Want To Fight Allergies? Get a Dirty Dog 147
sciencehabit writes "A dog in the house is more than just good company. There's increasing evidence that exposure to dogs and livestock early in life can lessen the chances of infants later developing allergies and asthma. Now, researchers have traced this beneficial health effect to a microbe living in the gut. Their study, in mice, suggests that supplementing an infant's diet with the right mix of bacteria might help prevent allergies — even without a pet pooch."
I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Informative)
I've had allergies all my life, dust and pollen. My mother HATED animals and we never had any pets.
Flash forward 20 years -- I get a dog, a little Chihuahua that lives inside my house. I'm sure his hair and dander is all over the place and I breathe it in every day. And.... my allergies are MUCH better now! I can actually breathe with both nostrils, which I never could do most of my life due to sinuses being swollen.
Re:I KNEW IT! (Score:4, Funny)
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Who the hell hates animals? Your mother sounds like an inhuman monster.
Or perhaps she just hates the mess or the noise they make, or their tendency to bite (rightly) if they're mistreated or mistrained.
Not everyone wants to live with animals. I pity such people, but I respect their choice.
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Re:I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that there are inconsiderate people out there is not, in itself, sufficient to call for an outright ban.
I lived close to a bar, and I can tell you a thing or two about noise, street fights and vomit on the sidewalk. I still did not consider asking for a ban on all bars within urban areas. I did, however, call the police when i considered it appropriate.
Re:I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I don't mind well behaved dogs, but anyone telling you that any laws on the books dealing with constantly barking dogs or dog crap on the sidewalks will have any effect at all is insane.
Police will not enforce such laws. Animal control will not enforce those laws. Until the neighborhood comes to blows, nothing you say will make the slightest difference.
There is something about dog ownership that causes deafness.
The closer the dwellings, the smaller the dogs need to be, and the less time they should be allowed chained up outside.
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Police will not enforce such laws. Animal control will not enforce those laws. Until the neighborhood comes to blows, nothing you say will make the slightest difference.
Rifle?
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Police will not enforce such laws. Animal control will not enforce those laws. Until the neighborhood comes to blows, nothing you say will make the slightest difference.
Rifle?
Prison?
You can't shoot at someone (two- or four-legged) just because they're pissing you off.
[And yes, I saw the Funny mod, and I agree with it.]
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It's at most a fine. Destruction of private property.
Are ye daft?
It's a swat team busting down your door.
It's cuffed and dragged out of your home and charged with attempted murder. (Until they can't find anything but a dead dog).
Then it's Reckless Endangerment, Discharging a firearm in City limits, resisting arrest, and anything else they can possibly pile on.
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Rifle?
Here's a guy that just got 28 months in jail for that solution. [oregonlive.com]
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Around here, it's a $50 ticket for not having a bag with you to pick up poop. There's no dog poop on the sidewalks. There are lots of dogs. You may live in a less civilized area, but don't push your hangups on me.
I'm not implying that the fine is the cause of the good behavior or an indication of civilization. I mentioned both the fine and the lack of poop on sidewalks two points of evidence which contradict the bulk of your post.
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Around here, it's a $50 ticket for not having a bag with you to pick up poop.
Another law that is never enforced.
Citing laws on the books does not contradict what I said.
The only way that $50 ticket gets issued is if the dog craps on the Cop's shoes.
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It's a lot easier to enforce "no dogs" than "no dog shit". You have to see dogshit as it happens with nobody picking it up. And dogs stop barking after your emergency 911 call to the police for "my neighbours dog is barking! Ticket him $50 on the double!". Dog existence? Not so much.
There are exceptions of course, like seeing-eye dogs or police dogs or other working animals.
Re:I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Funny)
There is something about dog ownership that causes deafness.
The solution then to the barking dog problem is to get your own dog.
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Or a hawk.
Re:I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Funny)
There are alphas like that and they should be fined, repeatedly. But you may not understand our situation.
Our barking is to indicate a warning to our packmates or to scare off a threat (or occasionally to intimidate a squirrel). We don't bark much when our alphas are home to hear us because our alphas quickly reassure us that they don't need us to help frighten off the threat. Once our packmates acknowledge the situation, we know we have done our job and can go back to more productive activities.
However, some things are too scary to stop barking, and one simply must keep barking until it has gone away.
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On the internet, no-one knows you're a dog, until you out yourself.
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Nobody ever asks.
Most people think we're not intelligent because we can't talk. But that's because our mouths and vocal cords don't give us the admirable control that people have, and until recently even writing was impossible because every time I pick up a pen, I find myself compulsively chewing it to pieces, which gets ink on the carpet; for some reason my human packmates say that is "Bad! Bad! Very Bad!" And computer keyboards are difficult too because we only have short little toes and no opposable
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Where I live, Police will not enforce such laws. Animal control will not enforce those laws.
TFTFY. But really, if your authorities don't do their job, that's again no reason to seek outright bans on household animals. Vote to have the authorities changed by a team who cares. Failing that, move to a different location where authorities do care.
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We should also ban children, by your logic. Loud, unbehaving things. Something about owning a child causes deafness. Especially teenagers. Heck, also ban drunken college students.
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No No No No! Small dogs are kept inside with the rest of the children. They may yip and yap but nobody will hear them.
Big dogs are left outside on chains all day when Mommy and Daddy are at work and bark incessantly at a volume that can be heard through walls, and it triggers barking by dogs 4 streets away. They also deposit enough crap that the entire neighborhood smells like a kennel. And if the owners are fairly young they will out partying till the wee hours with Bowser left chained and hungry barkin
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Or perhaps she just hates the mess or the noise they make
Mess? Absolutely. Noise? We have an 80-pound Golden Retriever. He's quietest guy in the house.
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I love animals. I can't stand vegetables.
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Who the hell hates animals? Your mother sounds like an inhuman monster.
Well, that's what self-hatred does to you after some time. ;-)
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Or a member of PITA... Oh wait that is the same thing.
In other words ... (Score:2)
What TFA suggests is to get a "dirty dog" which pass on some "gut microbes" onto the human babies which, according to TFA, may help the human babies to fight allergies.
This scenario has several implications:
1. How the "gut microbes" being passed from that "dirty dog" to the human infant ?
Shit.
Specifically, dog shit.
Which means, the human infant somehow ingested some of the dog shit which contains the microbes that previously reside inside the dog's guts.
2. The transfer of a microbe from a species (dog) to a
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And what do dogs have a habit of eating.
You guessed it, their own poo.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Informative)
You'd actually be surprised to hear that mother's body prepares itself for giving birth by allocating a number of fecal bacteria to the vagina, which baby licks up on its way down the birth canal.
So yes, nature intends for babies to "eat shit". Because it's needed to establish appropriate gut flora. To the point where nowadays doctors take vaginal swabs and put them in baby's mouth if baby is born of cesarean section and cannot get these naturally.
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I swear, God is a fucking troll.
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Funny)
I swear, God is a fucking troll.
No, God just loves incestuous scat child pornography. Either that, or it's evolution. You decide, based on whether you're religious or not. ;-)
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Proximity and changing pH, I'd imagine.
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Woah -- mind officially *blown*!
I'm not kidding. This is definitely one of the more interesting bits of trivia that I've learned in a long time. It means that it's common and widespread knowledge from doctors that humans need intestinal flora "training."
It's not long now until we start getting a lot smarter about immunizations and healthy living, and stop this nonsense with using anti-bacterial poisons on everything.
I still remember sterilizing bottle nipples for my boy and my anxious wife, only to discover
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It was also discovered that the infant immune system is inte
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Actually, the babies get their first shot of gut bacteria at birth. Unless it is a caesarean.
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The signs that a dog is harboring harmful intestinal bacteria are not exactly subtle.
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neither is it after I've had a strong curry... fortunately I can blame the less-than-subtle effects as coming from the dog.
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What TFA suggests is to get a "dirty dog" which pass on some "gut microbes" onto the human babies which, according to TFA, may help the human babies to fight allergies.
This scenario has several implications:
1. How the "gut microbes" being passed from that "dirty dog" to the human infant ?
Shit.
Specifically, dog shit.
Which means, the human infant somehow ingested some of the dog shit which contains the microbes that previously reside inside the dog's guts.
2. The transfer of a microbe from a species (dog) to another (human) may, or may not work.
It may even be very harmful.
If the microbes are of the "benign" kind, yes, it may benefit the human baby, as TFA has suggested.
But if the microbes are of the nasty kind, it may bring on transgenic diseases.
Yes, this is also how the parent's gut microbes are passed to their infant as well. It's a well known fact that fathers giving their newborns what we today call a "dirty Sanchez" immediately after childbirth goes back 10's of millions of years as a way to pass on their unique gut flora.
Wait, what's that? Oh, sorry, I'm being told it's transferred via saliva. Hey, maybe that's how the dog to human transfer works too...
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Isn't looking for a "hygienic" way to expose a person to microbes like looking for a pornography store without the smut? The unhygienic part of poop (or saliva, blood, skin, or any tissue or fluid) is the microbes. Example: What's the polio vaccine? Weakened or killed virus from poop. Why did kids need it? Too little exposure to poop as a result of better sanitation.
Also what dangerous zoonotic (transgenic means something else) disease do you expect to catch from Fido that you're not just as likely to get f
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Oddly the only thing I'm allergic to is dog dander, I've been that way ever since I was a little kid.
Re:I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you consider what allergic reaction is, your observation makes sense.
Allergic reaction is your immune system looking for enemies, not finding them and attacking benign or even symbiotic cells instead. When you get a dog, alongside all the hair you get those foreign microbes and suddenly your immune system has proper enemies to fight - so it can "recalibrate" itself to combat those instead of friendlies.
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I have a very different experience. We had several dogs (2-3 on average) and a few cats. I've had allergies all during my youth. Mostly pollen, cats, dogs. I still hate the smell of freshly mowed grass. That was one of the worst.
The upshot is that past my early twenties, pretty much all allergies have almost completely disappeared. I can now inhale deeply standing over freshly mowed grass and not suffer. The strong negative association with the smell is a little harder to get rid of though.
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I grew up with animals, mostly dogs, practically all my life. Always at least one, sometimes three. Apart from being the most loyal and loving companions you can hope for, it seems they actually did something for me in return. I do have zero allergies.
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Flash forward 20 years -- I get a dog, a little Chihuahua that lives inside my house. I'm sure his hair and dander is all over the place and I breathe it in every day.
Your experience does not fit the hypothesis. The way it is understood to work is that as a child you develop resistance with the right exposure, but once you are a teen or older, exposure doesn't help you all that much, it only stimulates the allergic response.
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Picking your nose and eating the boogers also works. A study demonstrated this many years ago. Gross I know, but I have done it all my life and I have never had an allergy to anything ever.
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Interesting. Just like my young life. I thought that only worked with younglings. My allergies are getting worse when I am almost 40. I do get a lot of dusts (my computers and air filters show that) since I live in a dry area (Los Angeles/L.A.). It also didn't help that I had to stay in the hospital for half of a year after I was born due to my multiple disabilities.
When I was older as a callow ant/child/kid (not a baby goat), I have had pets but not furry types like cats and dogs (not allergic to them). I
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Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
It makes sense. I have always said that keeping your kids in an aseptic environment is not helping them to build resistance for when they get out to the real world at some point.
Do you remember that South Park episode where the parents would get their kids with other sick kids for them to also get sick? Well, there is some truth to it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenpox_(South_Park) [wikipedia.org]
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Do you remember that South Park episode where the parents would get their kids with other sick kids for them to also get sick? Well, there is some truth to it...
Strange that that is considered bizarre enough for south park. My mum is an M.D. and when I was a kid she had me go play with one of her patients (a kid) who had chicken pox, so I would get it. (In the 60s, in a small town, there wasn’t much medical privacy...or many doctors).
Why yes, now you ask: I assume she did this to help me, but perhaps my judgement isn't good.
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Yep, now you just have shingles to look forward to. Thank goodness for vaccines.
The vaccine didn't exist 40 years ago!
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People used to do this for chickenpox specifically, because getting it as a young child is usually unpleasant, while getting it as an adult can be life threatening. These days we have vaccinations which achieve the same result without the unpleasant side effects.
But for allergies, the point isn't exposure to specific diseases, but to build up a young child's immune system to the point where it learns how to react to different pathogens instead of spending most of their life in an overly sterile environment
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Did you always say that before or after this lady [pbs.org]?
The relevant bit:
"The Hygiene Hypothesis," is that children who are around numerous other children or animals early in life are exposed to more microbes, and their immune systems develop more tolerance for the irritants that cause asthma. She is now researching the levels of allergy and asthma in children who live in villages as compared with children who live on a farm and are exposed to livestock.
According to this "hygiene hypothesis,'' the human immune system evolved two types of biological defenses. When one defensive system lacks practice fighting bacteria and viruses, perhaps from an overly sanitary lifestyle, the other system becomes too powerful and overreacts -- as an allergic reaction -- to harmless substances like pollen.
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There is some truth to it? Hell, everyone did that when I was a kid in the 80s. Still didn't catch the damn thing until I was 16 though.
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Of course it might also be caused the fact that with a dog you are forced to regularly go outside.
This posting... (Score:2)
Lactobacillus. johnsonii (Score:2)
the money quote:
"Supplementation of wild-type animals with L. johnsonii protected them against both airway allergen challenge or infection with respiratory syncytial virus."
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In addition, a study conducted by La Ragione et al. (2004) addressed the beneficial use of L. johnsonii in the poultry industry. This study found that the administration of L. johnsonii in chickens helped control diseases caused by Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens. Thus, L. johnsonii has the potential to be directly used in the poultry industry as an alternative to antimicrobials
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Always had cats, dogs, horses. Plenty of exposure to everything when i was a little kid. Used to spend my days in the woods and fields with a head full of snot.
Still ended up being severely allergic to a ton of stuff.
I'm pretty sure that in my case, it's the massive variety of pollen in the San Francisco Bay Area; there are tons of imported species, particularly a huge variety of trees with the accompanying tree pollen. There are things I used to be exposed to on a daily basis in Tucson, AZ which did not result in allergic reactions, but about 2 and a half years in the Bay Area, and it's allergy city for me.
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I
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Doesn't work (Score:5, Funny)
Will dirty lying dogs help? (Score:2)
To Congress, make haste!
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After the dog result, they tried to study the effect of having a cat on lab mice but it ate them all. Extrapolating to humans the researchers posited hat cats are baby eating monsters and abandoned the study.
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anyone who has a pet cat already knows this.
Not Really News. (Score:2)
I already learned this from George Carlin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo [youtube.com]
I'm expecting the next Slashdot headline to read "Will the Sun come up tomorrow? Probably."
The Finns already know it (Score:5, Interesting)
A Finnish friend of mine told me when kids there reach the age of 2, during summer holidays, they take them to the countryside and get them to play naked in dirt and mud on purpose, to build up their immune system.
Could I get a dirty girl instead ? (Score:2)
Not in my case (Score:2)
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Same here - born in rural area with two dogs, a cat, chickens in the yard, routine visits to dairy farm with cows, horses, pigs. Severe allergies and asthma diagnosed at 2 including to dogs, cats, horses. And have developed food allergies as an adult. Anecdotal, but don't think lack of early exposure to livestock and animals explains it.
I'll name her sniffles (Score:2)
ba-doom-ba!
Old news - Hook Worms and Allergies (Score:1)
Say the body is America and the immune system is America's defence force. The immune system is needed when dangerous pathogens appear, in the same way that American troops are needed to defend against enemies. If America is in no war and all its troops are recalled without downsizing the military, these troops
Didn't work for me (Score:2)
We had a dog in the house until I was about 8 or 9, but I had such severe dust and pollen allergies that I once spent a week in an oxygen tent and then went through weekly allergy therapy shots for several years. I had a window air conditioner in my bedroom on recirculate during the warm weather months to keep the air semi-filtered (this was in the early 1970s before the advent of HEPA filtration devices).
We couldn't even have a real Christmas tree or wreath in the house. We had one early on and I was su
Of course there are exceptions... (Score:3)
Born and raised a NZ farmers son I have been allergic (pollen) and suffered from asthma (allergic not chronic) all my life. I grew up surrounded by dirty dogs and more sheep and cattle than most people will ever see in a whole lifetime.
Did the fact that precautions were not taken with farm chemicals back then have something to do with the allergy. I have been exposed to DDT, pesticides, feretilizers, you name it.
So OK maybe this works in a city environnement with kids that live in a modern hyper clean envirronment and who eat agro-industry cr@p er sorry food. Didn't work for this farmers son.
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I'm asthmatic and allergic to dogs, you insensitive clod! And furthermore, my dad had a dog when I was a kid.
I personally blame my asthma on my mother smoking until she found out she was pregnant, and my father smoking until shortly before he died, including all throughout the pregnancy, in the car, in the car after I was born, etc etc. There's no family history of it on either side. But of course, there's no way to know. It's convenient, though, because one parent is dead and I don't talk to the other one.
Read this (Score:1)
Sucks that you were surrounded by smokers growing up. Me too and maybe that is the reason for my severe allergies.
However, read this:
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/07/23/original-aom-comic-2-theodore-roosevelt-ill-make-my-body/
Not new (Score:2)
I was allergic to cats. I got one. It's much better now. Simple logic. When I was a kid, we traded drinks between 5-6 of us, played in the dirt, went for a whole afternoon without washing our hands. People didn't use hand sanitizers. We weren't always sick either.
WOW! (Score:1)
Humans and dogs have a symbiotic relationship after +20K of living together.
In Soviet Russia . . . (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, dogs are allergic to you.
Also in my house.
Recently found out some of the allergens that my constantly irritate my dog, a list which includes cat and human dander.
Allergies and environmental factors (Score:2)
Some allergies don't depend on environmental factors.
Take me, for example. A couple of years of my childhood I spent some time after school each day on a farm. That included the occasional playing and jumping in the hay. It didn't happen every day, week, or even every month, but it happened and it was damn fun (but really dangerous). Then comes puberty and figuratively from one day to another I developed "hay-fever" and pollen allergies (mainly for grass).
Anecdotal and small sample size and all that, but I
Stay healthy (Score:2)
Eat poop.
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100 billion flies can't be wrong!
Makes sense (Score:2)
We had three large dogs when our daughter was born. The dogs lived inside and were well socialized, and daughter became just another member of the pack. Although this is only one data point, it's interesting that she has no allergies (I have severe allergies to pollen and cats) and was hardly ever sick. We put it down to her immune system getting exercised at an early age.
get a dog -- maybe (Score:3)
> Their study, in mice, suggests that supplementing an infant's diet with the right mix of bacteria might help prevent allergies — even without a pet pooch.
A part of me says don't take pills, go out and get a dog. There are enough of them who need homes. And then there's another part of me that says, if you're getting a dog just to prevent allergies, maybe you should take the pill instead.
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I have a Golden who lives inside with me (he has a doggie door he can open himself if he needs out) and most of the time I am at home he follows me around the house carrying a toy (currently a knotted rope we use for tugging play). When I work on the computer at home he lies across my feet. He sleeps in my bed, sits on the couch next to me when I read, and inspires me to nightly walks. I can't imagine a better companion.
On the other hand, we once rescued a lab mix with scars around her neck from being ch
Really? (Score:2)
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So by not living in a hyper clean environment as kids and by developing a proper immune system that is capable of fighting off allergies
You should never say it like this. Your body does not "fight off allergies". Allergies are when your body is fighting something it shouldn't.
The theory here is that when your immune system isn't educated correctly, it doesn't know what it should and should not go to war over. So, perhaps there are proteins/bacteria human children need to be subjected to before a certain again...or they grow up broken.
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here we go again (Score:2)
now I can watch, again, as people pay for nutritional supplements instead of just getting a dog. I love it when people spend hard-earned money specifically to avoid an enjoyable lifestyle. Live it up robot. Enjoy your more productive work life. Again. It's totally wasted on you.
So basically what you're telling me... (Score:2)
Not just dogs... (Score:2)
Any pet that impinges on your immune system is going to have long term positive influence! ;)
Oh... dirty children fit that bill as well
YMMV