The hygiene hypothesis proclaims that we
live in a world that’s too clean and that may account for the large rise in the
numbers of cases of conditions like allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders,
and anything to do with how we handle “inflammation”.
This theory proposes that early (and
frequent?) exposure to germs and all the other nasties that used to be way more
prevalent in our lives until we started cleaning, and wiping and generally
avoiding all those things work as a sort of priming mechanism for normal immune
system development, so if you delay or postpone the introduction of “schmutz”
(there’s really no good way to reproduce the real emphasis in the voice of a
Jewish mother for when she uses that word what is generally translated as
“dirt”), the non-primed immune system jumps into over-drive to protect us from
what lingers in the schmutz, leading to a much larger risk of developing those
conditions referred to above.
It’s been a topic of hot debate among the
experts but the “pro” side in this argument has just received a terrific boost
from a (soon-to-be) publication in the authoritative journal, Science, which has found that mice raised
in an environment lacking germs (intriguingly referred to as "germ-free
mice"; science is so tricky sometimes) not only had “exaggerated
inflammation of the lungs and colon resembling asthma and colitis” but equally
important, if the germ-free mice were exposed to ordinary shmutz (bacteria,
etc) early in life, their immune systems developed normally, although if that
exposure was delayed, their immune systems seemed to be permanently negatively
affected.
Does this mean you should throw your kids
into the dirt early in life (and not let them in until they’d rolled around in
it for hours?)
No, but it also means, if you ask me, that
we should drop our obsessive attachment to using anti-this and anti-that wipes
for our counters and work surfaces and floors (not to mention our own body
parts) and that allowing kids to play with dogs, cats, in parks, etc is not
only good for their social lives, it also benefits them physically.
