Is This Were Allergies Come From?

[arissa]

I find this a little hard to believe. I mean, I suffer from allergies but none are common household ones. The ones that get me are tree and grass allergies. That puzzles me since I was an outside kid when I was younger how in the heck did I manage to become allergic to the things I loved? I was the tom-boy, climing trees and playing football in the grass. Are we really going to let our kids run around touching fectal matter just to avoid the possible chance of getting allergies as an adult?

[Eclogite]

If this would significantly reduce the risk of developing allergies what would you have against it? You seem to be reacting to the suggestion emotionally rather than logically.

[Gregb]

It's well known that we over sanitize our kids. We are developing a generation with weak immune systems. It's time for kids to get dirty again.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011106055.html

[Excei]

I couldn't agree more. Let our kids get dirty. Stop with the over washing of our hands. We all turned out just fine. I think too many people are so "germaphobic". We have to let kids be kids.

[CraigD]

Are we really going to let our kids run around touching fectal matter just to avoid the possible chance of getting allergies as an adult?

Yes!

 

There’s a strong, uncontroversial, scientific and medical consensus supporting what’s generally called the “Hygiene hypothesis” (a term that came into common use around 1990, though the idea is much older). Its Wikipedia entry is one of many webpages giving a good overview of its science and history.

 

That you ask the question, arissa, suggest to me that you’re unfamiliar with this, so I recommend you give this literature a good read.

 

I meant to bring up the hygiene hypothesis a month ago in into the thread Clean Freaks (catching Germs).

 

While bioscientists and medical folk have agreed about the hygiene hypothesis for nearly a generation, I think it’s much less known and accepted where it’s most important that it be, in the general public. Though this might be explained as just a public health information communication/education, I think there’s more to it.

 

One factor is health education and the info businesses that carry much of it – print, TV, and lately, internet. They do a good job of accurately explaining the cause of serious diseases and the need for preventing their spread (the promotion of “safe sex” to reduce the spread of the HIV virus stands out as a major victory), but risk spreading the incorrect idea that all germs are dangerous.

 

Another related factor is the consumer market and advertising. Labels like “antibacterial” improve the sales of commodities like soap (and even plastic toys, which along with other plastic products, have since the 1980s often contains antimicrobial chemicals that effectively killed common bacteria on plastic surfaces). While the scientific consensus after several decades of their use is that these products are mostly harmless and in some cases beneficial, their promotion via labeling and advertising risks promoting the “all germs are bad” misconception.

 

I’ve long suspected that, underlying these more obvious and immediate factors are social/psychological ones. Two come to my mind:

 

Human culture has a long history of seeking to distinguish ourselves from the other animals. Most animals, even our closest primate relatives, seem much more comfortable around feces than we humans. So an aversion to **** (feces) is a way to strengthen our sense that we are different and better than other animals.

 

We humans have a lot of sex and nudity taboos. **** come from a the anus, a strongly taboo organ, so offends our sense of taboo.

 

Finally, and perhaps the strongest factor, one not just of social attitudes but of exposure, is that, as we become more urbanized and industrialized, fewer people live and work on farms and with animals, or regularly get profoundly, manure-ly dirty. 120 years ago (or even 40 years ago, in my case), most literally shoveled a lot of **** during their childhoods). In present day industrialized countries like the US, the only exposure many people have to manure is from pets.

 

Some of the strongest and earliest supporting data for the hygiene hypothesis compared disease rates among children raised on farms to children not raised on them. Others compared children raised with and without pets.

 

In short, if you don’t have a cow barn for your kids to clean, the next best thing might be a cat litter box or the baggy work that goes along with walking a dog in the typical suburb.