Slashdot Mirror
Exposure to Wide Variety of Microbes May Reduce Allergies
sciencehabit writes "A new study reveals that people who grow up in more rural environments are less likely to develop allergies. The reason may be that environments rich with species harbor more friendly microbes, which colonize our bodies and protect against inflammatory disorders."
From the article: "To test whether or not biodiversity does indeed create a shield against such conditions, the team investigated the microbial diversity of 118 teenagers. The study participants, who had lived in the same houses their whole lives, were chosen at random from a 100-by-150-kilometer block in eastern Finland. Some kids lived on rural, isolated farms, while others lived in larger towns. ... surveyed all of the types of plants growing around the adolescents' homes. The participants were part of a separate long-term allergy study, so the researchers took advantage of that data to investigate the connection between biodiversity and allergies. ... Whether there is just something special about Finland's native plants or whether this finding can be applied around the world is still an open question, Hanski says. 'Many research groups worldwide could easily attain these data from their study populations, and then we'd know how general these results might be.'"
Hardly news, it's been reported many times over the last few years that research indicates our overly sterile environment is causing problems with alergies, asthsma etc. Heck, even our grandparanents knew this with old wives tales about eating dirt to make you healthy. A collegue from India tells me they have a ceremony involving putting some mud or something in a babies mouth to encourage a healthy defence mechanism.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
It has already been shown that the children growing in "dirtier" surroundings develop less allergies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868862/ . This study shows that there is a correlation between flora diversity near home and allergy rates with people growing up nearby each other.
Clearly the human body sets strict targets for pathogens identified and the immune system is pushed to find enough pathogens, even finding subversive and insurgents among friendly substances, even in itself, if that is what is required to meet the targets.
We see the same thing in the operation of government and security forces. We see similar bad behaviour as education and health systems struggle to meet centrally set targets and commence a path of undesirable behaviour in order to meet the target and obtain the incentive.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
If only there was some kind of compromise position - let's call it a "happy medium" - between living in hermetic sterility and getting cholera.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's how I cured my cat allergies. I couldn't even stand to see a picture of one. So I got one... It was hell for a couple of weeks. Now, 16 years later, no reaction whatsoever unless she scratches or bites me. Even other cats have almost no effect on me now. If you always sterilize, remove germs and ultra-clean everything, of course your body won't know what to fight.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The risk/benefit seems to strongly favor water purification, but it seems we are going too far in other things these days. It's likely a natural outcome of the pervasive free floating fear in our culture today.
There is! We call it the big blue room. Some people say it has no ceiling. I scoff at them.
...personally, I vote for mandatory rural daycare, followed by kindergarten in an industrial district, and so on. By retirement you may live in a glass bubble.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Are also less likely to come into contact with carcinogens in their food, air and water.
Load of freaking shit. Until I was born my family was a farming family for a few generations, I still have a few friends in the business. One who does cattle(milk) 15k head(family owned), and another that does rotational crops from soy, corn and hay, to more rare stuff like ginseng and hemp. Sorry, but you get exposed to all sorts of really, really nasty stuff. On the field, and at your dinner plate. Because honestly, you're buying exactly the same stuff more often than not that everyone else does.
On the upside, you also get exposed to just about everything that nature can throw at you before it hits the slaughterhouse too. From cowpox to chicken based colds to whatever else. And you're not cooped up inside for 18hrs a day(unless it's winter), which really helps.
Om, nomnomnom...
Nonsense. We have not had medicine (that works) long enough to see a significant effect from natural selection.
Most of the problems are a result of our culture of fear and wrapping children in a protective cocoon. It is proven, for example that prenatal exposure to peanut proteans helps to prevent peanut allergies. As a result of mothers in the U.K. following bad advice and avoiding all peanut products during their pregnancy, there was an explosion of peanut allergies.
Meanwhile, the strategy of total avoidance of anything that provokes even the slightest reaction has lead to a lot of mild allergies never being desensitized.
Meanwhile, most allergies are of the minor itching or redness sort, not the OMG where is the epi-pen type, but you'd never know it from the media reports.
And yes, I am aware that the plural of anecdote is not data.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Really? Given that infant mortality has gone from several a generation to several generations per occurance in families, are you really sure that we don't see a substantial change in the population? While the gene pool is unlikely to change substantially in a few generations, the number of people who are living with genetic defects in the western world has increased immensely. Start with the extreme examples. People born with Down's syndrome didn't survive very long 100 years ago. People with cystic fibrosis didn't generally survive very long 100 years ago. Babies with GI troubles "failed to thrive" and died. Just because no major "evolution" has occured doesn't mean that the population is ithe same as a century ago.
I was allergic to all kinds of nuts. I have lived all over Africa and no doubt been exposed to countless microbes, I am now allergy free. Pistachios used to be the worst, I couldn't even lick them or my throat would swell up. I now eat them by the bag. There is truth to this, our immune systems were not meant to be exposed to an environment soaked in bleach and disinfectant.
I used to have hay fever, pollen fever, even pollen from trees - kleenex wasn't enough - I'd go through rolls of paper towels, gobs of dristdan nasal spray, lots of anti-histamines, unable to sleep because I couldn't breathe ... nothing really worked.
I was also allergic to dogs and cats - so I got a dog. Two months of absolute hell, 24/7, because he went with me everywhere ... then one day, it all just stopped. It's been almost two decades with no allergies to dogs, most cats (there was one who could stillmake my eyes water, for some reason) ... no hay fever or pollen allergies whatsoever ...
Our systems evolved in an environment where they have to distinguish between pathogens that can harm you, and the innocuous stuff like pollen. They aren't all that good at doing the job when there aren't any nasties to "train" against.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
These observational studies did not establish the direction of causation (assuming it is causal). It could be that people who do not have allergies are attracted to (or remain) in farming, while those who are allergic take jobs in the city. I did a report on this in grad school.