Exposure makes you healthy

Travel makes you healthy.

Travel as much as you can within your 'green plan' construct (though I hate the idea that while flying my family is being repeatedly bombarded by every sneeze, cough, or other germ fellow passengers have to dish out). We have to balance out our needs and ability to help the world as travelers; being green enough versus potentially having the interchange impacts of changing minds and countries has to balance out; and, if you are like me, give your self a couple days recovery from flying -  because you WILL GET SICK; and, psychosomatically at least, I always seem to need a shower, a bed, some exercise, lots and lots of water - and I still get some sickness within days of long flights.

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Chickens and pets make us healthier.

Having less than sanitized conditions make us healthier.

Exposure makes you healthy. Get dirty in life, unconventional I know but ask a gardener.

One obvious exception seems duly diligent for a reminder: Peeps are not pets. They produce no milk. When a three year old is going down a list of milk producers (Cows, Mommies, Goats etc): no Peeps!

We can all become more earth conscious as a part of being health conscious; if fact, it makes sense.

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On the other hand...

Antibiotics make us sicker

Anti-bacterial soaps keep us getting sick.

Use your head. Expose yourself and your children to the world - and to dirt. Rather than worrying senselessly and uselessly about the bugs - worry about whether human pollutions (lead, arsenic, mercury, asbestos) will get into their little systems and teach them to wash hands with foamy soap.

I had my first allergy attacks after 40 in the fertile summer airs of Maine and Oregon. Imagine; my whole adult life I thought I had out mustered the tortures of nature at her finest. I was under the impression this would last. I did not have a clue how many people suffer many new allergies after 30.

Our cleanliness makes us sicker. Lack of early and regular exposures makes children weaker. But, the worst new effect is that being this sick, so sick, so allergic is partly new - and partly we suffer from being able to survive, from better medicines, from surviving childhood at all! That's not bad is it?

However, our bodies will not adapt fast enough to plastics and chemical in every part of our planetary life. Food chains cannot do anything but get sicker over GMO frankenfoods. New gene sequences that should have occurred slowly over tens or even hundreds of thousands of years appear instantly: They ramp up and come at us faster than we can acknowledge them - not that we're even aware now.

Here is another link to nine weird allergies. If you suffer, as I have, this will make you feel better.

And, this one explains why allergies are increasing.


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Anti-bacterial soaps keep us getting sick.

Hand washing is key to health and not passing along sicknesses. But, favorite practical doctors I have known (Dr. Mike the Vet in New Orleans, and Dr. Celsa the OB/GYN in Cordoba, Argentina) both have gave the same recommendation: if it foams it is doing the work. Use common dish soap.

Let me add to this nugget what an old sailor fisherman friend who is 'green' told me about plain old Joy soap - no toxins - it does not pollute the environment.