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 of catching this and other potentially hazardous diseases?

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...

Yeah, it did wonders for my mood when I started walking to work barefoot. Something about the varying textures, I think? And the extra stimulation.

Doesn't take long to build up a good enough callus that even sharp gravel is tolerable.

I think I can live without my connection to asphalt, concrete, dirt, broken glass and literal shit while living in the city, which has nothing to do with nature.

Yeah, getting the immune system to tone down the responses is probably the best one can do for oneself health.

Our body didn't get the memo that for the last 200 years water and food are clean now and bacteria is fought with antibiotics.

Getting the immune system to not freak out at everything it detects via just touching grass is the best news I've read today.

I made the mistake of looking at /r/sauna on Reddit once or twice recently, and there was a lot of people doing very similar things.

"I take my preworkout, do my exercise, then I sit for 12 minutes at 90 degrees in sauna, before three minutes in the cold plunge-pool at 8 degrees, before going to sauna again for 19 minutes and I finish with a seven minute warm shower".

Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.

I assume going to sauna takes an hour, it might be I leave it on for a couple of hours, but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery and I like it like that. Same story with being outdoors in a cabin/cottage. I might dig up some plants, or move the hammock around, but whether I get (literally) dirty is just down to whatever random things I've done that day!

You forgot the app! You can connect our app to your smart dirt bucket so you can track that the correct composition of bacteria reaches your hands at all time! Collect points by completing challenges and watch a few ads for premium guides!

There’s a startup opportunity: a body cream with concentrates of beneficial microorganisms.

“Pair it with our full spectrum sun lamp and you can have all the benefits of playing outside from the comfort of your standing desk”.

I find this amusing. We know that light has an impact on the body - so they make/sell lamps that emit light similar to sunlight, red light therapy, circadian smart bulbs...

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.

I parodied this sort of thinking via my alter-ego, Brad Bradstone [1], in a post called "My Treadwater Desk" (https://web.archive.org/web/20190802085907/http://doublestea...).

--- My Treadwater Desk

If you're the CEO of company, like me, you do a lot of sitting and talking. And all the evidence points to sitting being a disaster health-wise. As a father it's my responsibility to take care of my health over the long term so that my kids, Dagwood and Spaniel, have their father around for a long time. Sure, they don't see much of me because I'm building Yellow Yellow, but I want to be there when we can all enjoy the fruits of my labors.

So, I looked into the current fads running through Silicon Valley. NoSitting has displaced NoSQL as the current buzzword and there are two current solutions: standing up and walking.

At Yellow Yellow we like to blaze our own trail and in NoSitting we're no exception. But rather than standing up all day (which kills your legs and leads to varicose veins---a major problem if you plan on spending your retirement years in the Caribbean on the beach) or walking on a treadmill (which causes wear and tear on your ankles, knees and hips) I've come up with a far better solution.

The Treadwater Desk.

In our basement we had a disused well from back before our brownstone had municipal water. It didn't take much to fill the well with water and a bit of carpentry later and I had my laptop and an Apple Magic Mouse (wrapped in Saran wrap).

Now my day starts by changing into a suit (in this case a wet suit) and plunging into the chilly waters of my treadwater desk. That blast of icy water is better than any espresso from the Daily Grind and really gets me in the mood for work. Also, the vasoconstriction of most of my body means more blood for my brain to keep Yellow Yellow running.

Then it's treading water while Skyping with my team. I've found that using Siri I can dictate emails without a problem and the Magic Mouse is working well.

And let's face it, we all came from the sea originally and so treading water is natural for us all. It's also aerobic and far easier on the joints than walking. It's also a full body workout. Rather than just working on my legs I get every muscle moving. And the health benefits of that are well known.

It's also a metaphor for what it's like to be a startup CEO: I'm literally keeping my head above water all day long and if I don't keep making an effort I (and Yellow Yellow) would go under.

Finally, I'm planning to add Epsom salts to the water to increase buoyancy and help keep my skin in tip top condition.

[1] The inventor of double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183

There should be a remake of American Psycho where he's a tech VC and has this sort of biohacking routine.

I'm sure the comments will be full of detractors scoffing at this claiming that all one needs is not to wash their hands. Or just go outside to handle that mud. With luck you might come across the king of Briton.

Holy heck, ain’t this the truth.

Really it’s the logical conclusion of living your whole life by studies-show. Studies show that friends are good for you. That’s why I have friends. Studies show that laughing is good for you. That’s why I indulge in merry company. Studies show that dirt is good for you. That’s why I go off the beaten asphalt.

> "I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning.

Not quite but close enough :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWzWwx8T3nE

Lucky for you, you can buy a subscription to DirtPlus™, which has the proper ratio of Earthzymes™ to organic material to make sure you get your hands properly dirty, instead of just dirty.

There's something very sad about all these people spending so much energy on crazy intensive n of 1 experiments.

If we could only get them to collaborate, we could get some real knowledge out of it!

Reminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg?is=HpS4BWeDbVRsnBPI

They'd be copying the greats! I have seen a distinct pattern of artists and photographers doing self portraits while rolling around in shit or mud.

GTD, lifehacking, quantified self... all coolness of the 2000s biting us hard now

Celebrities and influencers will be selling their own brand of mud, with their own special flavor!

Followed by HN readers asking for it in supplement/pill form.

Mud/Clay baths are a real thing in fancy spas

"sign up now and get free peptides your macrocolony needs to immunemogg those bacteria!"

We have this already: "touch grass" for the normies and "grounding" (standing barefoot on the earth) for the more hacker inclined

I have read but not verified that washing with water is about as effective as with soap at removing bacteria from hands. Having soap on your hands forces you to get all the soap off, which requires touching more skin surface.

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, specifically changing your electrical potential to match the ground. The problem with this is that the ground is 0V because we define it as 0V, not because of any sort of fundamental property. Between two points on the Earth you can see hundreds of kilovolts. So the obvious question is why should the electrical potential of a particular piece of soil where your grounding rod is installed be physiologically preferable to whatever potential your body happened to be at before?

Now lets go on to the next part of what these scam artists usually claim. That is that the Earth's electrons enter your body and do good things of some description. When you touch the ground some small charge does enter or leave your body, however that stops nearly instantly when the potentials equalise[1]. How is the Earth meant to to keep putting electrons into your body if there's no voltage? That's just simply not how electricity works.

As an aside, note that I said enter or leave. A positive static charge and a negative static charge can both easily build up in your body. Therefore any claims that specify that electrons enter your body (or leave you body) is immediately nonsensical because it could go either way.

I'll leave it to someone else to explain all the nonsensical biological claims that follow on from the already fundamentally wrong electrical side since that's not my area. I will however note that none of these sponsored papers actually show and measurable biological effect, they all just hand-wave about redox reactions.

[1]: Yes, you're coupled to mains wiring and other changing fields that are around, however that's getting too far into the weeds for a short comment. If the claim made by the snake oil salesmen was that a current going through your body is good then they'd also suggest wrapping yourself in an electrical cord to maximise the effect, or just taping batteries to your skin.

This study had no control group and they didn't check for a placebo effect. Pretty big red flags.

If you live with someone, have them flip a coin every night to decide if your mat should be plugged in or not and log it in a private journal. Record your feelings in the morning. After a month, compare your reports to the state of the plug each night.

If you live alone, get 2 more identical cord. Have your mats cord and the unconnected ones going into a box. Blindly label the cords a b and c.

The unconnected ones end there, the real one continues to the mat. Cycle through your cords every evening. In the morning log your feelings and the cord used. After a month see which cord was the connected one and whether your feelings were correlated with that

> but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them.

We know the reason, and it has been studied extensively.

The placebo effect is very strong.

It's important to distinguish between spiritual energy like prana/chi and electricity.

Science will never show that grounding has any measurable effect on the chemistry of the human body. But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.

In other words, magic only doesn't exist if you don't believe in it.

I'm a barefooter and the grounding thing sounds like bunk to me.

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.)

Do the people walking their dogs do it barefoot?

Wouldn't shoes ruin the effect?

It is 100% snake oil. No scientific basis whatsoever.

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If you're getting colds that often (and you're not immuno-compromised) then it might be worth getting checked out.

I was getting sick constantly, and it turned out I had chronic sinusitis, and surgery made it much much better.

(Just friendly advice, I know nothing about your situation).

Washing your hands is not only about your own health, it is also about other people's health.

Maybe you could get the same quality of life improvement without decreasing other's.

There is a certain style of trolling that isn’t as obvious to older people.

private podcasting is right up there with using ChatGPT in your head.

It sounds more like a joke or a lampoon of always-connected culture.

There's absolutely no reason to assume that getting your hands dirty would be "good for you". Playing outside and getting dirty is fun and is arguably great for enrichment and character building, but I think it would come as a surprise to just about anyone that it has health benefits.

When I say "come as a surprise" I mean they would be unable to articulate the exact mechanisms behind the health benefits before being told what they are or that they exist. Liking a thing and presuming it must have health benefits aren't the same.

Well... Book clubs, study groups, fraternal organizations, etc. have agendas that structure conversation. I've found this useful for even 1:1 conversations with friends.

Naturally, it's possible to take this too far; letting the conversation flow naturally before occasionally snapping back to the agenda is both more enjoyable and often more productive.

...this is also a common podcast format.

I have never heard the phrase "private podcast" used in this sense before (vs the group / company internal sense), but... I kinda like it; sets up some potential useful expectations!

It's a joke poking fun at podcast bros.

[dead]

Ecosystems have niches for aggressive behavior against participants that reduce diversity. It's why you find higher concentrations of Lyme disease in new housing developments than you do in the deep woods: it's the activation of a defense mechanism (in the Lyme disease case it has to do with there being a higher proportion of competent hosts for the pathogen: mice, but in general evolution has myriad ways if implementing this pattern).

If it's just you and one species of bacteria, you're closer to a circumstance that would call for the activation of such behavior than if diversity is high.

So it's not that the bacteria are intrinsically good or bad, but that the different circumstances call for calm or aggressive behavior, and all your friends going missing cues aggressiveness in species who have evolved by filling that niche in the past.

To keep it simple:

For one it's just competition. If you have regular contact to a diverse set of microorganisms chances are higher that they will keep each other populations in check. The dose makes the poison applies here too in some narrow sense.

Additionally (or even mainly) our immune system always on guard (me/not me) gets to play around with the obvious stuff and not be overwhelmed or be "bored" but constantly trained/tamed. We have evolved to have constant contact to a diverse set of microorganisms which modulate our immune system e.g. through toll-like receptors.

As an extreme case some people develop some natural immunity to the tetanus toxin through regular exposure to a extreme variety of microorganisms, obviously this isn't reliable nor a gamble remotely worth the risk.

[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3980089/

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6827147/

Edit: don't know why OP gets downvoted it's a perfectly fine entrance question/bafflement to motivate some deeper digging into microbiology/immunology.

It’s not dirt, it’s soil. Soil is a living ecosystem.

The Simpsons explained this one a while back, funnily enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8

My partner is an estate gardener; early on in our relationship she came home with a green thumb. Apparently, the adage is about getting fungus under your nail beds and not keeping plants alive

Yeah, as someone who fairly recently discovered that the reason I always feel so uncomfortable out in nature is because I am severely allergic to almost all grasses and most trees, I think we need to put some caveats on these statements.

I grew up playing outside in the dirt a lot, but as I got older I liked it less and less because I always felt so itchy when i would go outside, and my nose would get stuffy and my eyes would water.

I am doing weekly shots trying to make it better, but I always get frustrated whenever everyone acts like I should just go out and 'touch grass'

I thought that was related to the insecticides/herbicides, not soil itself.

yes, I’m so delighted by this quality content I want to up my licence fee

these are Imperial hands getting dirty

Some cultures clean without paper, with their hands

I use a bidet because I’m not disgusting. Wiping shit with paper does not clean your stinky arse cracks. Fucking gross people walk around with dried shit smeared on their body all day.

There are zero cogent arguments for using toilet paper over a bidet.

wrong tab I assume, cause above this post on the frontpage is the LAN house post

Kids benefit from being kids and rolling around in the grass.

In which cities are people favouring local parks over toilets?

Parasites can actually help with allergies. I am loosely aware of various attempts at treating allergies using parasites.

One of the approaches taken (under medical supervision) for kids with bad nut allergies is to gradually expose them to more of the allergen. Being able to survive a peanut or two without anaphylaxis is life-changing.

What do you think soil is made of? Where do you think it comes from?

This is like the dumbest take ever, do you think people go and take a shit on the park in big European cities?

I live in Berlin and compared to most other European cities it’s a shit hole, but one thing I can tell you is the cleanliness and green nature of the public parks. Most of the time people actually care about the public parks (with exception of few)

However, one thing to worry about is the tick bites or any other insect bites, but that’s part of the nature

I knew the germphobes would be all over this one.

> Children who play there willmdevelop all sorts of misterious allergies, skin rash conditions, asthma and so on!

No they won't you hysterical boob. Youre fear of germs is irrational. Get a grip

Maybe there's a benefit to having diverse natural memetic microflora on your cognitive convolutions. Like it could innoculate you against aggressive viral ideological infection.