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More Worms, Less Asthma

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

There’ve been lots of versions of this story floating around for the last few years.

But it’s fascinating stuff. The gist: Excessive cleanliness is making us sick. Particularly when very young, less exposure to various pathogens is stunting the development of our immune systems, causing dramatic upticks in cases of allergies and asthma.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 3:12 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “More Worms, Less Asthma”

  1. #1 |  Benjamin |  January 5th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    Anecdotal, FWIW, but I hold to this theory that small amounts of bacteria and pathogens throughout the day help expose my body potential illnesses and gives my body a chance to fight it off (not too dissimilar from the concept of vaccinations). Why do so few doctors get ill? It isn’t because they wash their hands religiously, but rather are exposed to bacteria and viruses in such small doses throughout the day that their body has enough to fight it off.

    OTOH, my mother in law carries around various forms of disinfectant (sprays and hand gels), and is ALWAYS sick. Go figure.

    I know…it’s anecdotal, but there may be some truth behind it.

  2. #2 |  zeb |  January 7th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    I have believed this sort of stuff for a long time. No amount of medical cleverness will ever substitute for an immune system and the immune system only works when exposed to the things it is supposed to fight against. Seems sort of obvious, no?

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