To slow the glacial movement of my gut down over my belt buckle, I have returned to the gym for regular workouts. Recently, there has been a change in the way the gym operates. Before, the gym provided stacks of orange towels. When you entered the gym, you took one of these and used it to wipe up perspiration before, during, and after exercising. I took two, one for wiping my brow and one for wiping the equipment.
Now, the policy is that you bring your own towel for yourself, while the gym provides special mauve towels at ten foot intervals throughout the work out area for the equipment. At each towel station is a spray bottle containing an antiseptic solution for wiping down the equipment before and after use. The spray bottles state that it is a disinfectant cleanser, bactericide, virucide, fungicide, mildewstat, etc. that is caustic and toxic, requiring the user to wear goggles and rubber gloves before applying the contents to a surface. No one in the gym using the stuff is so equipped. I stay away from it, but I notice that I must wash my hands after touching equipment or my hands begin to itch from contact dermatitis.
OSHA warns that chemical disinfectants, such as cresol and phenol, can be corrosive to skin, can cause central nervous system damage in repeated low concentrations, and are suspected carcinogens. However, they may be necessary, for the worst case scenario in the steamy gyms and locker rooms is Methicillin-Resistant Staphyloccocus Aureus - MRSA (pronounced mer-sa). This is a type of “super-bug” that has become resistant to penicillin-type antibiotics. Numerous MRSA outbreaks in school gyms and locker rooms have fostered enhanced cleaning and sanitation practices. Guidelines for lessening the chance of fostering an environment that encourages the spread of MRSA include: keeping uniforms, towels, and equipment clean and disinfected after each use; repairing any torn padded benches; keeping hands sanitized; and maintaining a close watch for sores that fester.
These specific cleaning practices seem to be just a part of the general movement to greater public sanitation, which includes increased use of antibacterial soap, hand sanitizer fluids, and antiseptic wipes. Grocery stores now offer sanitary wipes at the entrance for use on the handles of carts. Sanitizer fluidswith the antiseptic Triclosan are for sale at the cashier’s station. However, epidmiologists now say that Triclosan-containing products don't provide any disease protection beyond what you get from washing with ordinary soap and warm water.
Because hundreds of thousands of people are infected with serious respiratory diseases such as influenza each year and many require hospitalization, the Center for Disease Control is pushing for greater use of immunization and sanitary practices to curtail the spread of disease. Elderly people are particularly vulnerable to serious complications from influenza.
Noroviruses, also, are now ubiquitous and genetically diverse. These viruses cause acute gastroenteritis, and they are notorious for screwing up cruises for tens of thousands of people. Transmitted by the notorious fecal-oral route, the diseases caused by these viruses are specific such that immunity to one does not produce immunity to another, just like common cold viruses. These diseases are rarer on Navy ships, the exception being ships such as large amphibious ships or aircraft carriers subject to large influxes of personnel such as embarking Marine units or air groups. Smaller vessels, including submarines in which sailors literally “hot bunk it” (sleeping in the bunk of a man on watch), do not have this problem because the sailors have presumably developed immunity to the same noroviruses.
Massive cleaning and sanitation efforts have failed to prevent large cruise ship outbreaks. In truth, better hygiene by passengers and crew members could eliminate this problem. For example, I was washing at the restroom sink in an upscale restaurant recently when a man who had just used the toilet in a stall blew by me and exited without washing. Outside, he shook hands with five dinner companions. These companions might all get sick and blame it on the restaurant, while the gentleman, immune to his own brand of norovirus, would assume that his stronger constitution and healthy living had saved him from infection.
Sometimes things get out of hand. At the local Ralph’s supermarket a woman selecting a cart was wearing a surgical mask and carrying a spray bottle. She sprayed the whole cart thoroughly and also sprayed at me. I was far enough away that I felt no spray. I overcame the desire to have the nut arrested for assault. In the gym a different woman was walking around with a mask on and a spray bottle and towel in hand. Her mask was a cheery flower print cloth version that she apparently wears all day. Besides protecting her from germs, the full coverage improved her looks.
People in developed countries are so sanitary that their immune systems do not develop properly, and they consequently develop autoimmune diseases. This is called the “hygiene hypothesis.” British scientists were the first to notice that children in less developed countries were less likely to develop certain diseases thought to be autoimmune in etiology such as hay fever, asthma, and eczema. There is now evidence that acute lymphoblastic leukemia and even some autism in young people may be linked to the hygiene hypothesis. Scientists are also looking at various bowel diseases and, possibly, lupus as being caused by immune systems that developed unchallenged by the right bacteria and viruses. The cause of multiple sclerosis is unknown, but it is also considered an autoimmune disease. Women, who tend, in general, to be more sanitary than men, are twice as likely to be afflicted with multiple sclerosis. Could their cleanliness be the cause?
The broad agreement that the majority of autoimmune diseases are caused by inappropriate immunological responses to innocuous antigens has resulted in treatments the mere thought of which would send many of us to the air sickness bags. Think “helminthic therapy,” which consists of the inoculation of the patient with specific parasitic intestinal nematodes (helminthes) such as hookworms, or pig whipworm eggs, or human whipworm eggs. Dosage with live, innocuous fecal bacteria and “probiotics” now found in some yogurt brands are sometimes used.
One American man, described in a recent documentary, who was severely disabled by allergies was told of the British hygiene hypothesis by his sister, who lived in England. He studied World Health Organization statistics to find a country where hookworms were endemic. He traveled to a sub-Saharan African country, went to a small village, and walked barefoot around their village latrine. Soon he was infected, but his allergies disappeared. He now lives in England making his living curing people of their allergies.
I was fortunate in having developed a third world collection of worms and bacteria naturally, for I grew up a barefoot, rope-belted bubba in Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. I was a normal ADHD, booger-eating hellion, who lived like Huck Finn. Because women failed to civilize me, my immune system was heavily challenged, but surmounted every childhood disease, including polio.
Avoiding the more extreme measures toward improved sanitation at the gym is best. I go there for a workout, so why should my immune system not get a workout, too? Nietzsche may not have been entirely wrong with his famous, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”