do with my hormones. I truly believe that cleaning your hands of 99.9% of bacteria leaves open ground for that nasty .1% to take over. We should have a healthy petri dish of bacteria on our skin and our intestines, without we cannot prevail.

Are you #ing retarded? You don't get a "takeover", if you wash your hands again, those acteria also disappear, so no takeovers.
There is no such thing as healthy bacterias, at least not on the OUTSIDE of your body, and I'm not too sure about the ones on the inside either...

I KNOW you people are UNDERLY sanitized, not overly.


The acne from chlorine is stupid.


And it is just as stupid to eat or touch anything after shaking hands with anyone, before washing your hands, as it is to eat food off the ground. But if you want intestinal worms then be my guest.

[edit on 13-4-2008 by Rocambole]

reply to post by Rocambole

Did our ancestors lay around on piles of leaves, too sick to get up, most days out of the year because they ate berries without washing their grubby hands?

reply to post by Cythraul


`No, none of my ancestors ate before washing their hands, and neither did yours.

Haven't read through the thread yet, but I had to sound off with an affirmative. I have been slightly and a bit more than slightly sick for months at a time, as have most people I know. Not to mention the fact that everyone is always tired all of the time. Something is wrong.

I have been proggressively sicker by the day, a multitude of problems with my health recently has me seeking answers via internet, my doctor seems to not want to link any of it to my use of statins, although I have every side effect known with the use of statins. The doc, even 2 of them, attribute each symptom to a single issue, not related to Lipitor. I stopped taking the Lipitor last week when my tongue started going numb then jerking back to life with a jolting pain, now a burning sensation to my tongue is making me miserable. My hands are numb, my legs too, and pain in my knees and calves is unbearable. I have always thought we are being slow poisined by local plants, and last week it was annouced that after about 50 years of operation, a local power plant installed a 'scrubber'. After testing shows unacceptable amounts of sulpher dioxide, mercury, and fine particulants are in our air and water in this area. The stuff eats cars, it lands on them and eats them up, rust holes in a 2008 model should tell ya something is not right. The scubber will turn up to 93 percent of the pollutants into water vapor, that is great, but WTF, it took too long to do something about it!

jackinthebox and space cadet - I hope you both feel better soon, particularly you space cadet. Seems like you been suffering a bit of late. Not good. And Jac, I have to agree that I have my suspicions. I trust my own judgement immensely and I know I'm not capable of hypochondria - yet things are different of late.

Originally posted by Rocambole
`No, none of my ancestors ate before washing their hands, and neither did yours.

You mean to say that hunter gatherers would carry a bowl of water with them wherever they went, ensuring to rinse their hands thoroughly before eating that handful of nuts they just found... and furthermore, that they'd empty the dirty water and fill at afresh before the next person could use it to rinse their hands?

Originally posted by CythraulYou mean to say that hunter gatherers would carry a bowl of water with them wherever they went, ensuring to rinse their hands thoroughly before eating that handful of nuts they just found... and furthermore, that they'd empty the dirty water and fill at afresh before the next person could use it to rinse their hands?

That's YOUR misguided belief.

I'm sorry Rocambole but I don't understand. What do you think our hunter gatherer ancestors did in order to keep their hands clean at all times? I really don't want to pick a fight here, 'cos it's not like I'm an expert myself, but I think it follows fairly logically that our ancestors didn't always have the means to thoroughly clean their hands before every time they consumed food. Modern man - anthropologically - has been around for tens of thousands of years. That's an awful lot of feral living up until the time we settled into communities and stored water and developed methods of hygiene.

If I'm so misguided, I'd like to know how.

reply to post by Cythraul


Thanks cythral, I appreciate the concern. I feel like I am falling apart sometimes. I attribute most of my problems thought to the use of Statins, I had no idea what all the side effects really were, they aren't listed. Instead you get a paper telling you that the risks with side effects are not as great as the benifits. Quite frankly though, I didn't know I had high cholestoral to begin with, I wasn't complaining about anything cholestoral related, my doc just checked it, it was high, they put me on statins. That was a long time ago. My side effects started immediately, and should have been recognized as a side effect, but not even my doctor knew it was. Dermotographism. Skin Writing. I thought I was possessed. My doctor thought I was having some kind of continuous alergic reaction. I found out what it was on my own, the doc was just giving me shots of steriods while I swelled up and anything that touched my skin left lines and circles. One night after holding my precious poodle I noticed what looked like a name on my leg, written in my skin, looked like it said 'Mandy'. I was thinking my nephew's ex wife, whom I detested and he just divorced, had placed some kind of voodoo on me! LOL! I got on the internet and typed in just that: skin writing , the results told me about dermatographism. I printed it out , took it to the doc, he did a test, scraping my skin lightly with a tongue depressor, and walla, a line appeared and stayed there, all bright red, and for the rest of the day. I wrote 'hey doc' on my arm the next week about an hour before my visit, he found out he could try to treat me using Allegra, an antihisamine. But he didn't make the connection to statins. Same thing with my numb hands and feet, severe and constant headaches, blurred vision, mouth burning, various rashes, night sweats, the list goes on and on. Oh well, lets see what they tell me this week, got an appointment on Wed.

Originally posted by space cadet
I wrote 'hey doc' on my arm the next week about an hour before my visit

Haha that's brilliant. Good luck with it all. While I wouldn't go so far as to say there's a conspiracy to make us all sick, I definitely think there are health issues and side-effects (like you say, statins) that are kept secret (perhaps so as to not alarm us).