Customer Reviews

Why Dirt Is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, Mary Ruebush makes the case that we need to get a little "dirtier" if we want to improve our health and the health of generations to come.

Laid out in 5 different sections, this book explains how we have created "super-germs" and have actually lowered our immune response with our use of anti-bacterials and our hyper-cleanliness and how a little dirt and allowing our immune system to actually do its job will make us healthier in the long run. She shows that the use antibiotics, except in the most serious cases, actually weakens our immunity and how your immune system tends to become lazy and ineffective if it isn't given a job. She also explains the importance of vaccinations. Explained in simple terms and accompanied by cartoons, this book is a super quick read and based in solid scientific evidence. I give it four stars only because it is less an actual book and more like a hard-bound essay it is so short.

After taking an hour to read this book front to end, I found myself taking a deep breath and resolving to follow the advice laid out in this book, despite my germ-o-phobia, that is how convincing and solid this book is.

I would recommend this book to anyone curious about "Why dirt is good", but particularly those with babies or parents-to-be, as that is the primary audience that this book is aimed at. Not only will you find yourself having a better understanding of how our immune system works, you will find yourself better armed to deal with the day to day life with germs.

The author of this very readable little book makes the case that children should experience germs in order to acquire immunity. I have passed this book on to friends who have children and are almost paranoid about germs, using antibacterial hand soap, etc., at every opportunity. As a psychologist, I extent this idea to include acquiring immunity, or resiliance, through childhood by experiencing life's disappointments, such as losing in sports and friendships, so children can learn to cope with the little things before having to cope with similar big things later in life. Unfortunately too many parents today are over-protective and shelter their children from disappointments.

[[ASIN:1427798044 Why Dirt Is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends] was a book that caught my attention for its title than any thing. A book where the author true to the her word argues how can simple thing that we think that could be dangerous for our health can be actually be our friend.
What makes it more interesting is her way of explaining the whole complex medical terms for a layman. Let me tell you I have read many medical reviews , but this has been the most easiest and simplest to understand.
Although the message of the author is very crystal clear, she also proves her point with ways to use this theory in practice which is very pleasing to read.

The reviewer was compensated for posting this review. However, the opinion stated in the review is that of the reviewer and the reviewer alone. Further, the reviewer independently selected this product to review and has no affiliation with the product maker/distributor, Amazon or the review requester

I've always told my in-laws that I ate more dirt as a child than they did, and that is why I don't get as many minor colds and ills. Now I've got the science to back up my claim!

This is a very good book. I really liked the information in it and it was easy to read. It is a helpful book.

In Why Dirt is Good Ruebush exhibits a great gift for explaining immunology in a way which is both interesting and readily understandable. Unfortunately in addition to some very helpful information I had the feeling that Ruebush's immunology lessons were meant largely to prepare the reader to accept as truth the unproven and highly political idea that hyper-cleanliness was the cause of a current epidemic of childhood diseases such as asthma, diabetes and food allergies.

The more reasonable theory that environmental chemicals cause numerous childhood diseases was not mentioned. It has been shown that a wide variety of ubiquitous endocrine disrupting chemicals impact immune response. Also hundreds of environmental pollutants have been found in the cord blood of newborns, some of which have epigenetic properties that can change the reading of the DNA transcript during development for generations.

The book's discussion of vaccines, which justifies multiple shots in a single day and vaccination against hepatitis B on a baby's first day of life, noted only some "temporary" side effects from the "old" cellular pertussis vaccine. This leaves the impression that to question vaccine safety at all was unfounded.

Although there is no question that vaccines prevent serious diseases there are many examples of vaccine injury such as the not so "old" cellular pertussis vaccine leaving some children with permanent brain damage (see "A Shot in the Dark" by Coulter), vaccines being contaminated with other viruses, the 1976 flu vaccine being linked to Guillain Barre syndrome, and the recent federal vaccine court acknowledgment that multiple vaccines delivered in a single day may have contributed to autism in a child with an underlying condition (NYT, March 8, 2008).

So thanks to Ruebush for the brief foray into this fascinating world of immunology, but no thanks for the unwelcome idea that the current epidemic of child hood diseases is our fault for keeping our children too clean.

In the medical corporate rush of a seemingly endless quest for profitable, patentable answers for every medical issue, we clearly do need folks like Ruebush to ask us to consider alternative ways of examining present predicaments such as autism and diabetes appearing in infants and children.

This book does a very credible job of helping readers grasp the concept of immunology and offers this as a means to examine the process of how humans fall victim to disease and compromised health.

But, that's it. The writer then turns to some very questionable theorems that connect 'dirt' with the autoimmune system being formed and that link vaccinations to ongoing immunity. Not so. There exists adequate information to support the idea that having multiple vaccinations within a baby's early life is not neccesarily a good practice and that some vaccines can actually bring on neurological and other problems. We now know that instantly grabbing antibiotics whenever a child gets ill or has a fever is not always a sound idea, but we need to understand why this is so, and to as fully as possible, inform ourselves about the choices available -including vaccines- for building healthy immune systems in our children

So yes, Ruebush does a good job of explaining immunology itself, but my advice to any reader would be to put down the book at that point and clean things up! Our old 'friends' in field medicine, cholera, bubonic plague, whooping cough and tuberculosis are always lurking on the edges of any infrastructure breakdown and vaccines provide only a limited answer.

Focusing our collective energies on real, intensive and available means to have our children and ourselves living in a society that treats toxic onslaughts with the same seriousness currently directed at "terrorism" from outside our borders would be a fine legacy for our generation. Eating dirt won't help, I'm afraid, but asking questions and becoming informed and aware certainly would.