Stories from behind the examining room door, as told by Rod Moser, PA, a primary care physician assistant with more than 35 years of clinical experience.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Into the Wild
Standards of personal hygiene are in the mind of the beholder. When my wife and I were kayak-camping in Mexico, we learned to accept a much lower level of hygiene. There are few places to wash your hands or bathe, other than the Sea of Cortez. You had to wander off into the desert to heed Nature’s Call, or when going between islands, simply hang off the side of the kayak and pee with the whales, all the while looking for shark fins.
Two days into the trip, our entire group of eight developed pink eye. Several people had diarrhea (not the most convenient condition to have while wearing a wet suit in a kayak). And we all smelled bad and looked ragged.
A generation ago, when my uncle was a child, he said they bathed in the spring. I didn’t know that he meant the season of spring. He jokingly said that he changed his underwear every Friday; the bad news was that he had to change them with his brother. He didn’t regularly use a toothbrush until he was adult.
There was no such thing as deodorant. Men did not wear cologne, other than a splash of something from the barber. My grandparents used an outhouse. Never once did I see one of those white paper ribbons that read “sanitized for your protection” over the hole. Hygiene may have been deplorable, but people were surprisingly healthy, and no one was allergic to peanuts.
Our “Too Clean” Generation
There have been studies that show that we may be too clean. We use antibacterial soaps, spray disinfectants like Lysol in the air, and goop on antibiotics ointment. With the possible exception of Salmonella eggs, E.coli spinach and Hepatitis A salsa, our foods are considered clean. Milk is pasteurized and homogenized. We drink purified bottled water instead of the tap. New mothers sterilize nipples (just the ones on the baby bottles), use antibacterial diaper wipes, and adhere to the three-second rule. I even had a parent rush a child to the ER because he ate a fly! Our kids are allergic to everything and parents are germophobic.
When Good Hygiene Habits Go Bad
A large part of my day involves cleaning earwax out of little ears so that I can properly examine them. Parents are mortified that waxy ears are “dirty,” so I have to spend an additional ten minutes of my precious time extolling the benefits of earwax, and condemning the practice of daily Q-tipping. At least two or three times a month, I am seeing someone who has ruptured their eardrum with a Q-tip or paper clip. I see a lot of cases of swimmer’s ear in non-swimmers, caused by (you guessed it), the use of Q-tips.
Mothers of teenagers still feel that pimples are caused by dirty faces and insist that they scrub them raw. Acne is primarily caused by hormones, not dirt. Teenagers spend a lot of time in the shower, actively cleaning parts that aren’t that dirty. Of course, hormones also cause increased sweating, stinky feet and general B.O., so we shouldn’t complain too much. They may be pimply, but at least they smell okay.
I have been thinking about marketing a dirt supplement — something to add to our diets to help us cope with an over-sanitized world. Just like we need vaccines to help prevent serious diseases, we may need to put just a little more dirt back in our lives. Just a little dirt. Some good dirt.
