As someone who periodically suffers from what I call “stress-induced” asthma and allergies, and as a proponent of gardening, permaculture, horticultural therapy and ecotherapy, the article “Is Dirt the New Prozac” by Josie Glausiusz, (http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/raw-data-is-dirt-the-new-prozac#.UUS11oW0Y7A) was of particular interest to me.

My mother was one of the “extreme clean” of her generation, constantly using bleach and other noxious chemicals in the kitchen and throughout the household, sure in her conviction that the cleaner the better, health-wise and otherwise. This article leads me to believe that despite her best intentions, her attempts to protect our family with the old “cleanliness is godliness” adage were completely misguided by cultural beliefs around ‘dirt.’

It’s funny that science is nowadays ‘required’ as ‘proof’ that certain things are true. Like, that rooting around in a garden, taking a forest walk, or eating food fresh out of your garden is really good for you… and not in some hippy-dippy way, and not even just psychologically, but actually, physiologically good for you. It makes a lot of sense, really. Human beings have evolved throughout the eons in symbiosis with the land, from macro to micro. Only in the past hundred years or less has the move to urban environments literally ungrounded us – think apartments and skyscrapers and concrete covering the ground and shoes separating our feet from the soil. Not to mention getting carrots in plastic bags from grocery stores that we drive to, and then cleaning and cooking and seasoning them before they get even into our mouths and into our gut.

This article, furthermore, increases my love and admiration for bacteria! Our bodies are giant walking, talking bacterial colonies. For each one human cell, we have ten bacterial cells. Without them, we would certainly not be alive. Sometimes, I like to think about all the millions of bacteria that are keeping me around, and say a very quiet little “Thank You!.” It can’t hurt… It’s hard to know how much these little bacterial dudes are influencing our every move.

Human beings have built giant edifices, and have gone to the Moon and want to keep going further. Many of us are constantly searching for intelligent life ‘out there’. It’s a ‘the bigger the better’ type of mentality all of the time, and a “I have to see it to believe it” type of culture. This idea that there is more going on than meets the eye, and that what we think of as reality is a kind of collective hallucination or illusion is often met with skepticism, but science itself tell us that this is not a spiritual hoax at all. To me, what it means is that the eye, although an exquisite instrument in it’s own ways, is limited. They cannot see the bacteria that keep us alive without instruments of magnification. Does that mean they are not there? Certainly not! And what else is hiding within and without us that we have not taken the time to discover? It’s all well and good to want to ‘discover’ things way out there in space, but we seem to have entirely forgotten about the mysteries within our own bodies and within the ground we walk on. So many people I talk to are grossed out by the idea of millions of bacteria living in our bodies. Yet that is the reality of our lives, and it does not take away from what it means to be human to accept that. If anything, it enhances it. It proves that we are more than just flesh-sacks with big brains, living meaningless existences with no purpose. We are ecosystems! We support millions upon millions of bacterial lives! In my opinion, we should be grateful to the bacteria and in awe of the symbiotic relationship we have been designed to be a part of, not making faces and saying “That’s disgusting.”

Connecting with the land is a concept that requires us to revision ‘land’ as more than just that flat thing we walk on. ‘Land’ is a large, vast, alive organism of interdependence that we are a tiny part of. When we look at the ocean, usually all we see is the wavy surface, yet we know it descends deep down to the bottom of the earth and is teeming with life. Similarly, when we look at the ground, can we remember how deep down it goes, and how full it is of life, much of which we are probably not yet aware of?

Let’s all get excited about getting dirty! Let’s change the phrase “I soiled myself!” from something embarrassing, to an act of health! I am thinking of the Rumi quote which states that “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” What I feel he meant was that everybody can show their appreciation and gratitude for life in different ways. But I think we should all, literally, get down on our knees, touch the soil, and kiss the M. vaccae mycobacteria. It’s good for us!

THE ARTICLE:

Is Dirt the New Prozac?

Injections of soil bacteria produce serotonin—and happiness—in mice.

By Josie Glausiusz|Thursday, June 14, 2007

FROM THE JULY 2007 ISSUE of Discover Magzine

THE STUDY “Identification of an Immune-Responsive Mesolimbocortical Serotonergic System: Potential Role in Regulation of Emotional Behavior,” by Christopher Lowry et al., published online on March 28 in Neuroscience.

THE MOTIVE Some researchers have proposed that the sharp rise in asthma and allergy cases over the past century stems, unexpectedly, from living too clean. The idea is that routine exposure to harmless microorganisms in the environment—soil bacteria, for instance—trains our immune systems to ignore benign molecules like pollen or the dandruff on a neighbor’s dog. Taking this “hygiene hypothesis” in an even more surprising direction, recent studies indicate that treatment with a specific soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, may be able to alleviate depression. For example, lung cancer patients who were injected with killed M. vaccae reported better quality of life and less nausea and pain. Now a team of neuroscientists and immunologists may have figured out why this works. The bacteria, when injected into mice, activate a set of serotonin-releasing neurons in the brain—the same nerves targeted by Prozac….

THE MEANING The results so far suggest that simply inhaling M. vaccae—you get a dose just by taking a walk in the wild or rooting around in the garden—could help elicit a jolly state of mind. “You can also ingest mycobacteria either through water sources or through eating plants—lettuce that you pick from the garden, or carrots,” Lowry says.

Graham Rook, an immunologist at University College London and a coauthor of the paper, adds that depression itself may be in part an inflammatory disorder. By triggering the production of immune cells that curb the inflammatory reaction typical of allergies, M. vaccae may ease that inflammation and hence depression. Therapy with M. vaccae—or with drugs based on the bacterium’s molecular components—might someday be used to treat depression. “It’s not clear to me whether the way ahead will be drugs that circumvent the use of these bugs,” Rook says, “or whether it will be easier to say, ‘The hell with it, let’s use the bugs.”

LINK TO ARTICLE:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/raw-data-is-dirt-the-new-prozac#.UUS11oW0Y7A

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Monthly Archives: March 2013

Yes!

“Is Dirt the New Prozac?”

Is Dirt the New Prozac?

Injections of soil bacteria produce serotonin—and happiness—in mice.

Get Gangsta with your Shovel! Plant some Shit!