A couple of month’s back I read an article titled ‘Sanitizers may boost bug growth’. Really? I am amazed, I thought, tongue in cheek!

This article was written about one particularly lovely bug that is thriving on an extremely strong sanitizer used in hospitals and the like, but I can't help experiencing a certain amount of amusement whenever I read these types of articles. Is the scientific arena worldwide living on a different planet to the rest of us? I ask because I think people with a couple of brain cells should have realised that we have come to the point of over-sanitisation.

I do not, in any way, advocate us becoming dirty, but, much as we ourselves live on this planet and fight to survive, grow, change and evolve, so do all the 'bugs' that also inhabit the world. They are also much better at evolving and adapting quickly. So we now have super bugs, and, probably, super, super dooper bugs, helped along their evolutionary path by us humans - aren't we nice?

I am not sure if we can backtrack now, or if we are on a beltway that we cannot get off, but a start would be for each of us to practice basic hygiene, like washing our hands after going to the loo, particularly in public toilets! The thought of eating peanuts from a bowl on the bar, that has just had some guys hand in it, who was in the loo five minutes before without washing his hands, kind of bothers me! And all those people who do not wash their hands after visiting the loo then touch the handle of the door on the way out. We all use too many household cleaners anyway, so why not cut back on those and start using hot, soapy water, on a regular basis to clean things? Use wooden chopping boards and toilet seats - wood apparently has an enzyme in it that counteracts germs and is far more hygienic than plastic. Or use marble or glass chopping boards. Wash them thoroughly in hot soapy water after use.

Aside from anything else all these chemicals go back into the water system, the land and the water tables, ultimately ending up back in us, not to mention the things we eat, whether it be animal, mineral or vegetable. Think how much you will save on your housekeeping. Think how much less plastic rubbish you will have to dispose of too.

In the past disinfectants were only used for wounds and the like, not for cleaning every single surface in the home and elsewhere. It is a well known fact that elderly people whose homes are not sterile and pristinely clean are still generally healthy and living quite happily with their bugs and germs, because they and the bugs in their environment are adapted to one another. We all live in home environments that are filled with bugs that live in symbiosis with us. If you declare all out war on these, you create an environment where, to survive, they must evolve and adapt, and they do this very well, as I have already pointed out, and they change into bugs that our bodies cannot deal with.

In order to survive bugs have to keep their hosts alive and live in relative harmony with them. By creating super bugs that can no longer live in symbiosis with us we are creating a world where they kill us instead, and their cycle of working out how to live in symbiosis with us has to start all over again. This has happened with other ‘bugs’ like yellow fever, polio, measles, bubonic plague, smallpox and a myriad other illnesses caused by bugs that are alive and well and have fought hard to stay alive - just like us, making periodic come backs when we thought they were eradicated.

Germs, microbes, organisms, bugs, call them what you will, will remain on this planet until it is burnt to a crisp by our sun going nova, so learn to live with your bugs - many of them are friendly and help fight off the not-so-friendly ones in a more natural way. Stop using so many cleaners, soaps and the like that strip your body and everything around you of your symbiotes. Learn to live with them. In the long run you will benefit as they will boost your immune system, because it is not healthy to live in a sterile environment as a generality; it means that you have no immunity against bugs because your system will not be used to fighting them. More and more people are dying in hospital from ordinary bugs that have become super bugs; or to which the human form has become un-adapted due to overuse of antiseptics and cleaners.

People seem to think that they will be better off and not have allergies, sickness or things like asthma if they religiously clean everything with antiseptics. This is not always so. Many of our modern allergies and so on are not caused by ordinary bugs, but by the chemicals that are in the very air around us from everyday things such as chemicals for cleaning, chemicals that make up the things in our homes, like carpets, bedding, curtains, and cooking utensils and so on, in our cars, everywhere.

So, keep it clean, but do not over preen!

Written by Corinna Turner