• Sbauer@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    It’s just unscientific thinking. People think virus and bacteria are the only thing you have to worry about, but lots of the time it’s the bacteria producing toxins as part of their metabolism that’s dangerous to us. In other words, their shit is poison.

    One of the reasons we don’t want some groups of bacteria growing on our foodstuff is because they turn stuff literally toxic to us, completely unrelated to immune responses. Same way some molds can be toxic while others are not. It’s not because the fungus starts growing inside your body and has an epic free for all with your immune system. Its byproducts are just toxic. Like some berries or some plants are toxic.

    • deo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      yeah, mycotoxins (ie: toxic byproducts from fungi/mold decomposing your food stuffs) don’t always get broken down during cooking. So, while cooking according to standard food safety specs may have killed the mold, their shit is still everywhere ready to fuck your shit up.

      Not to mention that you have to survive an infection before it matters that you immune system learned to detect the infectious agent. Yes, the first inoculation techniques were literally just minor exposure to the infectious agent (eg: grinding smallpox scabs and blowing the resulting powder up the nose – wtf). While it technically worked, the mortality rate was still pretty damn high, just not quite as high as ya know getting smallpox the normal way, and thus really only used when a serious outbreak was occuring. We’ve gotten so much better at making vaccination safer and more effective, because we now know so much more about what is actually occuring biologically and know to use attenuated virus or just the benign protein coat alone to achieve results. Why would you ever want to go back to scab-snorting (or toilet licking, apparently, lol)?

      • Sbauer@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Toilet licking is especially stupid because different part of our body deal differently with the same bacteria. For example bacteria that are beneficial in your colon are most likely very much detrimental anywhere else. Training your immune system against colon bacteria is beyond stupid. Wouldn’t be surprised if that could lead to all kinds of issues.