Intro
You are an living ecosystem. You body contains 10 times more microbes than its own cells and your body cannot function without them. This does not include only good bacteria but bad ones
too. Even pathogens - we all got them, they
just do not cause disease in healthy individuals.
Most of the food you think you eat is actually eaten or processed by your gut flora first, your body simply cannot use the food without it being previously processed by these microbes.
For a healthy immune system, it is important to maintain a diverse eco-system.
All the microbes living on you and inside you have a function. If you sterilize your gut you'd starve. It is illogical to believe that sterilizing your skin or any other part of your body will
have no consequences.
Skin
Your skin is porous and it will absorb smaller molecules.
To wash your skin and remain healthy, use only water - your skin and your microbes don't need anything else. And if you use only water to wash your skin, you skin will not be absorbing toxic
chemicals, so you will stink less and you won't need to wash so often, or use perfumes to mask bad smell - although, to me, industrial perfumes don't smell good at all, they stink.
In any case, you should avoid substances that sterilize your skin - removing the thin protective dirt layer and all microbes residing in it. It is much better to wash yourself with water that has
dirt in it than washing yourself with industrial soaps and shower gels.
Hair
If you use only water to wash your hair, it will still be oily. This is not so bad for hair (it's probably good in small amounts) but you might not feel good if it feels greasy.
But there are couple of ways to avoid greasy hear and remain healthy.
Using urine
While I wouldn't recommend drinking it to satisfy thirst, washing hair with urine is much healthier than using industrial shampoos. The simplest procedure is to soak your hair in urine and
massage it a bit (the same way you do with shampoos), let it sit for 15-20 minutes and then rinse off with water.
You can find a list of benefits and more details on the web.
Using ash
Ash is alkaline and it dilutes oily substances.
Collect some ash (from burning firewood or charcoal) in a bucket, then fill it with water.
Leave overnight (one to two days) for the ashes to settle at the bottom. You can then use that water (filter it with cotton cloth if necessary) to wash your hair the same way as you would
use a shampoo. It may even produce foam as shampoo does.
You can also use this to wash your clothes, apparently, it acts as a fabric
softener too.
Great
replacement
for a fabric softener is alcoholic vinegar. It's not only good for cleaning and softening your clothes, but will also keep your washing machine (if you use one) clean - free from mould, dirt and
deposits of hard water such as calcium carbonate (CaCo
3) scale.
Okra powder
Slice okra pod into smaller pieces and thoroughly dry. Grind into a powder (you can use a coffee grinder) and mix with your solution to make a shampoo.
Aloe Vera gel
Slice the plant leaves to extract gel. Mix it in a blender.
Another alternative may be the locust bean gum or carob gum (guma sjemenke rogača), which has affinity for hair and positive influence with its coating and protective effect, although
some also claim it's high molecular weight has undesirable effects in cosmetics (however, this
can be resolved with hydrolysis of the gum). The production is more complicated though.
First, the skin is removed from seeds by acid or heat (thermo-mechanical) treatment. De-skinned seed is then split and gently milled.
The germ and endosperm are further separated by sieving. The endosperm can then be milled (eg. by roller operation) to produce the final gum powder.
Alternatively, the gum can be extracted from the seeds with water (dissolving seeds by heating), precipitated with alcohol, filtered, dried and milled, to give a very pure "clarified" locust bean gum.
To achieve optimal solubilisation, water with added gum should be heated to ≈85° C. Viscosity of the shampoo will depend on the concentration of gum - more gum, more thickening.
Teeth
Wild animals do not need to spend much time cleaning teeth (or at all) because they spend a lot of time chewing food rich in fiber. Chewing sticks, barks and grass after big meals helps
too. Eating nutrient rich food is important for health overall, but equally or even more important is a good (diverse) microbiome. Chewing wild food helps to keep the microbes in your mouth good for you.
Some claim that wild animals have healthy teeth because they don't eat cooked food, processed food or refined sugar. This is not the real reason. Healthy teeth are a result of nutrient rich
food and established good microbiome. Cooked and processed food can still have a lot of nutrients, but such food is usually consumed with a lot of spice, sugar and salt, which are then inhibiting the
absorption of a good part of other nutrients, essential for health. Additionally, this food is sterilized or dominated by specific types of bacteria, which, for long-term health is not
desirable. Microbes love sugars (refined or not), but sugar is only a problem when it is common and commonly excessive in your diet (so the absorption of some other important nutrients is
inhibited), or when your microbiome lacks diversity. There are animals in the wild regularly eating pure sugar and they still have good teeth. Why? Because they also chew other food rich in good
microbes. But even the sugar in the wild can contain good or diverse microbes. This is why eating sugary fruit is usually better than eating refined sugar. Thus, the refined sugar is not
bad per se, it just doesn't come with all the desirable microbes, and since your cavities have been optimized for locally unregulated microbial growth (a result of sterilization of food/mouth and
effective outsourcing of the immune system), sugar in your mouth is primarily feeding the bad microbial activity. Bacteria in such environment are greedy, they're not satisfied with existing
cavities in your mouth, they drill and create more cavities, in your teeth and gums (note how this reflects the behaviour of humans relative to the planet).
Of course, since the issues with teeth occur mainly due to lower immunity and cultivation of bad microbial behaviour, clearly, even wild animals can have bad teeth if they
cultivate bad microbes or have lower immunity. However, this is rare in the wild. In one study, for example, only
about 2% of wild male chimpanzees (who eat a lot of sugar) had tooth decay. Of 11 species of primates studied, 6 species had zero cavities in front teeth, 4 species had zero cavities in
posterior teeth, and 2 species (both langurs) had no carious teeth at all!
Industrial toothpaste is
definitely not the best solution to use to clean your teeth. It might make your teeth clean from food, but due to sterilizing effects it makes your teeth vulnerable and weakens them in the long
term.
You can simply brush your teeth using toothbrush only (with or without water), but if you need something more, you can mix one of the following ingredients with water to brush your
teeth with: baking soda, coconut oil, sea salt, essential oils, hydrogen peroxide (not recommended if you have artificial fillings) and natural soaps.
Just rinse your mouth afterwards, like you would do after using toothpaste. But at least some of these ingredients may also kill good microbes.
Chewing some raw, unwashed, healthy wild plants after a meal will keep the microbes in your mouth good.
It is also good to know that mouths are not made primarily for talk, rather for food intake. The fact is - exposure of teeth to air is accelerating decay
and may introduce
other problems. While it may have some benefits during development, opening of mouth in adult animals is generally correlated with feeding, not with long conversations.
So if you sterilize your teeth and talk much, you're not only depriving your microbes from food, you may be cheating those expecting food when they sense open mouth.
In short, to keep your teeth healthy, I would suggest this:
- eat diverse nutrient-balanced food, preferably dominated by raw plants (if you eat processed food, try minimizing spices, salt and sugar),
- don't brush, just rinse your teeth with pure water after a meal,
- chew raw, unwashed, healthy wild plants after a meal (even simple grass will do),
- and/or use probiotics (e.g., keep kefir in your mouth for awhile after a meal).
This is based on research and my own experience. I've ditched the brush and toothpaste a couple of years ago and started to just rinse the teeth with water after meals. After a while the teeth got
stronger and less sensitive. I did occasionally chew some wild food, but this was rare, sterilized food still dominated (and it still dominates) my diet, and since I still had some bad teeth, I was
still occasionally having toothaches, which were so painful sometimes that I couldn't sleep. But then came the revelation. One aching night I decided to try keeping some kefir on the tooth. The
pain was gone immediately. I tried to keep the kefir there as long as I could. Soon, I fell asleep, but I didn't just sleep that night, I slept better than I usually sleep without the
toothache, so I also got up earlier.
Kefir is an excellent source of diverse and beneficial microbes, but other probiotics - such as sauerkraut, unprocessed (non-pasteurized) milk, sour cream and fresh cheese, can help as well to keep
your gut/mouth microbiome healthy.
Added chapter Dental plaque
Dental plaque
Dental plaque
is a community of microorganisms occupying tooth surface as a biofilm, embedded in a matrix of polymers of host and bacterial origin.
You have probably been taught that it is inherently bad and should be removed. However, plaque is natural and contributes (like
the resident microflora of all other sites in the body) to the normal development of the physiology and defences of the host.
Thus, it is not inherently bad, even if may often become bad at some point if you don't have a healthy (diverse) microbiome.
The issue could be the sterilizing toothpaste. Toothpaste cannot remove plaque, but if you remove all traces of food from teeth then the microbes have nothing to eat, so they start eating what's
available - i.e., your gums (after all, they are made of meat).
This is equal to starvation - if you don't eat food, your organism (eco-system) will start burning your fat reserves, but when it runs out of these [and you die], microbes will start eating your
body (it's called body decay).
Even if it doesn't remove all microbes, toothpaste removes a lot of their comrades, so your microbes might not be happy about that either.
Even if not consciously, you are communicating with your microbes through your actions. When you use toothpaste you might just be saying to the plaque microbes - "Hey, I just died, you're welcome
to eat me!".
Therefore, leave some food for them - not too much (if you are afraid they might become greedy), but not too little either (if you are afraid they might eat you).
As I have stated elsewhere, how healthy your microbiome is for you generally reflects how healthy you are for your host (Earth). If you are an aggressive meat-eater you shouldn't be surprised
your microbes are too.
\ch_added
Teeth problems in general
Humans essentially didn't have teeth problems until about 10,000 years ago when they transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers. The key thus, to teeth health (and body health in general) is
in the diet and lifestyle (correlates with diet). Proper diet is much more important than teeth cleaning. And a healthy diet is a diverse diet, not dominated by processed
food, like processed flour and sugar. Diet should not be based solely on taste - modern food may be delicious, which will excite your brain, but it's a sore party for your teeth
and gums. That does not mean one should avoid delicious food, but one should at least balance it with healthy food, even if it doesn't taste well (medicines rarely do). Chances are that your
garden is full of non-tasty but edible perennial wild plants. You don't have to eat them (although it's recommended if you want your full gut microbiome healthy as well), if the goal is to keep your teeth
healthy, you only have to chew them for a while (and don't avoid the bitter ones), so you get that boost of microbial diversity in your mouth. Studies show that even farmers can have
healthy teeth, and the
key is in the inclusion of weeds in the diet.
Conclusion
Industry has taught you that you need to fight for your health. And do so constantly, using industrial products. This is a lie, especially if you are interested in long-term health.
If you are interested in long-term reliance on your eco-system to keep you healthy (generally achievable over generations) - aim to decrease the frequency of conscious physical care for
your body and externally provided help overall. And do not sterilize your living environment either.
During strong evolution, this may bring benefits even during current incarnation (due to accelerated evolution, current incarnation may effectively span multiple generations).
It's a matter of choice - do I trust my microbiome to keep me healthy or pharmaceutical industry to keep me alive (not healthy) so they can profit from me?
The more you trust pharmacy the less you show trust in your microbiome (the more you harm it) and the less it will trust you, so it will treat you just like a pharmaceutical industry treats
you - as a resource, not someone to live with in symbiosis.