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However I feel rather uncomfortable about the thought of mind altering organisms even beneficial ones.
It seems a very long winded way of saying 'the answer lies in the soil.'However I feel rather uncomfortable about the thought of mind altering organisms even beneficial ones entering my body.
Quote from: Digeroo on February 13, 2012, 15:15:35However I feel rather uncomfortable about the thought of mind altering organisms even beneficial ones.Bring it on, I don't have many anyway, whoops! I should have gone to specsavers ;)
I'd say the article was irresponsible at best.Yes, Mycobacterium vaccae is being studied as a potential antidepressent, but suggesting that depressives self-medicate with the live bacteria is recklessly idiotic. Depression is a difficult and dangerous disease and needs professional medical care and drug-therepy is by no means the most appropriate way to combat the disease, and if you don't suffer from depression then self-medicating with experimental anti-depressants is asinine.
However, many soil bacteria are far from benign, and breathing them in, as recommended in the article, is an extremely good way of incoulating yourself with something nasty or fatal.
Of course, there's nothing particularly dangerous about soil per se, but you really don't want to go rubbing it in a cut or eating it, and you certainly don't want to go inhaling it.For goodness sake.