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Overly Sanitized Environments Lead to Poor Health?
bignickel writes "A recently-released study examined the health implications of living in an overly hygienic environment. According to the 'hygiene hypothesis,' living in such an environment early in life can lead to problems with allergies and autoimmune diseases. The study compared lab rodents with rats and mice living in the wild. Time to stop Lysol-bombing the house?"
I'm not a doctor but I couldn't agree with this article more. I grew up picking rock, bailing hay & working with animals. Countless times I'd come home with dust, alfalfa or straw everywhere (eyes, nose, clothes, etc). I worked with a lot of people and every member of the family worked as soon as you were able to lift something. What was odd was that you had entire families and not one of them would have allergies.
Now, I'm sure there are exceptions but I think that it would be an interesting survey to compare people who work in dirty grimy environments with people who work in corporate America. I spent my childhood running through the weeds, pulling wood ticks out of my hair and watching my mom put iodine all over my cuts & scrapes (hurts like a b*tch). Although by some people's standards I grew up in utter squalor, it was a lot of fun.
I have two cousins who moved to Minneapolis and grew up in a house with an air filtration system. The tiniest pollen or cat dander will send them into sneezing fits. Those air filtration systems are more harm than good in my opinion.
To my knowledge, I don't have any allergic reactions or hay fever. Now, this is just my personal experience but when I lived out in the country, I didn't know anyone except my teacher who had hay fever. Once I went to college at age 18, I met tons of people with hay fever. Is this correlation due to the fact that our childhoods were spent in filth or is it simply because people with allergies move away from those areas? I'm not sure but considering that allergies can "develop" later in life, I'm prone to believe that the less you are exposed to tiny particles, the more your body wigs out when your immune system encounters them.
If you're a parent, I would suggest getting your toddler/infant out to the park as often as possible and let them get some fresh air. Yes, it has smog & pollen in it but everyone has to deal with these their entire lives.
There's no analogy to be used here, it's just simply speculation. They've done this study with lab mice, now why don't they do a sampling of populations and ask people whether they work in an office with a controlled air system or outdoors/farm work where they're exposed to plants & animals daily.
The human body is extremely adaptive. Anti-bodies are perfect examples of an immune system being exposed to something and then being able to deal with it later. I speculate that if people aren't exposed to dust, pollen, dander, etc. then their bodies will have a much more difficult time discerning them from actually harmful foreign particles.
My work here is dung.
If you did, you'd see why I haven't been sick in 15 years.
"In my neighborhood no one ever got polio. No one, ever. You know why? 'Cause we swam in the East River. We swam in raw sewage! It strengthened our immune systems. The polio never had a prayer; we were tempered in raw shit!"
This is why I never was my hands...
Hey, want an apple?
A good reason to give my fiancee for NOT cleaning my house every weekend... I'll tell her it's good for you!
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
It will be no problem at all if there are moon colonies. But, as we all know there aren't (although some conspiracy theorists know there are).
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
My mother was stricken with Polio in the early 50's, just a few years before the vaccine was approved.
Although I've never seen any literature that support this, she says Polio was known as a Middle-class disease, since the middle-class were more likely to have cleaner houses (thus not exposing babies to as many germs and developing healthy immune systems). The fact that her mother was a clean-freak before and after my mother was born may be coincidental to her contracting Polio, but I like to think they're related.
_______
2B1ASK1
There's an easy way!
"Powers. I have them."
If you want to fork out for the premium content you can get the full text here.
I'm presuming that in eight years time some other publication will 'discover' this again and maybe someone will link to me instead of Susan Taylor...
This is based mostly on BS, but interesting (at least to me) nonetheless...
When my mom was pregnant with me, at some point she had a bad case of poison ivy. I rarely ever get poison ivy, and if I do, it's only for a couple days, and is hardly noticable. My older sister on the other hand, is quite allergic to poison ivy, and generally needs medication to control it if she gets it. I've also heard of similar stories, but can't be arsed right now to remember them. Now, we all know that a baby's immune system is related to how good the mother's immune system is. I postulate that if a pregnant woman becomes infected with any sort of non-fatal/non-life-threating disease, bacteria, virus, the baby will, as a result, be more resistant to it, if not totally immune.
So, instead of isolating pregnant women from everything, I say we start giving them controlled infections of common sicknesses, so that their immune systems produce the atibodies, and pass them on to the baby.
Of course, I could just be completely insane....
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
I've always had this point of view all my life. I'm latin american so it's very easy to contrast fellows from extreme opposite social backgrounds in any main avenue; from what Ive seen, people that grow up in shanty towns, with no vitamins, poor diets and other problems have by average stronger, agile and toughier body types than more fortunate individuals.
Kind of odd, but its not uncommon to read news about a young high profile kid die from an asthma fit. On the other side another one survives from four shots and a head crash in a hold up in some poor neighborhood.
I guess this is called survival of the fittest.
I often work inside a clean room, and once I saw a colleague of mine have a severe hay fever attack in there. Tears streamed from his eyes etc. He had to sit down for a while to recover. He told me it's the change of environment (in this case from dirty to clean air) that did it for him. Very strange.
-- Cheers!
Mall Rats wasn't funny!
Ever notice little kids who eat dirt are healthier looking and tend to be not as scrawny as the kids with clean-freaks for parents. Ever see a toddler allowed to play outside that didnt eat dirt ? They need the bacteria for their digestive system.
DONT TREAD ON ME MOÎΩN ÎABÃ
Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
was all belong to us!
It is pretty obvious that those overly clean people are the ones getting sick because their immune systems suck.
I feel bad for the kids who have parents that force antibacterial everything upon them. What a waste of money and disservice they are doing to their children.
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/featur e4/index.html
The article is about allergies in specific, but is very relavant. A few researchers are claiming that because our environments are so sterile as children these days, more adults have allergies (and illness) as a result of not being exposed to certain elements (good or bad organisms, etc) as a child. Compelling read, I highly recommend it.
-Ponga
The wild rodents also showed as much as four times higher levels of immunoglobulins related to allergy and autoimmune disease, but didn't get sick.
Isn't this what we call "Vaccine"? The entire study is somewhat misleading. If I wanted to live allergy free, I rather wear a mask or something, not roll around dirt all day in hopes of my immune system picking up where it left off 4000 years ago before the invention of soap.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Your theory may hold some merit in some cases, but is 100% wrong in others. Just take a look at the Wikipedia entry for Chickenpox to see how dangerous that disease is if the Mother gets it while she's pregnant: basically the baby can be completely screwed.
Basically, I wouldn't recommend ANY mother to PURSUE disease while pregnant. It's probably not the end of the world in the vast majority of cases (there are considerable barriers to disease for the unborn child naturally through the placenta, etc), but do NOT think that it's always beneficial, or even some of the time without a lot better evidence.
As I understand it, the immune-strengthening effect doesn't come from exposure to high concentrations of pathogens, but from ongoing low-level exposure: playing in the sandpit, swimming in the river, that kind of thing.
Paid Q&A/Research
...I have a personal counterpoint to some of them. I grew up doing a lot of the typical outside kid things, but still ended up with some pretty bad allergies to grass and other pollens. That doesn't mean I don't agree with the article - I think it's fairly intuitive that a too-clean environment results in a weaker immune system. Just saying that the reverse isn't guaranteed.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
That some allergies are caused by the body's anti-parasite system misbehaving to a lack of parasites in the environment, and then overreacting to whatever irritants it happens to come across first.
In one pretty convincing case study, health workers travelled to some remote South Pacific island (sorry, I don't recall any details) and taught the natives the importance of fully cooking the fish and wildlife they caught, etc. Their rate of allergies was essesntially zero before the health workers arrived. After the sanitary training, the islanders' quality of life improved pretty dramatically...
and within a few years they started to have western allergy rates, including allergies to seafood.
Read that again: Islanders whose staple food for centuries was fish started developing allergies to seafood (among other things) after the parasites were removed from their environment.
Now, this isn't proof of causation: who knows, those western workers could have brought over a virus that prompts allergic reactions (not that any such virus has ever even been theorized), but it is highly suggestive.
at Discover Magazine:p arasitesandpo264/
http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-93/features/of
It could also be that those with allergies tend to move away from the farms. I wouldn't last a week on a farm without some Zyrtec.
My sister and I grew up in the same environment. We lived in air conditioning, but spent most of our childhood playing outdoors in suburbs of Minneapolis. I have severe pollen-based allergies. If I do not have air conditioning or medication, I can wake up with my eyes glued shut from secretions, my throat can hurt like the worst strep throat you ever had, and my eyes and ears itch constantly. I am also mildly allergic to pretty much every food. My sister has no allergies of any kind.
My family was on the farm two generations ago, and one generation ago they still worked on the farm during the summer. Some of them have allergies, some don't.
My daughter's skin has reacted to certain foods since she was a baby.
So, I think there are probably genetic predispositions to allergies. However, I think there may be a role for environment in those who are less severely predisposed to allergies than the members of my family.
Reminds me of the Carlin bit:
"The Hudson River was loaded with raw sewage. That's right, we swam in raw sewage. You know, to cool off. And back then the big fear was polio. Thousands of kids every year were dying of polio. But you know what, in my neighborhood, nobody ever got polio. No one. Ever. You know why? BECAUSE WE SWAM IN RAW SEWAGE. It strengthened our immune system. The polio never had a chance. We were tempered in raw shit.
What are you going to do when some super virus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit? I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're gonna get sick and you're gonna die and you're gonna deserve it because you're fuckin' weak and you have a fuckin' weak immune system."
Deliberately infecting one self with hookworms has been shown to prevent allergy and auto-immume reactions.
See fx http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3287733.stm
No, it's not called a vaccine. It's called training your immune system to distinguish between real pathogens and self.
Here's a hint:
What's the difference you ask? Well, which country insists on trying to exterminate every germ - harmless or beneficial - that crosses the border?
Clear, Dark Skies
Evidence and rational thought have very little impact on people who think things like
"the only good germ is a dead germ"
"bright lights deter crime"
"second hand smoke is dangerous"
"criminals prefer machine guns"
in the end, people don't like scary and/or icky things and demand that "something" be done about them, even if "something" makes the problem worse instead of better.
Clear, Dark Skies
There is a study at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/464830 on the topic of having pets about babies and if it affects them. In this study it was found that having a couple pets about a baby helped decrease the chance of the child being allergic to that pet later in life.
More to back up the "That which does not kill me only makes me stronger" theory.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
To think that I've had the 5 second rule backwards all these years... Note to self: let food sit on the floor for more than 5 seconds before picking it up.
Hobby Robotics
Since their users haven't had to develop antivirus instincts, are they more susceptable to a catastrophic plague in the future?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
And you're not the first one to notice that. There's a significant concern that because Mac users aren't in the habit of virus paranoia that they are setting themselves up for a very, very big fall.
Clear, Dark Skies
I cna't say I agree with this article. I grew up in a mid atlantic state in the 80s. Our house had no a/c, so I was exposed to dust and pollen from the outdoors year round, plus I was outside playing a lot. Mom was a pretty busy person, so things like dusting and vacuuming weren't as regular as they were in other people's houses. I've been stuffed up my whole life and this past year I was tested for allergies, it turns out I am allergic to dust, mold, and various tree pollens. Basically 3 things I have been exposed to my entire life.
Regarding eating a peck of dirt...
I'll wager that most of us live somewhere that is mostly urban and that most of the dirt we encounter in our daily lives is not at all like the kind of rich organic earth that surround farms.
Urban dirt is made up of unburnt hydrocarbons, dog poo, cigarette butts, sputum, and bird droppings and it doesn't contain much in the way of nutrients needed to grow plants in.
While it might help your immune system to eat urban dirt, I can't say I'm surprised that fewer parents in urbanized areas are telling their kids to go out an eat a peck of dirt.
Nice quote. I just watched that movie for the first time last night. :)
Sounds like 'War of the Worlds' had one thing to teach us in this regards.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Too much of a good thing will always be a bad thing. Just like how a little bit of dark chocolate is good for the heart, a lot is hardly good for the gut. You can't have it go both ways though. Personally, I'd rather Lysol bomb the house than share it with disease carrying bacteria.
I used to always spend all of my time outside, but then I grew up, and now I find myself in a cubicle all of the time. Apparently playing outside from the time I was 2 till probably late middle school years did nothing to prevent allgeries that I have now. I would say I have a predisposition toward them. I have relatives who have the same types of allergies and are sick at the same times as I am. Chances are, like everything else, allergies are a combination of genetics and environment.
The entire premise is flawed because there is no such thing as overly hygienic. Sure, if you grow up in a sealed bubble, you will likely lack antibodies for certain things. However, you will have antibodies passed onto you from your mother.
We already know that every living thing develops certain immunities/resistance in specific environments. People in certain countries develop resistance to many indigenous parasites, while vistors become seriously ill.
If I do get sick, at least I'll live. More people die in developing countries from things we can easily remedy than the other way around.
This article is just more anti-western rhetoric suggesting that the west would be better off if we were dirtier and that we should apologize for being better off than someone else. We've already gone through our development and I'm thankful to have benefitted from it.
Ever been to a geek's home? Or seen his workspace?
WE knew this all along! That's why we stay healthy during times when about half the company is sick. Like, say, during a football world championship.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While the hypothesis may be reasonable I think the lab experiment is totally flawed. They compared sewer rats to lab rats. Those are two different breeds as far as I'm concerned. Lab rats (bread, maybe several generations of breeding, in a lab) compared to actual sewer rats (real ones!). Put a lab rat in a sewer and it will be dead in an hour, not from disease but from being ripped apart by other rats. What I'm saying here is that lab rats probably lack many things that sewer rats possess, immune system development being just one of them. This is far from a "controlled" experiment.
My suggestion, get baby sewer rats, preferably before they were born, raise those in a sterile lab environment
Also, put lab rats safely in a cage in the sewer. Actually if they don't smell like their mother they may be adopted by a real pack, good luck tracking them. Again, their inferior breeding will probably make them relative retards, or ratards I suppose, so maybe inside the safety cage is still the best idea.
Lastly the idea recreating a sewer is ridiculous, it shows how impractical and wa$teful academics can be. They won't recreate it exactly but a cage in a real sewer will.
Next some yahoo is going to use this to support leaving your kid in day care with the rest of the "I need more crap" casualties in American society.
On other words...
Stuff like this makes me think hh is a valid hypothesis.
I can't find the link right now but I read a summary of a study just a few weeks back around the use of hand sanitizers, soap, etc. They placed samples of a common stomach virus on the hands of test subjects then had them wash with either a hand sanitizer, soap, or just plain tap water. The hand santizier actually proved worst and plain tap water was best. The sanitizer got rid of only about 1/2 of the virus but the plain tap water got rid of something like 90%.
My wife is 9 months pregnant, due to pop any day now. This is our first, so we've been shopping for day care centers. It seems all they want to tell us about is how everything is desanitized constantly. Shoes are not worn into the rooms. Hands are washed immediately after entering the room. Surfaces are sprayed down every few minutes. Each toy is desanitized immediately after a kid puts it down.
I came out of the first tour and said to my wife, "it was great and the only concern I have is that it's too damn clean. My boy's going to need some dirt and filth." Not only are they hampering the kids' natural defenses, but they're also evolving the next uber-germ.
I knew this when I was seven years old.
;)
I had been diagnosed at five with allergies and was getting the weekly shots. Ideally, it was supposed to slow down to once every two weeks, then once every three... but then I made the inductive leap that "excessive cleanliness" was the problem; if one was too clean, I reasoned, the immune system would get twitchy and trigger-happy for lack of genuine targets.
So I avoided baths and fought excessive face-washing etc. Of course, my real motivation was the same as any other young boy... but interestingly, I was able to quit the allergy shots cold turkey well before it was scheduled to run out, and to this day I have no discernible allergy issues.
I'm glad that the medical research establishment has finally caught up
It seems from many of the posts that some attribute hygenic environments to a "weakness" of our immune system from some sort of "lack of exercise." Just the opposite. Our immune systems are just as strong as they ever were, it's just that the absence of viruses, bacteria and parasites that it was evolved to deal with lead to it turning inward and attacking our own body systems. We actually need "weaker" immune systems to cope with cleaner environments.
I've found that my animal allergies vary from animal to animal (within the same species). My previous cat would sometimes start me sneezing hard. Getting her saliva on me would trigger an especially bad reaction. My current cat however hasn't given me the slightest problem. I know my allergies are still there because they flare up around different cats or at animal shelters.
I have some doubts about the dirt hypothosis beyond just animal allergies. I also grew up playing in the woods and being outdoors a lot. I also camp and hike a lot and drink straight out of (clean) streams. I still get bad reactions to many pollens. Maybe you have to have parasites or repeated infections as a child for this possible effect to show up.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
As we humans advance in medical technology and other pursuits, we are systematically weeding out strains of bacteria harmful to our existence.
By doing so, we also reveal strains that have immunities to our current antibacterial means. They generally arise via mutations (as bacteria have a fast growth and reproduction rate) and become apparent when we try to kill them off with old means.
Trust me, the more we as a species continue to "lysol-bomb" everything we touch and eat off of, we only harm ourselves in the long run. Eventually, more strains that are immune to current antibacterials will appear (not just ones immune to penicillin, which have been around for 50 years) and we will not be prepared for them. Then we will have to develop immunity. Then or now.
Just practice a little common sense, here. There's no need for OCD level sanitation, ever. Except maybe in a hospital or lab setting.
"my fiancee"
Yeah... sure...
I have been a network administrator for 6 years, and I haven't had a sick day in the past 5.5 years. I am always touching the input devises of people who are getting sick, yet don't ever seem to catch anything myself. I have always believed that my constant contact with other peoples germs, in low levels, had boosted my imunity. Scientific proof? No, but certainly the type of anecdotal evidence that might support the scientific theory.
I thought it was because the green-filled coffeecups and general geeky bo malaise tended to keep the co-workers (sick and healthy alike) out of virus transmission range... somewhat like a personal quarantine :-)
Intuitive: I figure your immune system is like anything else in your body -- if it doesn't get a regular workout it becomes less efficient and when you stress it, it may behave unpredictably.
Anecdotal: I grew up playing outside a lot. My favorite thing to do was hydraulic engineering on mud-puddles. I built dams, canals, locks with gates, stirred up mud to see how it behaved, etc. I was out in the woods a fair bit, got the occasional tick (this was before Lyme disease was such a concern, and as long as you caught the ticks the same day, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever was nothing to worry about). We had cats, our relatives had dogs, etc. To this day I have relatively little issue with allergies or illnesses of any kind. Yes, dust makes me sneeze, but it honestly puzzles me why people stampede to get flu shots every year -- I've had the flu maybe twice in my life, it sucked, it lasted about three days each time, and I got over it. People look at me like I'm nuts -- "You're not getting a flu shot? WHY NOT???"
On the other hand, just about all the people I know with allergies, constant colds, etc. are the ones with a horror of anything that might be less than perfectly fresh and germ-free. I drink milk that's a few days past the sell-by, I eat stuff that's been in the fridge a couple days, I have lunch at greasy spoons where the kitchen staff maybe doesn't wash their hands every time they touch their own face. I don't go out of my way to find "dangerous" food or items, but neither do I avoid things that may have tiny amounts of "harmful" stuff on them like my life is at risk every time I eat a sandwich.
Logical: I won't use antibacterial soaps unless there's no alternative. Why? Because using them indiscriminately breeds resistant bacteria. This is just logic backed up by known scientific observation of microbial evolution. It's the reason your doctor won't (or at least, shouldn't) prescribe you antibiotics every time you have a fever -- if it's not bacterial, the drugs wouldn't do you any good and would breed resistance in bacteria that aren't causing you any issues yet. Then those resistant strains would take over and now you have a problem, and it's a tough problem because the doctor has to give you massive doses, or use a different antibiotic -- and there are only so many antibiotics out there. Trying to sterilize the environment is the same thing on a grander scale.
If more parents let their kids go ahead and, for example, chew on the cat's tail, the kid's immune system would get exposed to a few new agents (and learn to deal with them), and the cat would swat the kid who would then learn "don't chew on kitty, it hurts". That's two problems solved. Don't let them play in raw sewage, but don't keep them in a plastic bubble either.
-- Old Man Kensey
Truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes. :)
Method of processing duck feet
Course that means my karma is bad on slash dot because I don't think like you computer nerds. Anywho, it's trash science. You body is a doughnut, putting something in your mouth or breating in does not equal putting something inside your body. You body processes things and allows them to come into contact with membranes when they pass through you but you are protected. Is stepping on an open can of rotting tuna good for you? No. Cleaner is better.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
You'll have a much harder time even dealing with being sick. I used to clean house for a student optometrist with two kids. She made her kids change clothes four or five times a day, wash the second they even got dirty, and I swear they must've taken four or five baths a day. We were only allowed to use Lysol, Pine Sol, Alcohol, and Acetone for cleaning around her house. She wanted it "STERILE." I told her her kids would grow up having problems. Guess what? The elest isn't even 5 years old now, and he's got practically NO immune system - he's stuck in a bubble now, most likely due to her insisting upon everything being 100% sterile.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The alternative to clean environment means high child decease and mortality, where only the strongest survive.
This may be Ok for high-birth (no contraception) era, but is pretty bad for the current situation, when most developed countries are facing population aging and even decline.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This just in...
The more you deviate from environments that humans evolved (gasp!) to co-exist with, a higher degree of "issues" will arise. Processed foods, high salt/fat/sugar content, disinfecting, formula over breast milk, no excersise, etc...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Cool. My kids must be the healthiest kids on the planet.
In with Jager-bombs!
"Just because you're eloquent doesn't mean you aren't a fucking crackpot." -Wavebreak
Those of us in the restaurant industry know we are more likely to call off with a hangover than a cold. Is it the exposure to diverse bacteria or the copious alcohol consumption, I wonder?
Field rats most likely get more exercise and most likely are happier than lab rats. This alone could account for differences in their immune systems and general level of health. Only a study comparing lab rats in a clean environment vs. lab rats in a dirty environment could tell if the dirt was really helpful in improving their health.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
There are more things to consider. Frist is that weaker babies and children used to, well, die.
This means that percentagewise, the ones that did not die seem healthier.
Also people used to be much more outdoors and lived healthier in general. Now we sit in front of a screen and do nothing. Doing nothing means also not building resistance.
So it is a combination of things.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Then again, what is the infant and/or youth mortality rate in a shanty town? I'd bet it's higher than in a "high profile" kid's neighborhood.
In other words, the children with the weaker systems might die young, when no one seems to care about it, in poor areas. In rich areas, those types of kids are kept isolated from anything that could harm them until they are 17, 18, 19 and off to college, where their problems exacerbate and they die and make the news.
Overall, I agree that living in a world with natural (mostly harmless) diseases is better than a sterile world (or one with man-made pollutants - smog hurts everybody). But there are also some benefits for some people by living in ultra-clean environments; they get to live longer.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
So if you eat your own poo, you become Superman? :-o
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Can't remember where I heard/read this, but rates of asthma (and other respitory problems) in third world countries is significantly lower than in developed (and significantly cleaner) countries. Scientists speculated we (people in developed countries) are too clean, we're not allowing our bodies to fight the baddies and build up an immunity to the germs. Roll on!
It isn't so "funny" if public policy get set on this sort of thing and people are involuntarily exposed to environments to which their immune systems aren't adapted.
One of the big problems is that technology doesn't just insulate us from natural pathogens -- it also exposes us to pathogens we wouldn't naturally be exposed to, and the more ecologies get mixed through transportation and environmental controls, as well as public policies promoting them, up the more that applies.
Seastead this.
Overly protective parents lead to poor mental health.
It's the same concept.
...kids (people) on farms can get exposed to man made chemicals that can compromise their immune systems, leading to "allegies" that they might not have had normally. That might have happened to your father when he was so young he might not even remember the incident. I know two different people now that are highly allergic to tons of stuff, both of them developed that after accidental exposure to toxic chemicals. One was a missionary in a town (over in east boondocks asialand) where there was a chemical company/factory "accident" and a lot of the locals got dosed-now she is sick all the time and can't handle most normal stuff, has to almost live in a bubble. Stays in a sealed house with electronic filters, has a special air filter insider her car, etc. Even someone wearing too much cologne or perfume around her can make her almost crumble. The other person I know became immune-compromised from working in a service station for years and just was around petroleum products too much, oil, gasoline, diesel, etc. He's a little better than the woman but not much, little things all of a sudden wipe them out. He started out as a pump jockey and wrench, eventually owned several stations bug finally had to retire and sell them off, couldn't even walk into his own stations any longer, let alone hang out and work, etc. And ya, he has a hard time filling up his car, has to drive around and find a full service place, let someone else do it.
Have you ever been to a farm? I have, and found the dirt to be made up of unburnt hydrocarbons (from ancient tractors), dog poo, cigarette butts, sputum, and bird droppings. Also, bull/cowshit, horseshit, chickenshit, goatshit, and peopleshit. I think that's the point, though. If it were 100% pure organic humus it wouldn't have the beneficial effect.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I don't react to poison whatever either. My brother was the same way for years and years, but eventually developed a sensitivity to it. His doctor said that erratic large exposure to allergens can eventually produce sensitivity.
So don't seek it out and show off like I did.
Man, you really need that seminar!
...that less people are living with asthma in countries where there is less access to the kind of medicine and care, both maintenance and emergency, that greatly reduces the risk of death associated with asthma in the developed world.
My, my, aren't you quite the narcissist.
This is merely backing up a previous study, where they found that kids who were raised with exposure to topsoil (i.e. on a farm, or even with a garden) had significantly stronger immune systems than those who didn't.
The interesting part of that study was that kids who grew up in dirty areas of cities (I believe NY inner-city was one of the test cases) ended up with a significantly weakened system.
Appears that our immune systems are designed to operate best when exposed to 'traditional' antagonists.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I know it's not exactly the same as this scenario, but the first thing that popped into my mind upon reading this headline was the STTNG episode where the kids have super-enhanced immune systems. The kids don't get sick, but their immune systems are do advanced that they proactively seek out and attack stuff outside their bodies, which includes the other residents of the lab...
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Recently my household had whooping cough. I had whooping cough as a kid and did not get it this time around. My wife and kids were vaccinated and all got whooping cough. Vaccination really relies on herd immunity rather than individual immunity.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
When I first started highschool I had to start waking up at six in the morning rather than sleeping in. The first half of that school year was hell - I had the same flu three times in a row, I just couldn't fight it off. I caught every virus I was exposed to. I even started having problems with some foods. Things got better as my body got more used to the sleep cycle.
Understanding how the body deals with antibodies is important here... A vaccination is, now there are many types but on the whole they tend to be, mostly dead versions of the virus which the body can identify clearly and do magical things with T cells that blow away the infection. Now a simple way of thinking of it is antibodies are regenerated based on importance of the antibody - in reality there is no intelligence in this process just based on which out break needed more antibodies to fight off - all antibody designs will stop being regenerated at some point so effectiveness is normally a time scale for anything. So while the average vaccination antibodies may only last say five to seven years in the case of whooping cough (I don't know the specifics for this one) some one who in fact had a full out break with serious virus cells that wanted to kill them may have managed to hang onto the blue print to craft the T cells to fight it. Now that isn't taking into account that the batch of vaccinations your family was part of could have been underpowered, a dud, or some thing else and please no one slaughter me on the generalisations here!
My point is basically that you shouldn't discredit vaccinations as a waste of time as they have done wonders for society along with general quality of life and you should understand that the idea is to use both herd immunity and individual immunity against virus just like a network may have a boarder virus scanner and each workstation has antivirus.
I ate your fish.
Honestly. Things become stronger by opposition. Duh.
or else!
Lab rats and mice are the result of SEVERE inbreeding. Their lifespans are 1/3 to 1/4 of their wild cousins. They develop cancer at astoundingly high rates. Comparing them to their genetically diverse wild cousins doesn't demonstrate anything but the researchers' incompetance.
Polio was not a major health threat until after the widespread adoption of clean water supplies.
Previously there was some, but at insignificant levels. Everyone was exposed constantly at low levels, few got sick.
However after clean water supplies, people normally were not exposed at all. Then for maybe 2-3 days a year the sanitation systems would get overwhelmed or break down, and people with no resistance were exposed to large amounts of it. Lots of people got sick. And the more we tried to do about it, the worse the problem got. (Until a vaccine came along, of course.) The result is that polio was the first significant failure of the public health system.
Source: Betrayal of Trust by Laurie Garrett.
I remember going to elmentary/highschool in westside Saskatoon with a couple people who were deathly ill to stuff like nuts, yet my school and their schools had no 'nut free' zones that I was aware of. Mabye these are a new development, but I think the kids who were so allergic just dealt with it, or got sick, or whatever. But it's not as if on the east side there are people who are so allergic, and on the west there isn't any, I just don't think on the westside anyone cares.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
http://www.jax.org/staff/david_serreze.html
I've met this researcher (we both work at the same lab), and he thinks that the genes that cause type 1 diabetes (an autoimmune disorder - the immune system attacks the pancreas) were benneficial at some point. They probably provided a fast response to certain diseases, but in ultra clean environments they end up turning on the pancreas.
More evidence to support this idea was inadvertently discovered when a epidemic broke out in a German laboratory mice facility. All the mice died except for a strain that has the gene for type one diabetes, and while the epidemic was active in the mouse colony none of the mice were diabetic. As soon as the epidemic was stopped, the mice became diabetic again.
Since this gene doesn't have to be inhereted from both parents to be expressed, you would expect it to be removed through natural selection, since without insulin it kills before normal reproductive years. This suggests that it has a bennefit. He suggested that it is probably good to let your children play in the dirt.
The theory that "ultra-clean environments leads to more allergies" doesn't explain the rise in food allergies. While it may be true that someone who has never been exposed to environmental pollutants may have a harder time with them as an adult than those who grew up exposed to them, it is also true that those born with peanut allergies will die if exposed at any point in their life to high levels of peanut oil. The same can happen with soy, milk, eggs, shell fish (which can actually get worse the more you're exposed to it) etc.
It's also true that unusually high levels of man-made pollutants will make your immune system weaker - not stronger - the more you're exposed (though it would be interesting to be able to track populations over time - but that debate can be saved for an evolution article)
-CF
...in the June issue of MacLeans magazine (Canada's "Time").
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Eating your own boogers boosts your immune system.
And on the flip side, people with allergies can become desensitized through repeated systematic exposure. Sounds great, right? The bad news is it takes two years of repeated exposure to achieve desenitization (from a doctor friend of mine).
One reason I'm aware of this is I do have allergies (hayfever? check. pet fur? check. etc ad nauseum); one of which is latex. Certain things have a latex component, of which gloves are one. So I get to buy my own box of nitrile gloves (blue ones) instead of being supplied with the nice white ones everyone else gets. Desensitization would be nice, but 2 years of repeated histematic reactions? No thanks.
As a post-script, there is apparently overlap between latex allergies and allergies to bananas and some other fruit. I don't have a banana allergy (thankfully), and I don't know anyone who does, but if you have one, watch out for the other !
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
I think it is probably better to Lysol Bomb once in a while as opposed to simply laying around in one's own filth. Filth has a way of multiplying and enlarging the area it encompasses. Before you know it, you become apart of the matmos!
This seems logical enough to me -- but just to play devil's advocate, couldn't this result be due to survivorship bias? According to the "hygiene hypothesis," exposure early in life to infections from household dust, germy siblings or surfaces may reduce the risk of developing disease in adulthood. But let's add a few words to the end of that sentence: among those who survived the original infections.
What if it's simply the case that the wild rats have more robust immune systems because those who didn't were killed off by disease? Perhaps living in filth doesn't make you healthier -- maybe it just kills off the sick, so that you only see the healthy ones who survived when you collect your sample?
It seems like you'd need to do an honest-to-goodness randomized experiment to rule out this possibility.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
As a kid, one of my sister's favorite food was shrimp -- shrimp salad a particular favorite. I remember this because she'd constantly be asking my mom to make it, when I found it to be totally gross. Fast forward to her mid-twenties and she suddenly developed an allergy to all forms of shellfish so severe that it would almost close her throat, sending her to the hospital. Yes, she found out about the allergy after a night out at a restaurant. She now keeps an allergy kit that contains a syringe of epinephrine in case of an emergency. And I don't have to eat shrimp salad when I go home to mom's house anymore (though, ironically, I grew up to like shrimp).
The point is, allergies can develop at any stage of life, not just because you were molly-coddled as a kid. If you look at any bottle of hair dye, for example, they all say to test it on a small area of your head before you do the whole thing, in case of allergies. That really does happen; you really can dye your hair and be fine, then dye it again with the same product a month later and have an allergic reaction.
Breakfast served all day!
Most likely the cause of this is antibiotics and antiseptics reducing the types of bacteria in our bodies not by washing our hands. The amout of bacteria that penetrates the skin is pretty small compared to the mega bio factory of your instestines/mouth. This is why the bacteria are in the gut, now the only question remains: What bacteria are we killing off in our guts/food and how can we replenish the supply.
"how kum city folk haf ter dew all kinda ex-per-I-ments befur they realiiize commun sense? "
Science is a great thing, but it seems as if some folks rely on it for every aspect of their lives. do we really have to 'create' an environment for ourselves that is every day proving to be more wholistically deficient everyday, and re-test every little aspect of the world around us just to find out that what was naturally provided is really great at it's seemingly intended purpose of sustaning us along with all other life? I'm not saying that science isn't a great and wonderful thing, but it seems as if as a species, we don't respect the system that has been provided as good enough. It's funny that we then are so shocked when adverse effects to 'snubbing'and isolating ourselves from nature are discovered.
like a man without arms, you can't hang......
Seriously, what do you expect? You force the body to fight, it will grow stronger. Give it an environment where it does not need to fight and it does not waste energy growing stronger than needed. Just an obvious part of the adaptation nature has given any living thing.
Why does it take them so long to reach such obvious conclusions?
It seems to be a ubiquitous misconception that "clean" means somehow pure.
What we call "clean" often means, "covered in cleaning chemicals", or perhaps "free from stuff that is alive or was recently alive, like bacteria, house dust, cat hair etc.", or just "free from visible dirt".
I think it's fairly common knowledge (though apparently not on slashdot) that perfumes and other chemicals are a common cause of allergies.
So therefore it is more likely that it is the paranoid housewife's love of agressive chemical cleaners with 'lovely' fragrant perfumes, that causes allergies in those clean city homes.
Regarding the clean room discussion - the term is also misleading: clean rooms are usually a type of laboratory, and so contain all manner of chemicals. They are usually only a low dust (or airborne particle) environment. I myself worked in a clean room, where we used nasty solvents (chloroform, benzene) for cleaning apparatus and dissolving chemicals. It would be no surprise to me if someone entering there had an allergy attack.
My mum thought she had asthma or similar, because she would wheeze when we opened the kitchen window. The she cleared out some cupboards and threw away a load of old household cleaning solvent bottles, and the wheezing went away. The draft from the window had been wafting the solvent vapours over to the kitchen table.
Of course, a subject like this is rarely black and white, and I am sure the argument about exposure to microbes has merit (I myself have had a bout of colitis, and was at one point was tempted by the worms treatment)
I'm sure you've met people who believe they got cancer from second hand smoke. I'm also sure that there is no way in modern medicine to conclusively identify the cause of a specific cancer.
I would also point out that (1) people do get lung cancer in the complete absence of tobacco smoke. Cancer is caused by genetic damage; it doesn't care what caused the damage, (2) the EPA study used as the basis for second hand smoke claims says "3000 deaths per year" - that means that shs represents, at worst 1/300th the risk of smoking itself.
Clear, Dark Skies
Assuming the EPA study on environmental tobacco smoke is accurate, they attribute 3000 deaths per year in the US to environmental tobacco smoke. It also assumes pervasive, continuous exposure to tobacco smoke - not simply being down wind of an occasional smoker.
Current estimates are that 275,000 deaths per year are due to direct smoking. That would lead me to believe that being occasionally exposed to second hand smoke isn't much of a cancer risk.
Consider - people often compare second hand smoke to asbestos exposure. This is illuminating because no one has ever gotten sick from asbestos who didn't directly work with it for many years.
Clear, Dark Skies
Sorry - I made a stupid math error.
The correct number is that if you are continuously exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (i.e., you live with a smoker) then your risk of getting cancer is 1/90th the smoker's own risk.
The odds of you getting cancer from occasionally being exposed to smoke are indistinguishable from your odds of getting lung cancer from any other cause.
Clear, Dark Skies
Scientists have discovered that experimentation causes cancer in rats.
Increased hygiene is good-to-extremely-good for 90% of us. And bad-to-extremely-bad for 10% of us. The Bell-curve again.
I used to have severe allergies. Let's see... dust, mold, cats, dogs, phenol, ethanol, and I think wheat. When I was a teenager, I went through desensitization treatments. These treatments consisted of shots at first, then drops that I would place under my tongue, hold for a minute, and swallow. It was nothing more than a solution of what I was allergic to, just barely under the level at which I showed symptoms. By the time I reached my 20's, my allergies were reduced to mild sniffles.
Well, it occurs to me that a kid running around and getting dirty gets the same treatment naturally!
i'm not a doctor, but from my personal experiences (and seeing those of my friends), those people who are exposed to littles bit of dirt and illness often tend to be a healthier.
in my case, when i was a child i was never vaccinated against things like whooping cough or measles or mumps or load of other things that kids get. so while i had periods of illness as a kid, since being about 10 years old (i'm 29 now), i've only had to take medicines on 3 occassions (2 over the course of a summer about 10 years ago, and 1 about a year ago).
if i'm snotty with a cold, i deal with it, i don't go rushing off to doctors to get some antibiotics; if i get a headache i don't rush for the paracetamol; you get the idea.
i'm a big believer that the body can sort out most of it's problems itself, and the continual reliance on medicines only serves to reduce that ability.
"the girl with colitis goes by" ;-)
"EPA estimates that approximately 3,000 American nonsmokers die each year from lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke."
There's no evidence to back up the ACS' higher number, and you'll notice they don't provide a source for it.
Clear, Dark Skies
1994 I worked at a Boy scout summer camp from may to August several summers. We worked outdoors, and slept in canvas tents that onyl had palletes for floors. I had terrible hay fever and probably other allergies. I popped benedryl every day, I went around groggy all the time - that is until I ran out. When I ran out (and the trading post had none either) I suffered for a whole day. I went through boxes of facial tissues. I awoke the next day, allergy free! I decided to test whether I was onto something. For two weeks, I never got that opportunity. I was allergy free. Then I had a day of allergies. I declined the benedryl and buddied up with the facial tissues. Two more allergy free weeks went by.
Another example: We had dogs growing up. Never was I allergic. Now, after living dogless for 5+ years, I experience a mild allergic reaction to dogs. If I say in the environment with the dog, it subsides for as long as I am around the dog.
I can only conclude that it is best to let your bosy react in whatever way it deems apropriate, provided it is not life threatening. When you take a drug, you destabilize the system that is your body. Thes destabilzations are called side-effects. And every drug has them.
I am not the only one coming to this conclusion. Trama centers used to as a matter of standard operting procedure would administer an anti-coagulant (or a blood clotter, I can't remember, but it is not important) There was recently published (~5 years) a study that found that patients who were NOT administered the drug as a matter of standard procedure healed and were released two weeks sooner than those who had received the drug.
Lets face it, the drug companies are out to make money, to sell product. Maybe benedryl is just one that its use requires its further use until allergens are removed from the environment.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Acctually, going beyond non-pathogenical antigens, I think one of the largest over-cleaning problems we face now is the craze for anti-bacterials. For those of you who don't know, bacteria who survive a hit from antibiotics will A)spawn more resistant bacteria, and B) acctually pass on the genetic information that coded for whatever caused the immunity to other bacteria. If a particular area is treated with anti-bacterial cleaning supplies regularly, colonies of resistant bacteria will thrive, while the weaker (and easier to defeat) bacteria will be killed off. Already many of our anti-biotic that we use medically have stopped working for increasing amounts of patients because both the doctor and the patient are mis-using the anti-biotics. Some doctors are too loose with the anti-biotics, increasing our exposer to them, and thus not only reeeking havoc on our internal fauna, but helping to fill our bodies with stronger disease-causeing bacteria. Inversely, some patients do not take the anti-biotics for the full term - they stop when they feel better. This is just as harmful, because even after you 'feel better' there still may be some of the harmful bacteria in your systems, and patients MUST take the anti-biotics for the full term or risk allowing a small colony to get used to trace amounts, and spawn a new colony that is immune to the anti-biotic that is being used. This is not only harmful for the patient, but everyone the patient comes into contact with as well, since bacteria can easily be shared. Secondly, if we don't allow ourselves to be exposed to pathogens regularly, then our immune system cannot learn to recognize antigens properly, and it will be easier to make us sick. People really do need to start exercising their immune systems! Some tips to help strength your immune system: Garlic is a natural anit-bacterial. If you fall ill, mix an oxymel with chopped garlic cloves in it to help safely wipe out the harmful bacteria while still allowing your immune system to do it's thing. Another thing ti try is meditation - your immune system is the first to react to stress, so if you are feeling very stressed out, take some time out of your day to just lay back and concentration on deep, even breathing. There are yoga postures that help, like lying on your back, and pulling your shoulder blads towards each other, opening the chest. Softly tapping on your chest just under the neck region is also suppose to help activate the area where t-cells are made and 'educated'.
Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement? - SMAC