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?"

Comments

Farm Workers Without Allergies

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies

[hindumagic]

Like you said, that is your *personal* experience.

Whereas I grew up just as you did, playing outside, lots of different animals, hay, etc. Not a Lysol environment at all. And then around 10 years old, while making tunnels and forts in a big pile of haybales with friends I got hit with the hayfever. Around the same time I developed an allergy to cats. My father is exactly like this and his father is as well (allergic to cat dander and have hayfever).

Oh, and you can be born with allergies. I'm allergic to penicillin - given some as a newborn and developed a rash (apparently a common allergic reaction to it).

I'm sure that there are others that can refute your hypothesis.

But I still believe that it is good to not grow up in a sterile environment. I'm not thinking about allergies, but just about having an immune system that gets some exercise and building up a catalog of antibodies that can respond to similar threats. (in fact, isn't the allergic reaction your immune system's response to that allergen?)

Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies

[Ryanwoodings]

The May (2006) issue of National Geographic has an article titled "The Misery of Allergies", which lends a lot of credibility to your story. The article says scientists aren't sure what causes allergies, but there is evidence that shows that growing up in "dirtier" environments leads to fewer allergies.

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/featur e4/index.html

Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies

[timcharper]

Something interesting about allergies is that the tendency to develop allergies is inherited, but which allergies they develop don't appear to be inherited.

I just did a research paper on the subject recently (within the last yeaar). If you can find it, here's a reference to an article about it:
"Allergy Myths: Cleaning the Air." Saturday Evening Post 271.4 (1999): 26-28. EBSCOHost. Online. 13 Oct. 2005.

Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies

[norman619]

I have a similar experience to yours. I was diagnosed as being allergic to pollen, animal dander, dust of any sort, and so on. My mom protected my brother and I from those things like crazy. When I was in the presence of a cat for example I would have a hard time breathing and my eyes would swell up and water like crazy. But guess what? After my sisters started adopting just about every stray or orphaned animal they found my reactions to them became less and less untill completely gone. At one point our house was like a petting zoo with all kinds of animals we were nursing back to health and/or rasing. The family doctor was very interested in what happened with me. At that time they were conducting a study into the theory of prolanged exposure to allergens can can help lessen or completely remove the allergic reactions. After that my parents started sending me to summer camp and again guess what? After the first 2 summers my allergic reactions to pollen were gone as well. Dust still makes me prey for death but that is the only allergy I haven't been able to shake. So yeah it's my own personal exp but I have spoken with MANY people with similar exp. Now my younger brother was not so lucky. He got the same exposure as I did but his allergies never went away. But they did decline noticably during the zoo period or our lives. But that only lasted until we left home. They have in fact gotten stronger over the years. So who knows. There needs to be more study done on this but I know in my case exposure did seem to cure me of most of my allergies.

You should see my bathroom

[Siberwulf]

If you did, you'd see why I haven't been sick in 15 years.

Re:You should see my bathroom

[elrous0]

I can top it. I used to live in a fraternity house. We had germs there that had learned to use tools.

-Eric

George Carlin

[BHearsum]

"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!"

At last!

[icebrain]

A good reason to give my fiancee for NOT cleaning my house every weekend... I'll tell her it's good for you!

No shit Sherlock

[ds_job]

All I had to do was google for "Eat a peck of dirt" and the sixth on the list is a New Scientist page from 1998

I was very interested in your article on the possible dangers of excessive hygiene ("Let them eat dirt", 18 July, p 26). As a child I remember being told by my mother that "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die", a peck being two gallons. Is this another case of scientists catching up with what has been common knowledge for generations?

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...

Re:My Own Similar Theory...

[Chicken04GTO]

Im nearly immune to the posion ivy/oaks families too. I can see it on my skin if ive been exposed, but they dont itch or bother me. Ill ask my mom if she was ever exposed to poison Ivy while preggers.

if your theory is correct, then I wish I could go back in time and surround my mom with stupid people, because I am deathly allergic to them now.

Re:Polio / Middle-class diseases

[Surt]

A lot of people like to think things are related. That's why we have scientists and statistics. In this particular case, scientists sampling water supplies of the middle/upper classes actually discovered for a fact that polio was less prevalent in the cleaner water supplies of the middle/upper class, and that reduced exposure in early infanthood or through the mother's immune system led to more crippling cases (the greater severity of polio infection after infanthood was also well researched and understood).

Here are a couple of resources:
http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/n/nycpolio.x ml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/disea ses/polio.html

So now you don't just have to like to think they were related, you can just say the link was scientifically proven.