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Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits
ananyo writes "Exposure to germs in childhood is thought to help strengthen the immune system and protect children from developing allergies and asthma, but the pathways by which this occurs have been unclear. Now, researchers have identified a mechanism in mice that may explain the role of exposure to microbes in the development of asthma and ulcerative colitis, a common form of inflammatory bowel disease. The researchers show that in mice, exposure to microbes in early life can reduce the body's inventory of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which help to fight infection but can also turn on the body, causing a range of disorders such as asthma or inflammatory bowel disease (abstract). The study supports the 'hygiene hypothesis,' which contends that such auto-immune diseases are more common in the developed world where the prevalence of antibiotics and antibacterials reduce children's exposure to microbes."
All those bullies sticking my head in the toilet were just trying to help expose me to germs. I should send them a thank you note.
Humanity (or human like creatures) survived for several hundred thousand years without modern medicine. If the body was not capable of developing defenses to disease we wouldn't still be here.
Finding this hard to swallow personally. I was born with pneumonia and had chronic infections early in life. In my 20s I am still plagued by allergies, asthma and generally poor health despite generally good habits as far as diet, exercise, and hygiene. I cringe when I think about what kind of state I'd be in if I didn't.
The theory goes that it's too late for sloppy hygiene to help you much, now, but if you ate more dirt as a kid, you'd be healthier.
Most of my anecdotal observations in life tend tend to agree: life in a bubble isn't good for you, even if you never leave it.
Most of my anecdotal observations in life tend tend to agree: life in a bubble isn't good for you, even if you never leave it.
Ah, but the big questions remains unanswered: Does the basement count? Do Dorito bits count as dirt? Are keyboards a good source of antigens for the early immune system?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Getting sick isn't the point. In fact, it might be exposure to relatively harmless microbes that helps stave off auto-immune disorders. The problem is that antibacterials/antimicrobials kill everything, not just the bugs that pose a threat.
It's a good one, but there are several competing theories out there too. One of the best I've seen is the correlation between acetaminophen use in children and the development of asthma in children. It just so happens that clean, microbe-adverse developed nations have much more access to acetaminophen than dirty, unsanitized third world countries....
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
... are due to not eating enough dirt as a kid. Well, I tried, but you know what mothers are like.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This isn't a question of if the body can defend itself, but if it is better to let it do so or not. For example you can also heal from a broken bone, however it is better to not have to. Near as we can tell it is all downsides, no upsides to breaking bones. When you are young there are usually little long term downsides (at least if it isn't major) but still no upsides.
What these studies indicate is that is not the case with illness. It is actually better to get sick at an early age than not to. It looks like it is even more of a matter than it helps develop your defenses, but that they may actually be more likely to turn against you if they aren't used.
That is not at all obvious, and rather interesting research.
...I was sick as hell as a kid, and grew up to develop an autoimmune issue. I always assumed that the illnesses I went through as a kid gave me a ninja immune system. This would kind of imply the opposite. Most research I've seen suggests that being sick when young does in fact build the immune system.
Third world is not a proof because, unfortunately, non surviving children unbalances the sample. There are no adult asthma cases when they died at three. There where no Alzheimer cases when life expectancy was shorter than today.
All those nutcases throwing around how our produced-foods society is causing all these new illnesses.
Is it hell. It is because we are being stupidly over-clean.
Biology never evolved in a sterile laboratory, it evolved with constant bombardments of infection that helps the body calibrate sensitivity, in exactly the same way that your skins touch sensors adapt to air pressure, your eyes adapt to light and countless others. Why should it have been any different to the immune systems sensitivity?
In fact, there is a partial truth to the produced-foods part, and that is more of a case that the food is too clean rather than microbe-filled.
We have been taught that all possible microbes in food are terrible, but are they?
Only a few select sources of food are overly-infected with nasty things, specifically beef supplies (which are just horrible for you in general)
Most other things are completely safe eaten raw. That includes milk, which has been blasted as dangerous to drink raw, but actually aids people with autoimmune. (now if only there was an actual full-on study for it since the sporadic cases of it all around are promising)
Fact is, if there is any sort of food source infection, the odds of you even getting it are as likely as you getting madcow disease or some other rare illness from eating, simply due to all the safeguards we have in taking care of animals, tracking food all across the world, etc.
Overly-cooked foods are of course bad for you, since burned foods contain carcinogens. But good luck getting anyone off that, some people like their food charred a little. You'll never be able to stop the grill lovers either.
As a person with crohns, it pleases me more is being found out about the intestinal tract and how the immune system functions there.
There was a recent huge discovery on how the immune functions were expressed there to prevent it from attacking vital resources and nutrients.
As an illness that is claiming so many more people due to this clean-freakishness that has become of society in recent years, it is about time people start to realize that clean isn't all there is to being healthy.
The study supports the 'hygiene hypothesis,' which contends that such auto-immune diseases are more common in the developed world where the prevalence of antibiotics and antibacterials reduce children's exposure to microbes."
Not to mention soap, bleach, clean water for washing, floor coverings, indoor heating and cooling, etc.
In the 11th century, Maimonides wrote about asthma -- in the children of the nobility of Spain, where they actually washed and generally kept house before the Christians reconquered the Iberian Peninsula and made handwashing (etc.) cause for you to be hauled off by the Inquisition. The children of the poor, on the other hand, had dirt floors and crawled around in the dirt with dogs, chickens, goats, etc.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
What made (past tense) you stronger is the stuff that killed half of each generation of your ancestors' competition.
What doesn't kill you delays the inevitable, but if it doesn't keep you from reproducing it improves the quality of your children's mates and thus makes your grandchildren stronger.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You mean George Carlin was right?
"Wouldn't want some guy goin to hell and be sick!" - George Carlin
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
What these studies indicate is that is not the case with illness. It is actually better to get sick at an early age than not to.
s/sick/exposed to some bacteria/ There's a big difference between being exposed to common bacteria of the soil and animal digestive tracts and coming down with smallpox, meningitis, etc. From the articles I've read, the protective effect is seen with completely harmless bacteria, so there's no reason to claim benefits from exposure to pathogens. Especially when you consider that infant diarrhea accounted for the majority of that 50% infant mortality.
With some exceptions. If your lifetime chances of avoiding a pathogen are slim, it may be better to be esposed in infancy while getting lots of maternal antibodies with every meal, assuming that Mama also gets exposed often enough to maintain a high antibody titre. That process is why polio was less of a threat in the 17th century, where the stuff was in the water supply all over the world, than in the 20th where we were actually doing things that blocked routine fecal-oral transmission.
All in all, with pathogens I prefer vaccination where possible.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Am I the only one who gets a titch annoyed with people who carry antibac-hand-gel everywhere to use at the SLIGHTEST of exposure to the world? I'm not talking people who use it when going to the doc's or at the grocery store if they're touching meat and stuff, but every. damned. time they touch any-thing at all. They're not even germaphobic, it just seems the 'in-thing'. Every time I've used it, I feel like I've taken a dive into an six-foot deep alcohol pool, and it burns.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
The number I've heard kicked around forever is an "average" lifespan of 30 years in primitive society... some live to 100, but most do not.
We've got a lot of interesting diseases to work on curing today, things that simply would have made us dead in the past, now we hang around and suffer long enough for the medical community to classify our conditions and try to do something about them - they even succeed occasionally.
The short lifetimes of our distant ancestors mostly came from accident and infectious disease -- and up until 60 or so, your odds against both actually improve the older you get. Maybe fewer of them made it to those ages, but once they got out of childhood a fair number did. After that, their teeth were more likely to give out before their hearts did or before cancer got them (etc.)
As for the aging effects of modern lifestyles, I think if you research it you'll find that a reasonably active modern American is much more likely to be in good health than our ancestors were. There was a study published a couple of years ago (IIRC) that did a statistical workup of the average American of 150 years ago, and it wasn't a happy one. No question they were tough, because they had to be to make it through the week with their bodies in the shape they were: poorly-healed fractures and joint injuries, rheumatic heart disease, tuberculosis, endocarditis, rotten teeth, you name it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
has gone almost as well as the war on drugs.
I'm interested in whether this would apply for bacteria only or if it goes for viruses as well. You see, bowel disorders (specifically inflammatory bowel disease) are a lot more prevalent in children with autism than in children without. I'm probably going to be flamed to hell for this, but this study would suggest that there might yet be a possible link between vaccines and autism. Studies so far have focused on the heavy metals in the vaccines.
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