[Rushy]

Well now you're making contradicting statements. Does the dirt protect you from organisms or does it give them to you and make your immune system stronger? It can't be both.

[Tom Bishop]

Well now you're making contradicting statements. Does the dirt protect you from organisms or does it give them to you and make your immune system stronger? It can't be both.

It is both.

The benefits are due to soil having a negative charge and bad bacteria having a positive charge. Soils and clays will attract and absorb the bad bacteria, viruses, fungi, without harming anything good or beneficial.

As per why this is, that is how nature has divided the kingdoms of life. We exist on the more negative and neutral side of the spectrum, with the Lactobacillus, supporter organisms, and soil, while fungus, viruses, and hostile bacteria and other parasites bad for life exists on the other side.

The video on this page sort of explains it.

[Rama Set]

When did native Americans stop eating well?

[Rushy]

It is both.

No, it isn't. You can't say something cures you of disease while simultaneously killing you. It does one or the other, not both.

[Particle Person]

It is both.

No, it isn't. You can't say something cures you of disease while simultaneously killing you. It does one or the other, not both.

Yes you can. Chemotherapy can cure cancer and kill you at the same time.

[Rushy]

Yes you can. Chemotherapy can cure cancer and kill you at the same time.

It does one or the other. No one has ever had their cancer cured and then died solely due to chemotherapy. Either the chemo cured them of cancer and they lived or the cancer killed them regardless.

[markjo]

I had no idea that eating dirt was healthy. These are great tips, Tom. I'll make sure to eat a handful of dirt a day now.

Absolutely. Eating dirt every day is one of the best ways to stay healthy. It's a back to the basics approach to health where modern medicine is thrown out the window in favor of the solution nature has already provided us.

How much vitamin c is in dirt?

[Ghost of V]

I'm so confused. So is eating dirt good or bad? Because I've been eating a handful a day since Tom dropped this little gem of knowledge.

[Particle Person]

No one has ever had their cancer cured and then died solely due to chemotherapy.

I presume you have evidence to support this outlandish claim.

[Tom Bishop]

Yes you can. Chemotherapy can cure cancer and kill you at the same time.

It does one or the other. No one has ever had their cancer cured and then died solely due to chemotherapy. Either the chemo cured them of cancer and they lived or the cancer killed them regardless.

Soil-Based Organisms aren't bad for you. They don't kill you. They're good for you. They're on our side. The top ten inches of soil are teeming with an incredible number of organisms which are beneficial to plants and animals, and live in harmony with higher life forms to help each other out in exchange for survival. When you eat dirt you are supplying your system with powerful organisms which will help you out in many ways.

On the opposite spectrum of life we have bad organisms which feed off of dead and decaying matter, some of which actively try to kill the host as a food source. They are commonly referred to as parasites and disease.

Life tends to exist in favor with its environment. If dirt is negatively charged, it makes sense that plants, good bacteria, animals, would be negatively charged as well, or at least neutral. Bad organisms, which are positively charged, do not live in abundance in the dirt of a vegetable garden. They primarily spread through contact and infection. If you put a drop of Tuberculosis into your garden, it will not grow and spread to contaminate the soil with its copies. It would just die and get trapped in the dirt. This is because dirt is not its natural home. It would be positively charged Tuberculosis bacteria in negatively charged soil. But if you put the contents of a healthy bowel movement full of the good bacteria in the gut into the garden, that good bacteria will be in favor with the soil and spread all over the place.

Nature has framed life in this way for a many number of reasons, such as an easier identification of friend and foe, the ability to take advantages of shared nutrients, and the ability to create poisons which do not destroy things friendly to it.

[Rushy]

I presume you have evidence to support this outlandish claim.

I'm sure you spent at least five minutes googling for evidence to the contrary and after finding none, came here to make this statement. That's all the evidence you or I will ever need.

Tom, you just got done posting articles about how dirt makes you sick. Now you're telling me it is 100% good for me. I wish you'd make up your mind on what your opinion on dirt is.

[Tom Bishop]

I presume you have evidence to support this outlandish claim.

I'm sure you spent at least five minutes googling for evidence to the contrary and after finding none, came here to make this statement. That's all the evidence you or I will ever need.

Tom, you just got done posting articles about how dirt makes you sick. Now you're telling me it is 100% good for me. I wish you'd make up your mind on what your opinion on dirt is.

The articles don't say that dirt makes you sick. I never claimed that. When I say that it builds up your immune system, the implications are that it does so by giving it powerful soil-based organisms which protect the body.

[Rushy]

The articles don't say that dirt makes you sick. I never claimed that. When I say that it builds up your immune system, the implications are that it does so by giving it powerful soil-based organisms which protect the body.

You might want to read those articles again.

[Tom Bishop]

The articles don't say that dirt makes you sick. I never claimed that. When I say that it builds up your immune system, the implications are that it does so by giving it powerful soil-based organisms which protect the body.

You might want to read those articles again.

Well, some of those comments in the articles may entertain the idea that feces and dirt are full of bad organisms, under their interpretation of the mechanisms involved. The party line is that feces is bad for you, which is why the call it bad. The opposite is true. The dirt and dander helped the children because it was good for them.

Why do you think dogs eat feces they find laying on the ground? This behavior is seen in almost all dogs. If feces was so bad, you would think that trait would have been weeded out eons ago. Dogs eat feces because it's great for them. The gut is the bulk of the immune system, which has wide ranging effects. If you have a healthy gut, you have a healthy body. A sickly dog can replace his immune system with the feces of a healthier dog. A feat far beyond what modern medicine can even dream of. They even sniff it out for the best candidates.

[Rushy]

Why do you think dogs eat feces they find laying on the ground? This behavior is seen in almost all dogs. If feces was so bad, you would think that trait would have been weeded out eons ago. Dogs eat feces because it's great for them. The gut is the bulk of the immune system, which has wide ranging effects. If you have a healthy gut, you have a healthy body. A sickly dog can replace his immune system with the feces of a healthier dog. They even sniff it out for the best candidates.

Actually, this was shown to be done by dogs when they have a serious diet deficiency or eating disorder.

[Tom Bishop]

Actually, this was shown to be done by dogs when they have a serious diet deficiency or eating disorder.

So evolution has decided that if a dog is having a diet deficiency that he should then go and eat feces full of bad terrible diseases?

No. Think for yourself. That's not what would happen.

[Rushy]

So evolution has decided that if a dog is having a diet deficiency that he should then go and eat feces full of bad terrible diseases?

Evolution hasn't guided dogs for a long time. Good ol' human artificial selection is what has turned dogs into poop eaters. Pretty much all dog varieties have horrific genetic disorders and that includes eating disorders.

[Ghost of V]

Dogs eat poop because their ancestors did it often during early domestication. Its not necessarily good for them, but it doesn't cause much damage. Regardless, there are other things that are much better for dogs to eat, and dogs don't need feces to survive. A dog could eat no feces and live to ripe old age. It makes no difference.

[Tom Bishop]

Evolution hasn't guided dogs for a long time. Good ol' human artificial selection is what has turned dogs into poop eaters. Pretty much all dog varieties have horrific genetic disorders and that includes eating disorders.

Dogs eat poop because their ancestors did it often during early domestication. Its not necessarily good for them, but it doesn't cause much damage. Regardless, there are other things that are much better for dogs to eat, and dogs don't need feces to survive. A dog could eat no feces and live to ripe old age. It makes no difference.

That's the party line again: Feces is bad and full of disease so it must be some kind of disorder bred into them by humans. Also incorrect. This does not explain why lots of animals eat feces, not just dogs. Everything including gorillas, rabbits, and elephants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia#In_animals

Coprophagia /kɒp.rə.ˈfeɪ.dʒi.ə/[1] or coprophagy /kəˈprɒfədʒiː/ is the consumption of feces. The word is derived from the Greek κόπρος copros, "feces" and φαγεῖν phagein, "to eat". Many animal species eat feces as a normal behavior; other species may not normally consume feces but do so under unusual conditions. Coprophagy refers to many kinds of feces eating including eating feces of other species (heterospecifics), of other individuals (allocoprophagy), or its own (autocoprophagy), those once deposited or taken directly from the anus.

Many animals are listed. If feces were full of terrible things which can cause illness, animals wouldn't be doing it left and right. Searching for a study isn't even required for this, simply thinking for ones own self.

[Ghost of V]

I never claimed it would cause disease or infection. I just said its not necessarily beneficial.