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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Surprising Healing Qualities ... of Dirt
The Surprising Healing Qualities ... of DirtA doctor discovers exposure to healthy farm soil holds keys to healthy bodies.
by Daphne Miller - Dec 06, 2013 - http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-to-eat-like-our-lives-depend-on-it/how-dirt-heals-us
You would find little to support these assertions within the medical literature. Enter the terms soil and health into a PubMed database and the top search results portray soil as a risky substance, filled with pathogenic yeast, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, radon, heavy metals, and pesticides. But move past these grim reports, and you will uncover a small, but growing, collection of research that paints soil in a very different light. These studies suggest that soil, or at least some types of soil, can be beneficial to our health.
The scientists investigating this soil-health connection are a varied bunchbotanists, agronomists, ecologists, geneticists, immunologists, microbiologistsand collectively they are giving us new reasons to care about the places where our food is grown.
Lively soil, better food
For example, using DNA sequencing technology, agronomists at Washington State University have recently established that soil teeming with a wide diversity of life (especially bacteria, fungi, and nematodes) is more likely to produce nutrient-dense food. Of course, this makes sense when you understand that it is the cooperation between bacteria, fungi, and plants roots (collectively referred to as the rhizosphere) that is responsible for transferring carbon and nutrients from the soil to the plantand eventually to our plates.
Given this nutrient flow from soil microbes to us, how can we boost and diversify life in the soil? .............
Warpy
(111,359 posts)The soil was often heavy clay and as it dried, it probably sucked some of the venom out. I know we were all convinced of the healing properties of dirt when it came to stings. Cuts and scrapes, not so much.
Toddlers pick up nasty things off the ground and shove them right into their mouths. This is likely pure instinct and exposes them to hundreds of different bugs at a time. They survive and the exposure helps to strengthen their immune systems.
There's such a thing as keeping it too clean. It's not good for kids to be raised in a sterile, hothouse environment. They need to be germ magnets and they need to ingest nasty things so their immune systems will build up a library of immunity, something that will keep them healthy as adults.
Just make sure those vaccines are up to date so the viruses won't have a chance.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Hmmm, if only there were some relatively easy thing most people could do at home, while simultaneously reducing their waste stream.....
Hmmmmm....
dionysus
(26,467 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
dionysus
(26,467 posts)appal_jack
(3,813 posts)I work in the agricultural field, and the pressure on all farmers to treat all dirt like it was toxic waste is insidious yet widespread. This is a particular pernicious pressure on small-scale organic farmers, many of whom have spent decades composting, cover-cropping, rotating their crops, and otherwise nourishing their land toward a diverse, healthy microbial ecology. Yet present "Good Agricultural Practices" (aka GAP standards) force these farmers to dump their produce into vats of chlorinated water before it can be sold.
About five years ago, I noticed that even organic carrots began tasting like chlorine to me. I never used to peel them before that - just a quick rinse and I'd happily crunch away (and of course I never got sick from doing so). Now I have to peel them just to be able to taste carrot instead of swimming pool.
-app
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)except pathogens and then you get pathogens from the soil.
Healthy soil is like a healthy digestive system: if you have a robust flora, you're fine. Tweak the flora a little and the slightest thing can send you into the bathroom for the next 3 days. :\
Kurovski
(34,655 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,426 posts)Thanks for the thread, Coyotl.