A Few Nasty Germs May Actually Help Babies

Read the comment policy

Showing 3 of 6 comments

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the overprotective parents who sanitize every square inch of their child were actually doing harm. We have so many autoimmune diseases in this country that you would struggle to find in the entire continent of Africa.

I dunno, this kinda sounds like common sense to me. Taking in small doses of outside threats is pretty well-known to help build an immunity to various things, so this seems like an obvious "next step" theory to explore. Taking a spoonful of "local honey" every day helps quell outdoor-allergies, and all-natural indoor-allergy pills contain small doses of animal dander. The basic idea being, "get it INSIDE you and it won't be much of a threat when it comes at you from the OUTSIDE."

Americans are also the ONLY ones who have any well-known "thing" with getting sick from the food or water in other countries. While food-poisoning certainly happens everywhere, we're the only ones whose systems are so sensitive to just about ANY sign of bacteria. Other countries don't have a problem with large numbers of people getting sick, yet their standards for refrigerating food products aren't nearly as strict as ours, unpasteurized dairy products (cheese mostly) are incredibly common, and no one else feels the need to walk around with liquid hand-sanitizers like we do. Up until very recently, Asians were more likely to be lactose intolerant because their culture/diet just didn't involve cow's milk really (with Western culture making it's way into theirs, that's changing now though). Their systems just never had to learn how to process milk solids before.

A body that has *never* dealt with certain things hasn't developed any tools with which to fight it off when it finally DOES come into contact with it.....seems kind of obvious to me *shrug*.

I remember my Grandmother telling my Aunt (her daughter) to leave the children alone when they would get really dirty and yes at times even tasting dirt telling her a little dirt is good for a child, there usually is a logical reason to old sayings such as that.

If you keep a child in a sterile environment it only goes to reason that once that child escapes that isolation they would be more acceptable to an illness they never had the chance to build immunities against.