Overly Sanitized Environments Lead to Poor Health? 352
bignickel writes "A recently-released study examined the health implications of living in an overly hygienic environment. According to the 'hygiene hypothesis,' living in such an environment early in life can lead to problems with allergies and autoimmune diseases. The study compared lab rodents with rats and mice living in the wild. Time to stop Lysol-bombing the house?"
Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm sure there are exceptions but I think that it would be an interesting survey to compare people who work in dirty grimy environments with people who work in corporate America. I spent my childhood running through the weeds, pulling wood ticks out of my hair and watching my mom put iodine all over my cuts & scrapes (hurts like a b*tch). Although by some people's standards I grew up in utter squalor, it was a lot of fun.
I have two cousins who moved to Minneapolis and grew up in a house with an air filtration system. The tiniest pollen or cat dander will send them into sneezing fits. Those air filtration systems are more harm than good in my opinion.
To my knowledge, I don't have any allergic reactions or hay fever. Now, this is just my personal experience but when I lived out in the country, I didn't know anyone except my teacher who had hay fever. Once I went to college at age 18, I met tons of people with hay fever. Is this correlation due to the fact that our childhoods were spent in filth or is it simply because people with allergies move away from those areas? I'm not sure but considering that allergies can "develop" later in life, I'm prone to believe that the less you are exposed to tiny particles, the more your body wigs out when your immune system encounters them.
If you're a parent, I would suggest getting your toddler/infant out to the park as often as possible and let them get some fresh air. Yes, it has smog & pollen in it but everyone has to deal with these their entire lives.
There's no analogy to be used here, it's just simply speculation. They've done this study with lab mice, now why don't they do a sampling of populations and ask people whether they work in an office with a controlled air system or outdoors/farm work where they're exposed to plants & animals daily.
The human body is extremely adaptive. Anti-bodies are perfect examples of an immune system being exposed to something and then being able to deal with it later. I speculate that if people aren't exposed to dust, pollen, dander, etc. then their bodies will have a much more difficult time discerning them from actually harmful foreign particles.
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:2, Insightful)
Now to go the other way when I first got poison ivy it was really really bad. Each time after that was not
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:2)
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just funny. The GPP indicates that a family that works on the farm does not get allergies to many things like dust and pollen, but discounts the idea that genetics influences allergies in the least. IE, if the parents are not allergic to dust and take up a life of farming, then their children are not likely to exhibit such ailments as well.
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:5, Informative)
I just did a research paper on the subject recently (within the last yeaar). If you can find it, here's a reference to an article about it:
"Allergy Myths: Cleaning the Air." Saturday Evening Post 271.4 (1999): 26-28. EBSCOHost. Online. 13 Oct. 2005.
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:3, Informative)
Incorrect. Cross-reactivity can make you allergic to things you've never been exposed to. Here is a lay article, [about.com]
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:4, Interesting)
That information, while useful, would probably be less useful than you might think. Even if you discount the typical problems associated with questionnaire-based studies, such a study will won't distinguish between problems caused by sterile environments and problems caused by different allergens that may be associated with air conditioning systems or with urban areas in general.
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, the original study that popularized this idea compared Germans who grew up in cities and on farms and found a lower rate of allergies in the latter.
As for this mouse study -- lab mice and wild mice are extremely different animals, as lab mouse strains (which used to be pet mouse strains) as have been selected for two hundred years to grow in close quarters. It's very hard to distinguish environmental and genetic effects in this case.
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:2, Interesting)
My father grew up in a farming family and, like most, he was expected to pitch in and work from an early age. However, he also has severe allergies to grain dust, pollen and a number of other respiratory related things. These just got worse over the years. When he helps out on the farm now, he actually wears an aspestos removal suit with a breather unit. I grew up in a sterile house - excessive vacuuming and cleaning. While I
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:5, Interesting)
Whereas I grew up just as you did, playing outside, lots of different animals, hay, etc. Not a Lysol environment at all. And then around 10 years old, while making tunnels and forts in a big pile of haybales with friends I got hit with the hayfever. Around the same time I developed an allergy to cats. My father is exactly like this and his father is as well (allergic to cat dander and have hayfever).
Oh, and you can be born with allergies. I'm allergic to penicillin - given some as a newborn and developed a rash (apparently a common allergic reaction to it).
I'm sure that there are others that can refute your hypothesis.
But I still believe that it is good to not grow up in a sterile environment. I'm not thinking about allergies, but just about having an immune system that gets some exercise and building up a catalog of antibodies that can respond to similar threats. (in fact, isn't the allergic reaction your immune system's response to that allergen?)
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:2)
Outdoors, animals and allergies (Score:3, Informative)
I have some doubts about the dirt hypothosis beyond just animal allergies. I also grew up playing in the woods and being outdoors
Re:Outdoors, animals and allergies (Score:2, Informative)
Predisposition (Score:5, Interesting)
My sister and I grew up in the same environment. We lived in air conditioning, but spent most of our childhood playing outdoors in suburbs of Minneapolis. I have severe pollen-based allergies. If I do not have air conditioning or medication, I can wake up with my eyes glued shut from secretions, my throat can hurt like the worst strep throat you ever had, and my eyes and ears itch constantly. I am also mildly allergic to pretty much every food. My sister has no allergies of any kind.
My family was on the farm two generations ago, and one generation ago they still worked on the farm during the summer. Some of them have allergies, some don't.
My daughter's skin has reacted to certain foods since she was a baby.
So, I think there are probably genetic predispositions to allergies. However, I think there may be a role for environment in those who are less severely predisposed to allergies than the members of my family.
Re:Predisposition (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus, people who grow up in less-than-cleanroom conditions are *born* hardier, because natural selection takes out the rest of us before we're born. In ultra-hygenic areas, mothers are exposed to less potential allergens and low-grade toxins, and thus more fetuses with potential immunodeficiencies come to term.
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:5, Informative)
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/featu
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:2, Funny)
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." -- Albert Einstein
Re:Farm Workers Without Allergies (Score:5, Interesting)
You should see my bathroom (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You should see my bathroom (Score:5, Funny)
-Eric
Re:You should see my bathroom (Score:5, Funny)
You can't count the pledges, that's not fair!
George Carlin (Score:5, Funny)
Re:George Carlin (Score:2)
"Listen, if you kill all the germs around you and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you're not gonna be prepared.
And nevermind ordinary germs, what are you gonna do when some supervirus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit?
I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're gonna get sick, you're gonna die, and you're gonna deserve it cause you're fucking weak and you've got fucking weak immune system."
Re:George Carlin (Score:5, Insightful)
We do--it's called vaccination.
At last! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At last! (Score:4, Funny)
Your not from around here are you?
The future (Score:4, Interesting)
It will be no problem at all if there are moon colonies. But, as we all know there aren't (although some conspiracy theorists know there are).
Re:The future (Score:5, Interesting)
Untrue. There are more problems with an untrained immune system than just the fact that it won't strengthen. At the low end of the scale are allergies, where you develop an immunoresponse to things that aren't actually dangerous, and have to start avoiding certain foods that you'd otherwise be able to eat. At the other end of the scale are autoimmune problems; where the immune system starts to attack you itself. I recall a case of a guy who's immune system was attacking his own intestines. They countered this by (yeah, I know) giving him *worms*, so that his immune system would turn against them instead, and, being occupied, allow his intestines to heal.
You immune system also fights many other things other than just outside invaders, such as cancer, which is a lot more common than you might think, but most of the time the immune system can take care of it and so it's not a problem.
So no, proper immuno development is essential, even if you can live in a sterilised environment all your life.
Re:The future (Score:2)
I think I speak for everyone here when I say BLEEEEUUhhhh! Ugh! Ew.
You could never toke up again, total freakout session. Eugh... *shudder*
Hookworms (Score:2)
Truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes. :)
Re:Hookworms (Score:2)
The worm treatment I link to above works due the hookworms supressing the hosts immune system for their own benefit. It isn't the hosts immune system having a bigger fish to fry, as it were (I don't think the immune system really descriminates against pathogens), but rather that the immune system is slightly weakened.
Re:The future (Score:5, Informative)
Because nobody likes to talk about digestion, there have been very few studies of colitis or attempts to find cures. People love to raise awareness and money to fight cancer and other disease, but ignore this one because intestine problems are not polite to discuss. It's a damn shame.
Re:The future (Score:2)
Re:The future (Score:4, Interesting)
That may not be true. The worst case is that, if a 'bored' imune system can lead to hypersensitivity, a totally sanitised environment may lead to you getting sensitive to things like skin dust or human hair, or something (anything) in the food you're eating. Your immune system grew up in millions of years of non-sterile envirnment and so a reasonable presumption is that if it's not seeing any pathogens, it's not being dilligent enough -- so it ups the sensitivity until background noise sounds like a signal.
The first clue that pointed me to the possibility that overly clean environments can lead to immune problems came from the difference between me and my middle sister.. We're pretty close to each other in a lot of ways, and have even managed to be mistaken for identical twins (when wearing heavy winter coats).
Since we've moved away from home, she's kept an immaculate house -- nothing out of place and incredibly clean.
I, on the other hand, have almost always had at least one cat and one roommate, clean on a sporadic basis, and once learned (empirically) that at least one species of ant can help eradicate a stubborn flea infestation.
The result: I have no known alergies, and she suffers from multiple alergies. It doesn't make much sense unless a bored immune system becomes hypersensitive.
Re:The future (Score:4, Funny)
Polio / Middle-class diseases (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I've never seen any literature that support this, she says Polio was known as a Middle-class disease, since the middle-class were more likely to have cleaner houses (thus not exposing babies to as many germs and developing healthy immune systems). The fact that her mother was a clean-freak before and after my mother was born may be coincidental to her contracting Polio, but I like to think they're related.
Re:Polio / Middle-class diseases (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are exposed as a child, you are able to fight it off and are pretty much innoculated to it for the rest of your life. Poor people didn't have the cleanest conditions a century ago, and even middle class parents allowed their kids to mingle with the masses, in places like public swimming pools. Polio was pretty much endemic in the population, and it was only the rich kids, who weren't allowed to play with dirty urchins, who contracted the virus later in life and were unable to fight it off.
Re:Polio / Middle-class diseases (Score:5, Informative)
Here are a couple of resources:
http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/n/nycpolio.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/dise
So now you don't just have to like to think they were related, you can just say the link was scientifically proven.
Re:Polio / Middle-class diseases (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy remedy - Mucophagy. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's an easy way! [damninteresting.com]
No shit Sherlock (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to fork out for the premium content you can get the full text here. [newscientist.com]
I'm presuming that in eight years time some other publication will 'discover' this again and maybe someone will link to me instead of Susan Taylor...
Unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
"the only good germ is a dead germ"
"bright lights deter crime"
"second hand smoke is dangerous"
"criminals prefer machine guns"
in the end, people don't like scary and/or icky things and demand that "something" be done about them, even if "something" makes the problem worse instead of better.
Re: hard to find good dirt these days (Score:2)
I'll wager that most of us live somewhere that is mostly urban and that most of the dirt we encounter in our daily lives is not at all like the kind of rich organic earth that surround farms.
Urban dirt is made up of unburnt hydrocarbons, dog poo, cigarette butts, sputum, and bird droppings and it doesn't contain much in the way of nutrients needed to grow plants in.
While it might help your immune system to eat urban dirt, I can't say I'm surprised that fewer parents in urba
My Own Similar Theory... (Score:3, Interesting)
When my mom was pregnant with me, at some point she had a bad case of poison ivy. I rarely ever get poison ivy, and if I do, it's only for a couple days, and is hardly noticable. My older sister on the other hand, is quite allergic to poison ivy, and generally needs medication to control it if she gets it. I've also heard of similar stories, but can't be arsed right now to remember them. Now, we all know that a baby's immune system is related to how good the mother's immune system is. I postulate that if a pregnant woman becomes infected with any sort of non-fatal/non-life-threating disease, bacteria, virus, the baby will, as a result, be more resistant to it, if not totally immune.
So, instead of isolating pregnant women from everything, I say we start giving them controlled infections of common sicknesses, so that their immune systems produce the atibodies, and pass them on to the baby.
Of course, I could just be completely insane....
Re:My Own Similar Theory... (Score:2)
Re:My Own Similar Theory... (Score:4, Funny)
Chickpox dangerous to gestating babies (Score:2)
Basically, I wouldn't recommend ANY mother to PURSUE disease while pregnant. It's probably not the end of the world in the vast majority of cases (there are considerable barriers to disease for the unborn child naturally through the placenta, etc), but
Re:Chickpox dangerous to gestating babies (Score:2)
Hence even for seemingly-benign things, do NOT try and "test the waters" with people that are pregnant. A BAD idea. ALWA
Re:My Own Similar Theory... (Score:5, Funny)
if your theory is correct, then I wish I could go back in time and surround my mom with stupid people, because I am deathly allergic to them now.
Re:My Own Similar Theory... (Score:2)
Be careful... (Score:3, Informative)
So don't seek it out and show off like I did.
Re:My Own Similar Theory... (Score:3, Funny)
Though when you think about it, I think it'd be WORSE to not have indications that you are among such. Better to have the detector than not!
Re:My Own Similar Theory... (Score:2)
Pretty soon there will be shots called immunizations for common illnesses.
Thats only theory at this time though.
agree 100% (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of odd, but its not uncommon to read news about a young high profile kid die from an asthma fit. On the other side another one survives from four shots and a head crash in a hold up in some poor neighborhood.
I guess this is called survival of the fittest.
Re:agree 100% (Score:2, Flamebait)
None?
Thought so. d:
Clean room (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats why little kids eat dirt. (Score:3, Funny)
fluoridate (Score:4, Funny)
Re:fluoridate (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:fluoridate (Score:3, Interesting)
I checked on your assertion and several reputable sources agree with you (i.e. outside of the anti-flouride crowd).
Since flouride in food and water is almost inescapable nowadays, can the effect from flouride be overcome with higher levels of iodine in your diet or through supplements? I've heard of anti-radiation supplements that provided superdoses of iodine so that radioactive iodine from fallout wouldn't
Re:fluoridate (Score:2)
this page: http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/thyroid/ [fluoridealert.org] lists a few. Try googling things like:
fluoride thyroid
Also effects carbohydrate metabolism thru interactions with insulin (also causing lethagy, weight gain), google for:
fluoride insulin
Note that on the insulin front, there will naturally be futher implications if someone already has insulin problems, such as diabetes.
This should be more than enough to get you started.
Dr. Strangelove (Score:2)
Article in Mays NatGeo about this (Score:2, Interesting)
The article is about allergies in specific, but is very relavant. A few researchers are claiming that because our environments are so sterile as children these days, more adults have allergies (and illness) as a result of not being exposed to certain elements (good or bad organisms, etc) as a child. Compelling read, I highly recommend it.
-Ponga
Re:Article in Mays NatGeo about this (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is about allergies in specific, but is very relavant. A few researchers are claiming that because our environments are so sterile as children these days, more adults have allergies (and illness) as a result of not being exposed to certain elements (good or bad organisms, etc) as a child. Compelling read, I highly recommend it.
There is a difficulty with proving the theory that cleaner houses in your youth make you more suspectible to develop allergies later in your life. Fact is that there is
Sterile children = sickly adults (Score:5, Interesting)
Intuitive: I figure your immune system is like anything else in your body -- if it doesn't get a regular workout it becomes less efficient and when you stress it, it may behave unpredictably.
Anecdotal: I grew up playing outside a lot. My favorite thing to do was hydraulic engineering on mud-puddles. I built dams, canals, locks with gates, stirred up mud to see how it behaved, etc. I was out in the woods a fair bit, got the occasional tick (this was before Lyme disease was such a concern, and as long as you caught the ticks the same day, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever was nothing to worry about). We had cats, our relatives had dogs, etc. To this day I have relatively little issue with allergies or illnesses of any kind. Yes, dust makes me sneeze, but it honestly puzzles me why people stampede to get flu shots every year -- I've had the flu maybe twice in my life, it sucked, it lasted about three days each time, and I got over it. People look at me like I'm nuts -- "You're not getting a flu shot? WHY NOT???"
On the other hand, just about all the people I know with allergies, constant colds, etc. are the ones with a horror of anything that might be less than perfectly fresh and germ-free. I drink milk that's a few days past the sell-by, I eat stuff that's been in the fridge a couple days, I have lunch at greasy spoons where the kitchen staff maybe doesn't wash their hands every time they touch their own face. I don't go out of my way to find "dangerous" food or items, but neither do I avoid things that may have tiny amounts of "harmful" stuff on them like my life is at risk every time I eat a sandwich.
Logical: I won't use antibacterial soaps unless there's no alternative. Why? Because using them indiscriminately breeds resistant bacteria. This is just logic backed up by known scientific observation of microbial evolution. It's the reason your doctor won't (or at least, shouldn't) prescribe you antibiotics every time you have a fever -- if it's not bacterial, the drugs wouldn't do you any good and would breed resistance in bacteria that aren't causing you any issues yet. Then those resistant strains would take over and now you have a problem, and it's a tough problem because the doctor has to give you massive doses, or use a different antibiotic -- and there are only so many antibiotics out there. Trying to sterilize the environment is the same thing on a grander scale.
If more parents let their kids go ahead and, for example, chew on the cat's tail, the kid's immune system would get exposed to a few new agents (and learn to deal with them), and the cat would swat the kid who would then learn "don't chew on kitty, it hurts". That's two problems solved. Don't let them play in raw sewage, but don't keep them in a plastic bubble either.
Vaccine (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't this what we call "Vaccine"? The entire study is somewhat misleading. If I wanted to live allergy free, I rather wear a mask or something, not roll around dirt all day in hopes of my immune system picking up where it left off 4000 years ago before the invention of soap.
Re:Vaccine (Score:2)
Re:Vaccine (Score:2)
Sorry, but the human body is adaptive, we're supposed to expose our bodies to all sorts of threats that are non-damaging. Sort of like vaccines, but it's a passive way of doing it. Vaccines only work for bacteria and virii anyway.
And exposing yourself to pa
This counts as "insightful"? (Score:2)
No, it's not called a vaccine. It's called training your immune system to distinguish between real pathogens and self.
Here's a hint:
Re:This counts as "insightful"? (Score:2)
Asthma is not an "immune disorder", though immune responses (including allergies) are common asthma triggers that exacerbate inflammation. Asthma "inducers" that produce spasms (a different kind of asthma attack) are environmental, but generally not related to immune response.
That I've seen
Re:Vaccine (Score:2)
Not the mold in your refrigerator (Score:3, Interesting)
While we're all sharing anecdotes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhh.. what? (Score:2, Funny)
Oblig. Carlin (Score:5, Funny)
"The Hudson River was loaded with raw sewage. That's right, we swam in raw sewage. You know, to cool off. And back then the big fear was polio. Thousands of kids every year were dying of polio. But you know what, in my neighborhood, nobody ever got polio. No one. Ever. You know why? BECAUSE WE SWAM IN RAW SEWAGE. It strengthened our immune system. The polio never had a chance. We were tempered in raw shit.
What are you going to do when some super virus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit? I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're gonna get sick and you're gonna die and you're gonna deserve it because you're fuckin' weak and you have a fuckin' weak immune system."
Re:Oblig. Carlin (Score:2)
Hookworm infections preventing allergy (Score:2)
See fx http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3287733.stm [bbc.co.uk]
And a study to back it up. (Score:2)
More to back up the "That which does not kill me only makes me stronger" theory.
5 second rule (Score:2, Funny)
wonder if an analogy can be drawn with macs... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Damned if you do...
War of the worlds (Score:2)
Too much of a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to always spend all of my time outside, but then I grew up, and now I find myself in a cubicle all of the time. Apparently playing outside from the time I was 2 till probably late middle school years did nothing to
Geeks knew this for ages (Score:3, Funny)
WE knew this all along! That's why we stay healthy during times when about half the company is sick. Like, say, during a football world championship.
Really? (Score:2)
That which doesn't kill you makes your stronger (Score:2)
On other words...
Reminds me of a recent study (Score:2)
Day Cares (Score:3, Insightful)
I came out of the first tour and said to my wife, "it was great and the only concern I have is that it's too damn clean. My boy's going to need some dirt and filth." Not only are they hampering the kids' natural defenses, but they're also evolving the next uber-germ.
If you don't use your immune system (Score:3, Interesting)
Found the article from '93 (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-93/features/of
Re:What is overly hygienic? Where is the story? (Score:5, Insightful)
Suggesting that "antibodies" inherited from out mother is the same thing as developing our own immune response is well... just totally simplistic.
If I do get sick, at least I'll live. More people die in developing countries from things we can easily remedy than the other way around.
Hopelessly facile argument. The point of the article was that auto-immune disorders (which generally don't kill you outright) are a largely Western affliction because our immune systems have not been properly calibrated. Were you to get Crohn's disease (largely Western) you would live on, sure, but you'd have diarrhea for the rest of your life and some fun stomache pains. People with Crohn's disease have been successfully treated by deliberately giving them pig whipworm eggs.. once the immune system sees a *real* threat (real to the immune system, pig whipworms can't reproduce inside us) it eases up on inflaming the intestines.
Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that kids that grow up with pets, like a dog, have less of a chance of developing allergies then those that don't.
Please get a clue before you start posting drivel like the above. "anti-Western rhetoric" sheesh. paranoid?
Re:What is overly hygienic? Where is the story? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is the reaction to anti-microbial everything for children. Kids aren't allowed to play outside unsupervised in the dirt anymore (many kids aren't allowed to play outside anymore). Soaps, baby toys, etc., all comtain special anti-microbial materials. Super antiseptic sprays are a hot seller... and no-one eats anything raw or unpasterized before.
The over-protective parents who mak
Re:What is overly hygienic? Where is the story? (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire premise is flawed because there is no such thing as overly hygienic.
No, the premise is not flawed. Antibodies are produced in response to a threat so if there is no threat there are no antibodies. That is why vaccines work by introducing a small amount of threat to your body.
Sure, if you grow up in a sealed bubble, you will likely lack antibodies for certain things. However, you will have antibodies passed onto you from your mother.
If your mother was raised in the same sealed bubble as you she wo
Re:Apple and Orange Rats (Score:2)