Can We Be Too Clean?

What is with these antibacterial soaps and gels, there are even ones made specifically for kids, apparently kids need one that works faster (???).

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http://www.thirdage.com/today/how-stuff-works/can-we-be-too-clean


Can We Be Too Clean?

Can we be too clean? Apparently so.

Rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have far healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs. The New York Times concludes that clean living may make us sick, based on the study published Friday in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology.

Called the hygiene hypothesis, the overly-sanitized Western world may be why the rates for allergy, asthma, type 1 diabetes and Rheumatoid Arthritis are soaring. Our immune systems aren’t being challenged by disease and dirt early in life and the result is they end up overreacting to small irritants.

When the immune cells in the wild rats are stimulated by researchers, ''they just don't do anything they sit there; if you give them same stimulus to the lab rats, they go crazy,'' said study co-author Dr. William Parker, a Duke University professor of experimental surgery.
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''Your immune system is like the person who lives in the perfect house and has all the food they want, you're going to start worrying about the little things like someone stepping on your flowers,'' said study co-author Dr. William Parker, a Duke University professor of experimental surgery.

When kids grow up with two or more pets, they develop far fewer allergies and kids on farms rarely have asthma. Does that mean we shouldn’t shower or bathe? I hope not. But we can relax a lot more, ease up on the anti-bacterial soap and let our kids play in the dirt and sit on the grass. Why not get in the dirt ourselves? Whether it’s gardening or sports, getting in to it, will do us a world of good. Somewhere along the way, too many of us have lost our primal connection with the natural world. The dirt, the insects, the worms and bacteria that make us strong, connected with the earth beneath our feet.

We are hopelessly entangled with others and the world, seen and unseen around us.
Even as we wall ourselves off, and think ourselves safe behind our walls of glass, wood and cement and secure with our soaps and sprays, we lose what would make us strong.


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