Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
For years it's been known that kids from third world countries usually don't suffer from auto-immune diseases and things akin because of the sickly environment they are exposed too. It's simple, if you live constantly with the risk of infection your body will build up a stronger immune system than someone who lives in a bubble.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
My kid must be immortal!
My mother told me this 20 years ago, this is like household wisdom.
Same basic theme as the "hygeine hypothesis" that exposure to soil bacteria plays an important role in causing the immune system to deemphasize inflammatory responses and rely more on cell-mediated immunity. In particular, it's been invoked to account for ectopic disease and asthma.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
And the corollary is... a dirty old man is a healthy old man.
This is why I plan on mounting mirrors and/or cameras on both my cane and my shoetips.
This is why, as an old man, I will take a volunteer job on a college campus somewhere in Florida.
This is why, as an old man, I plan to be a huge supporter of high school sports, standing on the sidelines with my hands in my pockets.
I don't want to die, and if being a dirty old man is what it takes, then so be it.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
A friend of mine teaches at a primary school. She has noticed the kids from the "bad side" of town may have other problems but bizarre allergies aren't one of them. In contrast, the kids with nut allergies, pollen allergies, etc. are the ones from upper class neighborhoods with an obsessive focus on cleanliness - they get sent to school with little bottles of purell in their knapsacks.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Because of this, I will continue to not wash my hands, ever.
Of course nobody listened to me, and I doubt anyone will listen to this study either. They'll just keep cleaning their kid.
Likewise exposing your kid to lots of allergens (like pollen, grass, et cetera) can prevent allergies as the body learns to ignore these things. Even in adulthood the body can be "trained" to allergens through frequent exposure.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
George Carlin said it best
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s
. . . front porch.
When I dump it on those damn kids, they get off my lawn, without me saying a word . . .
. . . and I'm doing something good for their health.
Hey, maybe this a good idea for the new government health plan.
Lady: "Doctor, my kid needs antibiotics!"
Doctor: "Sorry, lady . . . have some mud."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
if god meant us to walk bare foot, he wouldn't have given us feet to put shoes on.
rewriting history since 2109
I have two kids in daycare and I bike to work. (Biking gets mud and puddle water on my face regularly.) I also SCUBA dive, and we don't treat our sewage here. (Primary screening, but no secondary treatment.)
I eat in pubs, work out at the Y, hardly ever wash out my water bottle, and I just licked my keyboard.
Mortal germs can't live in here.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Human beings are well adapted to most common bacteria, adjusting immune responses to a ancient equalibrium created by evolution. The problem is that we haven't had time to adapt to antibacterial soap, everything we eat carefully sanitized, and constant cleanliness.
I'm increasingly convinced that a healthy diet reflects eating habits established tens of thousands of years ago.
It could be that the process of cleansing is itself stressful to the skin when carried to excess.
This has been understood for at least several decades.
When I was in college, back in the late 60s and early 70s, a doctor diagnosed my dry, cracked skin and ongoing rashes as the result of too many showers. He recommended only one or two showers a week, with the qualification that any heavy exercise that produced sweating could probably be followed by a shower. I tried following his advice, and the problems cleared up. His explanation is that soap doesn't just clear away dirt and micro-organisms; it also removes surface skin cells and destroys oils, and this isn't too good for the skin.
This whole story is basically just reaffirming what has been understood in the medical community for a long time. As with most other biological topics, extremes in cleanliness aren't especially good for your health. You're better off being mostly clean, but with a small surface sprinkling of the sort of stuff that we evolved with. Soapy water does the same thing to your skin cells as it does to the bacteria. Your skin cells to have mechanisms (proteins) that bind them together, so they don't wash away all that easily. But your skin does succumb eventually to the same chemical attacks that remove the bacteria, if you hit it with too strong an attack.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm not a "dirty" person, but I also don't wash my hands all the time (of course I do after taking a crap, but thats a bit different).
Antibacterial soaps have only landed us in more trouble, since the bacteria left are resistant to them. I do like the idea of the new alcohol based cleaners though, since they aren't antibacterial.
I don't stress out about making sure my pork is cooked all the way through, I don't scrub down my kitchen with bleach every day, and I also never get sick.
Compare this to others I know that are neat freaks, and tend to get really sick a few times a year and seem to get horribly sick every time they eat something a bit off. I've eaten the same shitty chinese food or tacos as someone else and while they were getting violently ill and had the shits for a few days, I didn't feel a thing.
Speaking as a 35 year old who regularly played in the dirt during my childhood, I'd have to anecdotally agree with this study. As and adult, I get sick about once ever four or five years.
However, much like sports training or academic studying, work + rest = results. Anyone who trains without rest will eventually over-train and become weaker. The same can be applied to studying, and most likely the the immune system.
Being exposed to mud may be good for the immune system, but I suspect being filthy 24 hours a day isn't. Let your child get as muddy as he/she wants to be, but at the end of the day, clean up and get a good night's rest to allow the body to repair and build.
It is suddenly clear to me: My mother wanted me dead!
Also another related advantage :
It might get the kid exposed to parasite.
Not only does the kid get preventive antibodies ready to be used in case of real parasites invasion (just like with bacteria as in the above explanation), it might as well diminish risks of allergy.
As far as the hypothesis goes :
- People exposed to parasite :
100% of them make adapted anti-bodies (IgE) and prepares mast-cells, ready to use in case of real parasite invasion.
- People never exposed to parasite :
In most of people :
nothing happens, the part of the immune system responsible for parasite response (IgE antibodies and mast cells) just sits idle.
No allergy happens.
In unlucky people with genetic predispositions :
out of "bordom" is it doesn't have anything else to do, the system start to attack random mostly innocent stuff, which are just mildly irritating but have nothing to do with actual parasites.
The body creates IgE targeted toward food or to animals' saliva, and has mast-call equipped against that.
Unlike a real parasite (which is an animal, and thus can only exist in a single point of the body - well, ok : unless it's two specimen, in which case they are in 2 points, but you got the main idea), the target substance is soluble or is a liquide and can diffuse across the whole body.
Thus the Mast-cell don't react only locally at the single point(s) where the paraiste(s) is/are, but react everywhere in the body, creating systemic symptoms => allergic reactions.
This might get really dangerous, because the whole parasite reaction cascade (like dilating blood vessel and lowering blood-pression) was never designed to happen everywhere at the same time => anaphylaxis.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
seriously, I don't know what they teach in nursing school, but every nurse I've ever met was a freak about cleanliness
What they teach them is that getting microbes into the insides of a person is much more likely to kill someone than make them stronger. And they're right.
I find the more bugs I introduce at the start of the project, the better the users are at dealing with bugs later on...
Unexpect the expected!
The top scientist is R Gallo at the Dept of Dermatology, Univ California San Diego. I couldn't find a mention on his web site, but the link below lists all his pubished papers.
From the abstracts, I would speculate that the idea is something like this
the normal skin bacteria - the microflora - secrete various antimicrobials peptides, that is compounds which are toxic to other bacteria. If you wash to much, you don't have the right peptides on your skin. at th bottom is an abstract from a recent paper
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=search&db=pubmed&term=Gallo%20RL
from this, the following article appears to have the clearest abstract:
J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2009 Sep;124(3 Suppl 2):R13-8.
Antimicrobial peptides and the skin immune defense system.
Schauber J, Gallo RL.
Department of Dermatology and Allergology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany.
Our skin is constantly challenged by microbes but is rarely infected. Cutaneous production of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) is a primary system for protection, and expression of some AMPs further increases in response to microbial invasion. Cathelicidins are unique AMPs that protect the skin through 2 distinct pathways: (1) direct antimicrobial activity and (2) initiation of a host response resulting in cytokine release, inflammation, angiogenesis, and reepithelialization. Cathelicidin dysfunction emerges as a central factor in the pathogenesis of several cutaneous diseases, including atopic dermatitis, in which cathelicidin is suppressed; rosacea, in which cathelicidin peptides are abnormally processed to forms that induce inflammation; and psoriasis, in which cathelicidin peptide converts self-DNA to a potent stimulus in an autoinflammatory cascade. Recent work identified vitamin D3 as a major factor involved in the regulation of cathelicidin. Therapies targeting control of cathelicidin and other AMPs might provide new approaches in the management of infectious and inflammatory skin diseases.
PMID: 19720207 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
an article of interest
J Invest Dermatol. 2009 Aug 27. [Epub ahead of print]
Selective Antimicrobial Action Is Provided by Phenol-Soluble Modulins Derived from Staphylococcus epidermidis, a Normal Resident of the Skin.
I love rare meat. There is probably more to it than just that.
People think, for whatever reason, that being cold is the reason they would catch a cold...virus. They continue thinking so in spite of the common knowledge that one can catch a cold in 100+ degree temperatures in the day. Some things such as colder temperatures can and will put the body's systems under stress, but if you are reasonably healthy, you will likely be fine and be able to resist a cold virus.
With that said, meats that have been mishandled will tend to contain bacteria that could lead to food poisoning. Completely raw meat that has been handled carefully will never lead to food poisoning. In the past, the act of cooking food was a means to rid it of any infectious diseases or to otherwise make it edible. Today cooking still serves that purpose but is also something of an art form in which cooking with heat is varied and handled in a wide variety of ways. It is well known that sashimi meats from a variety of sources including beef is fairly common. My point is that it is actually the handling of the food that leads to problems with food and that proper handling can prevent many of the problems that cooking with heat are there to resolve.
I feel pretty sure that my discussion here will not change your mind as a great deal of your belief is based on illness and other bad experiences from childhood and those tend to run pretty deep in the psyche. (This is why it's pretty hard to convince most religious people that modern day religions are no different from any other and are especially similar to even the most silly sounding myths.) But since you are here on Slashdot, there is a pretty good chance you have a rational and logical core and will analyze the obvious facts before you.
With all that said, I am not suggesting you eat raw beef from a local grocery store. Some grocery stores have REALLY good meat departments.... others do not. You really have to know what you are getting into when it comes to meat -- it is still an extremely risky food when compared to others.
Annual traffic deaths in the US are about 40,000 a year, including pedestrians, and trending down. 2008 is the first year to break under 40,000. 1950s, 1960s, the annual rate was about 55,000. Thank improved technology and (maybe) increased social disdain of drunken driving.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Perhaps they were trying to get rid of you. Its just a thought.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
People have been going barefoot and risking parasites for years. Funny thing, though. When you walk barefoot for long periods of time, you get these things called calluses on the bottoms of your feet, which protect them from being cut open and make it a lot harder for a parasite to burrow through! Also note that soil-borne parasites don't survive well in temperate or cold climates (such as most of the US and Canada), are rare except in soil contaminated by animal/human waste, and are generally easily treatable. Personally, I like going barefoot. The risk of stepping on broken glass, especially in urban areas, is far higher than the risk of picking up roundworms.
If God had meant us to live naked in a cave with no fire while hunter-gathering, he wouldn't have given us these big brains that can figure out how to make clothes and shoes and houses and fire and fridges and supermarkets and big screen TVs.
Why can't people accept that the way humans live right now IS 'the natural way'. A gorilla's natural way is to eat nuts and berries and the odd chimpanzee. A human's natural way is to build tools and machines and try to understand their surroundings in order to control them. You don't complain that a beaver damming a river is 'interfering with the natural order'.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The article says specifically what they are referring to. From TFA:
"The San Diego-based team discovered that normal bacteria that live on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt.
These bugs dampen down overactive immune responses which can cause cuts and grazes to swell, or lead to rashes, according to research published in the online edition of Nature Medicine."
It is also a well known mechanism that is the primary method in vaccines, where the immune system is primed for something before hand so that it can recognize it later as a thread and respond accordingly. If someone is exposed to a lot of these viruses and bacteria at a young age, it follows that they might have a stronger or more rapid immune response later on.
His explanation is that soap doesn't just clear away dirt and micro-organisms; it also removes surface skin cells and destroys oils, and this isn't too good for the skin.
Our son used to get skin problems (dry, rashes), we stopped using soap and just went with water and facecloth for shower or bath. Problems gone.
That being said, I work on infection control software and as a result am pretty fussy about washing hands after going to the toilet and before eating meals.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion
Ok. I'm God. You can't prove that I'm not. And I say I had nothing to do with any of this. Therefore, I've proven that God had nothing to do with any of this.
"I love rare meat. There is probably more to it than just that."
It depends on the meat. Chicken has to be cooked thoroughly because salmonella can live in the meat. Steak is meant to be raw on the inside, but must be seared on the outside because some meat packer probably dropped the thing so e. coli could be living on the surface. Ground meat should be cooked through because some meat packer probably dropped it, ground it up (thoroughly mixing the bacteria in) and then dropped it again for good measure.
They're right only for a limited subset of microbes that people in hospitals are susceptible to. Your body is FULL of "microbes" already. What makes things like staph dangerous is open wounds and weakened immune systems... the sort of thing you generally only see in hospitals. Washing your hands at home because you touched a stick in the back yard is obsessive, not sensible.
That "limited subset" of microbes is quite unlimited. Virtually any microbe that gets into your body proper is dangerous even the normally nice ones in your digestive system. The body is designed to keep that stuff out for a good reason. Even with a healthy immune system you can die from microbes that get in. That's why nurses are hard core about cleanliness in the hospital. And I really don't why you brought up home cleanliness. It's not my experience that nurses are more obsessive about this than anyone else.
Don't consider marring this hypochondriac and having children with her. She'll pass that insanity onto the kids.
Find a healthy girlfriend.
So if you lost a limb but survived you would be stronger? But crippled? But a stronger cripple? Naturally the loss of limb would be due to an attempt to jump a shark, an attempt that went horribly, yet hilariously, wrong.
Now wash your hands.
I read somewhere humor is associated with farts in all known human cultures. I have noticed we are one of the few species that produce audible farts. Anthropologist have theorized that farts may lend itself to social bonding.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Believe is not subject to logical trumps.