Rats!

Or: You stink! Good for you!

There's a wonderful nutter whom I used to adore for his message of Love. Leo Buscaglia suggested that Westen civilization detests its own oily emanations so much, its folk have cleansed ourselves beyond the ability to know what we really smell like. Ie, we wash away our true selves.

Since then, I've made it a yearly habit to give myself a few days sans showering just to be able to tell when I'm just not right. (LOL! No comments there, peanut gallery! There's an extremely valid point a'comin'. {-;)

The following story suggest that my altie buddy was really onto something.

Uh, just remember; moderation in all things, so your friends and loved ones won't be holding their noses everytime you come in the room, eh.

Rat study shows dirty better than clean
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Fri Jun 16, 10:56 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick.

The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.

The new studies, one of which was published Friday in the peer reviewed Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, found significant differences in the immune systems between euthanized wild and lab rodents.

[Read the rest]