Let ’em Play Dirty 0
From the Guardian:
They will now be able to answer the disapproving tuts of their more fastidious friends by pointing to research which gives biological backing to the old adage that the more germs a child is exposed to during early childhood, the better their immune system in later life
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California found that being too clean could impair the skin’s ability to heal. The San Diego-based team discovered that normal bacteria that live on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt.
The writer of the story could not avoid the oh-so-cutsy-poo lead that still implies that parents who let their kids get dirty are somehow bad parents.
I know someone whose daughter, when she was young, was sickly. It was 30 years ago that her doctor told her, “Let [the kid] play in the back yard.”
Mother followed his advice, the sickliness went away, and now, oh so many years later, daughter is a quite healthy adult.
There is evidence that the recent increase in asthma is related to parents’ keeping kids too clean.
It is one thing to be concerned about germs. It is quite another, as someone I knew once said, to be paranoid about them.* And don’t believe the ads that tell you that this or that over-priced substance will kill umpty-ump germs if you wash/gargle/rinse/spray your whole house with it. “Clean to the touch, clean to the eye” is usually enough.
Sure, it will get the top layer, but to do any real good it would have to be strong enough to take your skin off too. And then you would have a difficult time getting a date, except maybe on All Hallows’ Eve.
_____________________
*He–a biochemist–was talking about removing a splinter. The exact quotation was, “If you are paranoid about germs, you can hold the needle over a match.”
