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This is Why I Tell My Daughter to Go Roll in Mud Every Day
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Friday, September 14, 2007
4:28:00 PM EDT
Hearing Tarantula -- Smashing Pumpkins
Apparently there is such a thing as too clean:
While avoiding excessive contact with germs can help prevent the spread of infections, going overboard with cleanliness could be at least partly responsible for an increase in allergies among children, mounting research suggests.
"We’ve developed a cleanlier lifestyle, and our bodies no longer need to fight germs as much as they did in the past," said Marc McMorris, a pediatric allergist at the University of Michigan Health System. "As a result, the immune system has shifted away from fighting infection to developing more allergic tendencies."
Recent research has found evidence for the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which explains how more sterile environments can lead to higher rates of illness. For instance, scientists in Germany recently found children exposed to farm animals (and the associated bacteria and other microbes hiding out there) were about half as likely as other children to develop the autoimmune illness Crohn's disease.
I have to say that Athena's not too likely to have these problems. We live out in rural America, where we share our street with a dairy farm, and we have a dog and two cats and various other critters that live wild around our house. Nor is Athena shy about going out and playing with her friends and getting dirty in the process. She's pretty much all antibodied up at the moment, which suits us just fine.
However, we do draw the line at her skipping baths. There's still room for clean.
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4:28:00 PM EDT
Hearing Tarantula -- Smashing Pumpkins
This is Why I Tell My Daughter to Go Roll in Mud Every Day
Apparently there is such a thing as too clean:
While avoiding excessive contact with germs can help prevent the spread of infections, going overboard with cleanliness could be at least partly responsible for an increase in allergies among children, mounting research suggests.
"We’ve developed a cleanlier lifestyle, and our bodies no longer need to fight germs as much as they did in the past," said Marc McMorris, a pediatric allergist at the University of Michigan Health System. "As a result, the immune system has shifted away from fighting infection to developing more allergic tendencies."
Recent research has found evidence for the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which explains how more sterile environments can lead to higher rates of illness. For instance, scientists in Germany recently found children exposed to farm animals (and the associated bacteria and other microbes hiding out there) were about half as likely as other children to develop the autoimmune illness Crohn's disease.
I have to say that Athena's not too likely to have these problems. We live out in rural America, where we share our street with a dairy farm, and we have a dog and two cats and various other critters that live wild around our house. Nor is Athena shy about going out and playing with her friends and getting dirty in the process. She's pretty much all antibodied up at the moment, which suits us just fine.
However, we do draw the line at her skipping baths. There's still room for clean.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
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This entry has 3 comments: (Add your own)
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I always wondered about this when I saw mothers using the anti-bacterial this and anti-bacterial that and watching so that 'little Johnny' didn't share his ice cream cone with the dog.... It just seemed to be asking for the kid to not develop a natural protection from germs, etc. I mean, I grew up with the '5 second rule' and I seem pretty healthy <LOL>
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Unfortunately, this research is adding guilt to millons of American mothers (like mine) who tried to keep the kids clean and saw them get allergies (an auto-immune disease) as a result.
I also wonder how much of auto-immune disease was historically underreported. I know people who get "summer colds" every time ragweed is in bloom, for instance. What they actually have is an allergy to ragweed.
9/15/07 9:10 PM
Thanks for the Smile! Leigh