On Sat, 2012-11-10 at 08:58 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > Utterly fascinating. Among the more memorable phrases: "As we looked at > belly buttons we saw a terrible, yawning, richness of life" > > Udhay > > http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/11/07/after-two-years-scientists-still-cant-solve-belly-button-mystery-continue-navel-gazing/
Well you can imagine how much of this gets into swimming pools and into our mouths. Not that it is bad. Our immune systems work because of bugs. Only, there is no known figure to say how much of a bug is bad. Too little is as bad as too much I work intimately with navels, although I generally don't culture (the bacteria in) them unless there is an overt infection. The presence of exotic bugs can be surmised from the stink of the grey-black gunk that exists in most navels (except mine because I religiously remove it). Unfortunately it requires some surgical knowledge and skill to get your navel really clean because there are crevices you don't know about, (assuming you don't have a wide open navel like some people do). But I still think that it is inexcusable for the 1 cm size grey-black balls of gunk I have to remove from some navels before surgery - a lifetime's collection. One data point. All navel gunk stinks. If you can dig out a 1 or 2 mm sized bit of gunk from your navel, smell it. Not only will you find that it stinks, you can rest assured they all smell similar, and equally bad. If you think digging your nose is impolite, try digging out stuff from your navel. Should make a good video for YouTube, or its new Pakistani avatar YouPube. shiv
