Possible Ill Effects of Protecting Children from Infections


If I recall correctly, George Carlin has a routine where he suggests, in his usual humorous fashion, that it is not a good idea to be too sanitary. Drop your sandwich on the floor, don't discard it, pick it up and continue eating, along with whatever crud it picked up on the floor. Your immune system needs the practice, you don't want it to get lazy and not be prepared to defend you at all times. Well, Carlin just might have been right about this one. An article in Time magazine, 4. Sept. 00, "Bugging Asthma," refers to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which the researchers, from the Univ. of Arizona, report that six year olds who had not attended day care before the age of 6 months had a risk of developing asthma twice that of those who had attended day care before the age of 6 months. These researchers suggested that early experience with infections might prepare the immune system to provide lifelong protection. It was suggested that the immune systems of those children who were not exposed to infectious agents early in life turned their efforts to attacking normally harmless substances such as pollen and dust mite excrement. It was suggested that this shift in the target of the immune system would have a life-long effect, and that it could not be changed by infections later in life. It was suggested, however, that treatment with allergy shots later in life might be successful in desensitizing individuals to the allergens to which they react.

I remember my that my Mom, who is a nurse (RN), frequently had a Lysol disinfectant can in hand during my childhood. Might her protecting me from infections early in life been, in part, responsible for my having developed asthma as a child, and allergic polyps in my sinuses as an adult? I do now take those allergy shots.

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This page most recently revised on the 22nd of November, 2013.