Written by: Michael Claxton

There are many reasons to stay home when you’re sick: to give the body rest, to avoid infecting co-workers, to rebuild your immune system or to catch up on reality television. But perhaps the most compelling reason to skip work when you’re under the weather is to minimize your exposure to advice.

I have it on good authority that the worst thing you can do for your health is to listen to other people telling you what to do. Just to be clear, I don’t mean you should ignore medical professionals. These people know what they’re talking about. But it seems that as soon as you come down with something, suddenly everyone you know becomes a doctor.

My uncle is a retired pharmacist, and he’s constantly amused by the fact that people call him for medical advice, listen intently and then proceed to do something else that their hairdresser suggested. In fact, beauty salons are veritable hotbeds of dabbling diagnostics and home remedies. I blame the hairspray fumes for these delusions of grandeur.

Academics are among the worst offenders. Alexander Pope famously said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” but the only thing worse is a lot of learning. As a college professor, I work with many highly educated people. I love these folks dearly. But I am slowly realizing that I should never mention to some of them that I am sick, even with the hiccups.

Here’s an example. When I was laid low by illness earlier this month, someone told me that I should eat dirt. At first I thought she had just mixed her metaphors and had meant to tell me to eat crow or something. But no. She was serious about recommending soil. Grime. Muck. For lunch. Apparently, the probiotic dirt diet is sweeping the nation.

It’s funny. I’ve spent my life sweeping dirt OUT of the house. It’s often been said that a single grain of sand would die of loneliness on our family’s living room rug. I was trained to wash my hands more times a day than the average heart surgeon. When I told my mother that someone said I should eat dirt, her first response was, “Is it clean?”

But now, everyone is reading the new book by Dr. Josh Axe called “Eat Dirt.” His reasoning for touting an earthy diet goes something like this. Dirt is good for us. It contains nutrients our body needs. In fact, our body is composed of a significant amount of the grimy stuff. Dirt is useful in digestive health and in building the immune system. The more we wash bacteria out of our lives, the good Dr. Axe explains, the more vulnerable we become.

So he tells us to go barefoot more often, not to wash vegetables, and even to sprinkle a little probiotic dirt on our lasagna. It gives a new meaning to the phrase “salt of the earth.”

“Eat Dirt” has sold over half a million copies in six months. Meanwhile, my book has sold 350 copies in three years. There is no justice. Maybe I’ll hit pay-dirt next time.

Seriously, after all the progress humans have made as a species, now we are reverting to dirt. I don’t think that’s what God meant by “to dust you shall return.” In fact, I was always told that dirt was what people ate during the Great Depression when food was hard to find. But food is not hard to find. The Waffle House is open 24 hours.

My friend even offered to sell me a jar of dirt, but I quickly sensed this was part of a pyramid scheme, where some guy in Sedona is making a killing selling grit to people who forget that they, too, have backyards. Though apparently soils from some areas taste better than soils from others. Just the same, I’m definitely not getting mixed up with these Sandinistas.

Every day our world gets just a little more messy. I do apologize for all this filthy talk.