Author: Ian McAllister
Sterile conditions lie: To remain healthy you must keep your house sterile with all bacteria killed.
Fact: That is impossible. There are millions of bacteria in the air around you, and there are millions of bacteria on your skin. That is why surgeons wear gloves. They know that they can't kill all the bacteria on their own skin. My bacteriology lecturer at University said that you can only remove most bacteria from a polished surface and hardly any from rough surfaces such as skin. You can sterilise needles by heating them red-hot in a flame, but you can't use that technique to sterilise your kitchen.
This lie is a borderline lie. Although it is false, I suspect that most doctors believe it, because of earlier brainwashing. If they believe it then it isn't really a lie...only an untruth. Historically surgeons were killing most of their patients until they were forced to accept that sterile conditions cut down on the number of patients that they killed. Having been forced to accept this fact the pendulum swung to the other extreme and they decided that we should all live in sterile conditions.
Our body as a fortress.
The two situations have no similarities. Our skins are toxic to nearly all pathogenic bacteria, with the exception of streptococcal bacteria. That is our front line defence. You can think of it as the moat and walls of a fortress. What about the defenders on the walls of the fortress? We have some absolutely vicious white cells in our blood that don't wait to kill invaders, they swallow invaders whole.
What would happen if the soldiers in the fortress were allowed to sleep around the clock each day instead of having constant drilling? They wouldn't be much good at fighting off invaders if an attack ever happened.
Your immune system is the same. If you don't give it practice at destroying invaders it will be unable to fight them effectively when need arises. The increasing prevalence of asthma is blamed on just this situation. Children are kept in sterile conditions and never develop their immune system, so they have no defence against asthma.
I just heard on TV that the drug companies are developing asthma vaccinations. This reminds me of the perfumes scam.
Your body makes powerful pheromones (scents to attract the opposite sex) so artificial perfumes wouldn't really be worth much. Cassanova the seducer knew that so before a date he would spread perspiration from his crotch and armpits to his face and chest. The rest is history. So perfume manufacturers persuaded people to wash off their body odour with the slogan that only your best friend will tell you that you stink. Then they could sell perfumes to replace the pheromones that had been washed off.
The asthma vaccines are going to try to replace the dirt that germicide adverts have got rid of.
Drug company adverts
You've probably seen the television adverts that show a child eating off of the floor that has nasty bacteria crawling around until antibacterial spray is used to keep your child safe. Well tests have shown that antibacterial sprays are no more effective at killing bacteria in real-life conditions than other household cleaners. That doesn't mean that they don't work in laboratory conditions.
However, that is all beside the point. A baby is meant to crawl around in the dirt out in your garden. Your baby will probably try eating some of the dirt, and spit some of it out because it doesn't taste very good.
Your child will get scratches as it plays in the garden, and these scratches will get dirt in them. Remember that your skin is your first line of defence? Scratches breach that defence, so your child will have millions of bacteria invading its body. The immune system will love it. White blood cells will crowd round, trying to eat their share of bacteria before they are all gone.
Colds are good for you
One research worker noticed on looking through hospital records that cancer patients hadn't had cold or flu for several years. The conclusion was that a dose of flu stirs up your immune system into red alert, and not only the flu bugs but all invaders such as cancers get gobbled up.
This research wasn't followed up because patients wouldn't run around trying to catch the flu!
My parents did something similar. Whenever the children of friends had measles, mumps or whooping cough we were sent round to play with them in the hopes of catching the complaint. Homeopathy makes these illnesses minor, no worse than a dose of flu, but as a result I have life-long immunity to measles and whooping cough.
I don't know if it is possible to get immunity to tetanus by early exposure. Here is what I observed as I grew up in a village in Paraguay. Everyone walked barefoot. When they got severe cuts on their feet they kicked around in the dust. The blood and dust combined to form a plug that stopped the bleeding immediately.
Doctors who insist on treating us for tetanus every time we get a wound would forecast that half the population would die of tetanus, but I never heard of anyone getting tetanus. I enquired later and found that the tetanus organism does exist in the Paraguayan soils.
Bali Belly
You've probably heard of "Bali Belly" and the warnings not to drink the water or eat any of the fruit. Do the people of Bali get Bali Belly all the time? Of course not! Their immune systems are accustomed to eating all the bugs that cause Bali Belly.
The Americans had worse problems than Bali Belly in the World War. After living all their lives in sterile conditions they died like flies from diseases in Europe and the Orient.
Fast Food
The only good thing that can be said for fast food is that it is likely to be infested with salmonella and e. coli bacteria and other food-poisoning organisms. That means that most people who eat fast food will be immune to food-poisoning bacteria. Every now and again a handful of customers will come down with food poisoning.
Compare that with the thousands eating the same bacteria and you will realise that the diners are eating the food, then the friendly bacteria in their digestive systems are eating the food poisoning bugs.
Pasteurised milk
Pasteurisation is supposed to protect you from tuberculosis. But in a survey done before raw milk became illegal it was found that 14 times as many people got tuberculosis from pasteurised milk as from raw milk. There would have been fewer TB bugs in pasteurised milk but the immune system of people who drank it was weaker.
Legionnaires disease
Recently there was an "outbreak" in an Australian city of Legionnaires disease. 22 victims came down with the disease. When the source was traced it was an air-conditioning system in a large public building, so 22 thousand visitors had breathed in the legionnaire microorganisms. That means that only one person in a thousand had a weakened immune system that gave the legionnaire bugs a chance.
Gardeners are exposed to legionnaire bugs all the time, in soil and in compost. They breathe the stuff and become immune to it. The only time there might be a problem is when you are already sick with something else that weakens your immune system, or when you have had chemotherapy that switches off your immune system, or eaten sugar that switches off your immune system.
Faecal Microorganisms
One summer I was helping to clean cow manure out of a large concrete-floored shed. A front-end loader was loosening the mass, then we forked it into trailers for carting away. I was sitting on a low wall at the side of the manure, eating my lunch, when the farmer came round and noticed the large pool of liquid manure in the lowest part of the floor.
My workmate said that the drain had just got blocked, put down his half-eaten sandwich, rolled up his sleeves, and felt down through the liquid manure until he found the drain and raked out the straw that was blocking it. As the liquid started to drain away my workmate gave his hands a quick wipe on his dungarees, picked up his half-eaten sandwich and finished eating it. Statistics at the time showed that farmers were the healthiest section of the community.
Several experiments have been carried out in five-star hotels to see how clean they were. They found human faeces smeared on all the door handles. I don't believe that. It is founded on the belief that I was taught at university that e. coli bacteria only appear in faeces. More recent research has shown that they spread throughout the digestive system, which includes your mouth. My guess is that the door handles were smeared with nothing worse than saliva.
Would it matter? No! If you believe the sterile conditions advocates then any population that used human faeces to fertilize food crops would soon die out. Have you seen any sign of the Chinese race becoming extinct?
How to help your immune system
If you are worried about food poisoning eat plenty of garlic. That is a good idea anyhow because it also fights cancer.
If you can afford it when you are healthy, take a daily dose of vitamin C. I buy mine at an agricultural supplier. It is pure vitamin C (ascorbic acid) intended for animals, and costs about $37 for one million milligrams. Compare that with the price for 100mg capsules.
Most of your vitamin C will be wasted while you are healthy. Your immune system is on standby. Whenever your immune system kicks into overdrive it needs large amounts of vitamin C. So if you can afford to keep it available all the time it will help to protect you before you even notice that you are ill. 300mg taken 3 times daily is a good starting point. I can't afford it myself, so I take 15000mg three times a day when I am ill. As soon as I start to get diarrhoea I know that my body no longer needs such massive doses (I'm getting better), and I stop taking vitamin C.
If you eat shiitake mushrooms each day and get enough vitamin C you are unlikely to be interested in the sterile conditions lie. You will be ready for any bugs to make your day.
If you still haven't read about the diet lies that are the biggest killers, read the earlier articles in this series. 
Next in this series (which ends by telling you how to avoid the lies for a healthy diet) you can find out about the lie that makes children ashamed to open their mouths. 
