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When my child was a baby, I was about to feed my child a snack and found myself scanning the immediate
environment for a bathroom or at least some running water to wash my
child’s hands. Upon witnessing my vigilance, one mother said something like, “Oh you are so good, aren’t you?” and she followed
this up with a self-dismissal to the tune of, “I just let my kids eat
all kinds of dirt and hope for the best.”
Over the past several decades, parents have bent over backwards to
keep their children clean and free of germs of all kinds. This endeavor
has ranged from the sensible (frequent washing of hands) to the dubious (anti-bacterial everything in every form imaginable)
and fueled an industry eager to feed your fears about everything from
your garden-variety icky germs to virulent strains of flu viruses.
The
marketing of products to keep your family safe and germ-free has fueled
this fleeting fantasy of a hypersanitized childhood, free of the
plagues and pathogens that had befallen previous generations. It is a
noble, but futile fight.
Now comes news that these germ-free adolescents may be suffering from
too much of a good thing. Too much cleanliness can be a bad thing for a
young child’s developing immune system, according to a recent article
on Slate.com by Amanda Schaffer.
The article goes on (backed by
multiple recent scientific findings) to assert that early exposures to
germs help teach a child’s immune system to regulate itself and provide
much needed stimulation and training to insure future health and a
bolstered immunity.
Some of the evidence suggests that a small percentage of
gastrointestinal bugs and viruses, which may or may not cause illness,
might protect a child later in life against allergies, asthma, and skin inflammations like
eczema (note: this sort of exposure does not work the same for
respiratory illnesses and infections and may in fact increase the
likelihood of future infections and complications).
As mentioned in the
article, hepatitis A, a virus transmitted by contaminated food and
water, seems to bolster immune training, too: Kids with a certain common
gene variant who had been exposed to hepatitis A appeared to be less
likely to suffer from a range of allergic disorders.
This idea of bolstered immunity through controlled and selective
exposure is not entirely new. Our vaccine and immunization regimen is
based upon the idea that controlled exposure to dead or controlled
pathogens will foster lifelong immunity to virulent diseases like polio, hepatitis, and measles.
So what to do? Should we just take this
information with a grain of salt (or dirt) and keep on keeping on with
our anti-bacterial wipes and magic UV-sanitizing wands? Or should we
turn our babies out into the backyard with the worms, dirt, and trace
amounts of fecal matter and hope for the best?
Please share your
thoughts along with your personal experiences on the matter. Do you feel
safer in a world stocked with anti-bacterial wipes, or do you feel like
exposure to all the nasty bits provides the key to a healthy childhood?
freelance writer who contributes regularly to care2, where this post originally appeared.