Microbiome and Naked Health

[jbeegoode]

I just finished studying a course segment about micro-biome. Among the useful feedersof this ecosystem in and of our bodies is naked in nature.

There is microbiome on and in the skin, as well as the gut and mouth. Bacteria. Good bacteria that help us to live, feel and think, smell better and we die without its help. We have discussed studies that show that naked in nature, even clothed in nature is good for our biology, our health, mental and physical.

According to this, getting into the soil, walking in nature, breathing in natural environments increases and helps balance our essential microbiome. We absorb the stuff this way. They told of studies that have shown that people who live in the country, nature have a much greater diversity and healthier microbiome, than people who live in city and industrial environments.

Interacting with nature with the skin, in water and dirt and air filled with that good stuff is much better, live longer and better. What better way than to not be insulated from that earthiness by being fully naked. Garden, hike, swim, feel great.

We don't want to get overly clean, no antibiotics outside or inside except emergency, mouth washes bad. 

Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

Yes. We are now suffering epidemic diseases caused by being overly clean.  The whole "wash your hands" dogma we have been taught since childhood is actually unhealthy.    The whole "sit on a towel" nudist thing may be unhealthy too. 

Here is a very good science lecture on the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlEFI5A3QFM

[jbeegoode]

Yes, very good lecture. It runs through most of the topics that I have been looking at this year and clarifies my disparate sources. It glances on some important points and I got some new facts out of it. I might read the book.

Diverse microbiome seems to be the key to health and longevity, as well as all that he presents. How to populate that biome, balance, ecologize (I think I made that up) and increase the diversity is the complex question. Things can shift in there in a few hours, or a month, depending. So, feeding who you have what they like is key. Diverse foods, diverse ecological environments, will make diverse microbiota.

A handful rich soil has billions of critters, so the plants that eat it become that micro biota, and pass this on up the chain. Most of our food sources are being sanitized by anti-biotics and pesticides which build up in soil, plants and animals, a whole huge set of topics.

These biological systems need to adapt, to evolve and that entails a kind of exercise, a good stress. That is part of the reasoning of my regimen of sauna and goals for exercise. It cleanses, detoxes, the skin and then these kinds of systems throughout the body communicate, it is more than the vagas nerve that does this.

I brush and scrape the dying/dead stuff with a rough cloth, or a brush during sauna, before showers and I only use a healthy soap in a few key areas.  I use none of these new and unproven chemicals. I don't stink, or have a crust, or oily sheen. I'm optimizing microbiology, as best as I know how.

When we were in Utah, there was little washing, but being nude nearly all of the time in nature aired parts out. We didn't get disgusting, it was a dry environment. A shower was a pleasure, once a week.

In our lives, it isn't just a situation where there is no point in wearing clothing, so much of the time. We need to add that there are many good reasons to make a point of not wearing clothing, most of the time. All of which fall under the heading of "natural" and then trusting in that.

I gotta go outside naked, but for shoes and a head covering, in 104F to 108F, now. I'm going to sweat, as I sort a cord of wood and transport it out back to stack with a wheelbarrow, while I drink lots of water and take several relatively cool outdoor showers. It will be good for me and my collection of critter partners. Vitamin D will happen, my skin will become better suited to resist solar damage, too. I will naturally learn to be aware and pace myself. I will take adequate breaks. My goal is to do what I can today, I'll be less efficient than in better weather, but the stress will be good for the body. I will sleep well. 
Jbee

[jbeegoode]

Oh yea, AND there will be lots of inner dialog convincing myself that I'm not out of my Fe--k'in mind. Several times per minute, as a rule.

Well, I did it. Worked until I felt, "enough" and took a break. Sat down drank water and then fell asleep. Sun and heat really knocks it out of a body. When it cooled off before sunset (99F or 100F), I returned and finished the stacking. Tomorrow, the wheelbarrow, storage and a sweat at the end of the day. Every bit stimulates the microbiome. Movement stimulates the gut wall muscles, moving the system along.

I don't know about the nudist sit down being unhealthy, but it does smell better. I always wash after the morning deposit, camping or not. I do know that it can be dangerous to leave skid marks on people's furniture. At the least, you lose a friend. They will never forget. Some people won't sit down on used sit down towels or furnishings. It is gross to them and it could make their clothing smell bad.
Jbee

[Safebare]

My niece, well I guess ex-niece since she and my nephew divorced, but we still consider her family as the mother of my grand-niece, is a crocodilian expert in Belize. Actually, she is a parasitologist. The crocodile is one of the oldest living large animal on this planet. Her research is based on the knowledge that the parasites are the biggest reason the species has endured for so long.
Yes, we must have a healthy biome to survive. We don't have to eat dirt or sit on dirty towels to accomplish that, but eating real food, playing in nature (naturally) and stop buying into all of the commercialism that sells us on antimicrobial drugs, soaps and the lot will get us on the right path.

~Safebare

[Greenbare Woods]

I don't know about the nudist sit down being unhealthy, but it does smell better. I always wash after the morning deposit, camping or not. I do know that it can be dangerous to leave skid marks on people's furniture. At the least, you lose a friend. They will never forget. Some people won't sit down on used sit down towels or furnishings. It is gross to them and it could make their clothing smell bad. Jbee 

Yes, we all have been taught all our lives that we need to wash every time, and that our gut material is ICKY!  Bit the trouble is that our human digestion and good health needs thousands of species of microbes that we have to acquire from the guts of other people   We aren't born with any of them.  So yes, we don't want to make big "skid marks" on furniture, but we do need general availability and acquisition of all the symbiotic gut microbes that other people's guts may be carrying .Our own natural immune systems also need frequent exercise by contacting small amounts of "foreign" microbes.  It takes a lot of unlearning and rethinking decades of cleanliness training, but our culture now has epidemic diseases from being overly clean.  .Exposure to the natural environment is all good.

[jbeegoode]

Yes, I've heard amazing results and no complaints from medical fecal transfers. I'd consider one. They do find people with absolutely natural unpolluted microbiomes that have been tested for the procedure.

There is the case of two twins, one fat and one thin. The thin got sick. The transplant was a great success, curing the illness, but now the thin one is also very overweight. I would rather not mix it up so much from others. Some soils, rock, air, things that are out there and balanced biological ecological naturally inherent in systems are my preference.

A babe gets original microbiome from mom who gets such from her mom, sort of like what we have been taught about inherited genetics (and is now found not true). As it passes out of the canal into life it gets a good dose of more, a parting gift. If not...Ciserian born kids have a far greater likelihood of having asthma for example. 

Safebare, people are not getting the minerals that they used to. It isn't present in the soil and so not in the food. With age, some of these become more critical. For example magnesium. I'm occasionally supplementing with a soil that is very old from deep under the forest surface and virgin, which has an amazing list of minerals documented. It is in a suspension state so it isn't like pouring some old dirt in a glass of water. It is set to absorb into the system better. I also take it with a medical grade liposomal vitamin C, which improves the absorption of minerals. The stuff is naturally balanced, ancient, pure. I had to give it some thought before investing myself (it sounded kinda screwy at first, you know eat dirt). It should bring my system what it needs and lacks.

I'm always being natural nude outside of the body and finding many health benefits from that, so why not explore being natural inside, too. The interface of body and environment should be better because of that effort, I figure. Our world isn't the one that we grew up in and the one that we grew up in was nothing like the one that humans evolved and lived in for millennia before that. I'm not going fully primitivist, but I'm discovering ways to be better off than trusting modern living and a Standard American Diet (SAD), which are now proven to be very exploitive and more often than not wrong.

I'm genuinely feeling results over all. I'm actually getting younger in many ways, life is getting simpler in a charming way and without the stress and risk of those bygone olden times. So far, so good. I never have been one to accept the herd's directions, and seen so much misdirection from authority and my upbringing, over years and years. Life is a process of unlearning, it would seem.

Yesterday, a cord of wood arrived for the sweat. It looked a tad light, so I sorted it out and measured. It was good enough. I relished the smell on my hands, the powder on my naked body, the idea of where these varieties of wood had come from, and the micro processes that occurred as it cured. My pores opening as I sweated in the heat, absorbing the biology of it, as it attached to my sticky skin. I put down a fresh towel on the couch and didn't bathe. I just trusted the fragrance of the microbiome that I had just bathed in. I didn't use a antibiotic soap to wash my hands to make dinner; it was just me and the critters dining anyway. DF is visiting relatives across country.

Today, I moved the load around, storing it, brushing nude through flowering garden plants and pollen, bushing my way through overgrown hemp, pushing a wheelbarrow. Then, I climbed up onto my perch on the bench of the sweat and perspired, played drums, sang, shared a family bathing together vibe for a few hours, hugging other sweaty wet sticky naked people, rinsing with cool water and detoxing some more. The cooler evening air sealed the days accumulation in.

It will feel good to shower in soothing hot water after some exercising. I have some chemical free shampoo and conditioner and good 'ol Dr. Bonners. But there is no hurry. The sweat cleansing my pores and lymph system and the diet that I eat have eliminated any typical B.O. and I'm feeling very real and healthy, like I'm pampering myself.
Jbee

[Safebare]

hmmm. I believe my untreated well water is providing some of the minerals, maybe I need to get a broad analysis done to be sure.

I have always been skeptical of the vitamin (supplement) industry. Convincing the populous that everyone needs the specific cocktail they offer. Getting specific blood content of various nutritional necessities can be daunting, or maybe not. I am also skeptical of the magnesium commercials. Explaining that we, their potential customers, have a 40% deficiency. Their product offers 100% of our daily requirements. But we were at 60% already. Where does that extra magnesium go? Is it more harmful than the deficiency?

Makes my head spin. "We can never be too careful." Yes, yes we can.

[jbeegoode]

I've got to rely on over-cleaned bottled water that I fill up each week or so, into big bottles. It has nothing in it. Even the guy that I buy it from has warned me about the lack of minerals, but it is conscientiously processed.

The alternative is the tap water, from a well down by "A" Mountain, that is filled with approved procedures like chlorine which I can sometimes smell as it comes out of the tap in the kitchen. I wash, shower and rinse my toothbrush with it. Who knows what kinds of issues may be included into the delivery piping. I live in an area called the Flowing Wells District, but the tap water comes from several miles away...go figure.

Needing minerals and appreciating good taste, I get cases of Peligrino Water and down a bottle each day on the rocks. We drink a lot of water during hotter months and outside. I filter with a Sawyer contraption when hiking/backpacking. I'm always looking for a source of better water that doesn't have the cost of fine wine. I take a sip on a shot of kombucha here and there during the day. I eat plenty of fruit, which is a wonderful watering source. More during cooler weather, we get into various herbal teas. I'm intending to get away from the packet type, but I'm spoiled and lazy to take the time...getting there.

There are a lot of lime and salts around here in well water. White crusty build up takes only a few months to accumulate and clog. Many farms have salted out their land from well water in Arizona. It is hard to grow things and then they move on leaving a weedy dirt lot.

You may find that you need a filter, or you may find that you have a precious jewel to savor and feel good about using in that well of yours.  I think it's worth it to have it thoroughly checked out. My Tortolita water was very unusual, weird.

Back in the day, I just drank BEER. It days of old, people drank alcohol to be safe, I could tell myself. Fermented stuff, boiled tea water, etc. were better and known before anyone knew about bacteria, etc.

Even this soil supplement stuff I use moderately, not daily. It is also easy to overload on some minerals. The magnesium absorbs or passes through. I eat chelated mag pills. It gets in more efficiently, I've read.

I stagger my supplement input. I don't think it natural to be loaded everyday, but these less nutritionally dense foods are not so natural either. DF takes a handful of supplements at her doctor's blessing and some of it doc's orders. I take a dissolving in the mouth B-12 prescribed by mine and ignore the vitamin D BS that he tells me to do. I'm well within the good numbers. I get a multi at Trader Joe's and eat two, two or three times a week. Melatonin is an old folks supplement need that I take 500 whatevers of at bedtime, as per a couple of studies that I read. It does make me sleep different and it helps in several other ways, contributing to not feeling so stiff and wasted in the morning.

What I don't need flushes out. My focus is on as wide a variety of nutritionally dense, fresh, organic veggies and I feel that difference more than than anything, except maybe some exercise. I stick a couple of scoops of collagen and a concoction of over processed veggie/herb powder into my daily smoothies, along with a raw egg and some hemp meal. I do tumeric and ginger with pepper as often as I can. It sounds like a lot listing it like this, but then I skip it here and there and I fast here and there. These are mostly things that an aged body tends to flake out on. It's what I eat and exercise which are the potent factors.

I have a strong suspicion of supplement claims, but even so, I've been adding a supplement here and there for years. Most haven't stuck with me. It can get overwhelming and there is so much BS out there. The things that I do now are recommended by concurring doctors, respected in their fields, well known and I still read many studies that they quote. 
Jbee

 

[nuduke]

As a biochemist at college (called University in UK) and later a producer of various types of vitamin tablets, I feel a bit qualified to comment.  If one has a normal, nutritious diet - plenty of veg fruit and yes...meat (for Vit B12) ....plus some sunshine on the body fairly regularly, the need for supplements should be zero.  I don't think the minerals in tap or other drinking water mean diddly squat compared with the minerals and inorganic cofactors (e.g. cobalt) you get from diet.  However, particularly with age, imbalances do occur (iron, calcium, vit D spring to mind) and therefore supplements may at least ensure that the body is topped up with anything it needs.  What is not needed is excreted or metabolised away naturally (well, not naturally actually as the excretion is required because of an artificial intake! But the body deals with the excess by normal metabolic pathways anyway). 
Looked at from a purely observational point of view, the intake of supplements seems to be relatively harmless.  The supply industry is huge....based merely on our beliefs about supplementing our dietary intake rather than any genuine science identifying what supplements should be taken.  So billions of pills are consumed each day.  What we don't see is well characterised syndromes based on excess vitamin and herbal remedy consumption.  50 million robins can't be wrong...the risk of taking supplements seems to be very low, I reckon, and so I wouldn't stop people taking them nor decry their usefulness except that their usefulness is not really very well characterised.
I take vitamin D daily.  Some years ago the doc called me in because a blood test had shown low Vit D.  They gave me high dose vit D to take for a few weeks and tested again - normal levels were resumed.  6 months or a year later I asked the doc for another test to see if my vit D levels remained OK.  They refused to do the test on the grounds that it was too expensive just to check.  How the hell is that good reasoning?  But I couldn't shift the doc so I simply started taking Vit D daily to ensure my levels never dropped low. 
I also take a Vit B complex daily.  This was based on a piece of research about a decade ago that correlated long term taking a high dose Vit B with reduced brain shrinkage with age, a factor that correlates with dementia and a number of other cognitive declines in older adults.  I started taking the tablets and read the paper of that research.  The test subjects and controls were just given brain scans to assess shrinkage.  No cognitive testing was done.  What a crap piece of research!  The assumed benefit of the vitamins were just that - assumed, and notionally correlated with the cognitive decline observations from elsewhere rather than any genuine correlation or causation proved.  Nevertheless, just in case, I continued taking the tablets.  Last year, I checked with the medic that my vitamin consumption was OK.  She saw not problem and a few days afterwards sent me a link to a paper that did further work on this area (completely different research group) and had found that the beneficial effects of the vit B were only seen where Omega 3 oil was being taken in parallel!  I realised I had wasted a decade taking ineffective supplement.  So now I take Omega 3 capsules daily in addition! 
I refuse to take any other supplements though - too expensive!!  At least the 2 regimes that I do take have some decent grounding in common sense or research respectively.
I do take a calcium tablet every now and again to ward off the effects of osteoporosis - which I don't have as far as I know!!
It's all pretty silly really but relatively harmless and might do some good.
John   

[Safebare]

Thank you Nuduke for that wonderful read. I too take Vitamin B for the very same reasoning. I am the caretaker for my little brother as he suffers from Wernicke Korsakoff's Syndrome and pancreatic cancer. WK is linked to a lifetime of excess alcohol consumption and B-1 deficiency. It is a unique form of dementia affecting short term memory and other brain function. Being a caretaker for someone with dementia is not for the faint at heart.

Anyway, I agree that vitamin supplements can help, but should be taken thoughtfully, not just because they are popular. I agree with that philosophy with most anything. Don't simply go vegan in protest of the treatment of animals in the food chain, it will not change the industry only your health. Not saying that a vegan diet is bad, just that the reasons should be personal and thought out, not in reaction to outside influences.

~Safebare

[Greenbare Woods]

Our skin produces Vitamin D by converting cholesterol to D.  It's one way that full body sunshine and high cholesterol helps us live longer.

I saw a meme recently that said "Winter is not 'flu season.'  It's low vitamin D season." 

[jbeegoode]

Back in 1980, I saw a couple of "scientist" on a talk show that had researched and experimented on themselves, taking mega doses of vitamins. They demonstrated how their skin had tightened up and they, previously a pair of skinny nerds, looked like athletes, without exercising. I bought their 860 page book, "Life Extension: A scientific Approach" read it and spent lots of money on vitamins for a time. Literally handfuls, they would dwarf my meals. Within a short time, I got tired of that and also smelling like somekinda weird. I got stuck with a pile of bottles of pills, wasted.

They had complications. He died early, something about disease caused by toxicity, of mineral, or something. It pretty much killed them, as I remember.

I have at times, begun multi-vitamins and felt a distinct difference for a time. I know by that, that those can optimize health to some degree. I do them every few days, give or take.

DF reported that her mother, then like 98, had begun taking collagen and shortly had gotten so she could climb the stairs again to her bedroom. Just on that (and I did read some hype), I tried a quality bucket of it for a month, until it ran out. I felt better, all that was promised. So it goes into my smoothie. A body doesn't produce as much with age.

The vitamin D is produced by the body, so I began giving it what it uses for that and getting plenty of sun. My deficit went away. The yearly test has been good every since. It is part of a standard testing, especially after the "crisis epidemic of low Vit D 
I'm very surprised that Nudukes Doc refused to test. Low D is on going if not treated, important and quite the med-fad.

B-12 needs to be soluble. I get these little red pills that dissolve under my tongue. Doctors orders. It is mostly not absorbed other ways.

There is controversy about calcium pills not absorbing. The best source of it is in many veggies, green leafy, cruciferous and others. Nuduke, do what your mum says, "Eat your veggies!" There is quite a lot of calcium absorption info out there.

I try to keep my doses close to the studies that produced the results, but cut the stuff out sometimes.

Long term study of people in Blue Zones out of Loma Linda found dramatic statistical facts about diet and longevity and quality of that. Meat eaters didn't live as long, pescaderians after that, vegetarians live significantly longer and figgin' vegans did by far the best! Ain't that a bitch to hear?

What you eat, the quality of it, exercise and aging characteristics are factors, but there are a few supplements that could be used as a boost to optimize health and longevity.

I studied (highlighting and the works) "100 is the New 30: How Playing the Symphony of Longevity will enable us to live Young for a lifetime." Jeffery Gladden, MD, FACC. All of the stuff that I had accumulated and had stored in a messy computer and notebooks seemed to be in his book and sorted out. Great cutting edge stuff. He's pretty radical in his own self care and more of an A type personality than myself, but it is a great smorgasbord for information to make decisions. Basically, eat a whole food plant based diet, as much variety as you can find, sauna, intermittent fasting and "keep movin'" (As DF's 101 year old mom used to say). Then, he suggests many many ways to improve on that.

He mentions naked sunshine in nature, but doesn't go so far as I do.
Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

I'm sure all those supplements help, but a healthy diet and life style provides us with just about all the nutrition we need. 

[jbeegoode]

Jbee

I'm sure all those supplements help, but a healthy diet and life style provides us with just about all the nutrition we need. 

True that, and then some...until we begin to age in several ways.

For instance in that book "100 is the New 30" calls for a "symphony" of measures. There are several measurements of age to take into account. To optimize, to make up for deficits in some of these, they must be addressed individually. You could be 22 in one way and 62 in another. The idea is to orchestrate the processes of health addressing separately and in concert with one another. Fixing one might be exercise, another a supplement, another might be readjusted in another way.

Here are some examples, telemere attrition, DNA repair, mitocondria, glycan age, or stem cell exhaustion. The guy gets very complex, as the systems are. It is amazing how most of this is addressed by a body with diet and exercise and a few natural tweeks.   
Jbee