Our obsession with clean
Why it’s making us less healthy
Jan 25, 2026
In the 70s and 80s I was a microbiologist and chief lab technologist in the local hospital
Throughout eons of evolution, from the lowly earthworm to the present, we’ve had a close association with dirt – which is home to millions of bacteria, moulds, etc. (Earthworms are essential for turning that dirt into the soil that sustains the plants which feed us.) Up until a few centuries ago, we didn’t know any of this but those microorganisms were and are essential to our existence. As with all animals cleanliness was not something that concerned us.
We didn’t have soap, we didn’t take showers … and we survived and multiplied.
(Archaeological research indicates that some early soaps appeared about 3,000 years ago but there is little evidence that it was in common use until relatively recently.)
We learned that there … More
