
Think Again About Keeping Little Ones So Squeaky Clean - wglb
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2009/12/germs.html
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tokenadult
There are a lot of educational benefits for children to playing OUTSIDE (not
in a carefully cleaned house), including building sand castles or mud dams
across rivulets or other activities that expose the children to lots of germs
but also expose them to lots of practical information about small-scale
engineering.

The study reported in the submitted article would of course need to be
replicated

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

some more, but it appears to be a well designed long-term observational study
that provides partial confirmation for some intriguing suggestions

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy>

that some forms of infection can actually be helpful rather than harmful to
growing human beings.

------
ekanes
Is this real science?

I'm all about studies about germs, cleanliness and health, but I lost
confidence when I read this:

"The research took advantage of a longitudinal study of Filipinos, following
participants in utero through 22 years of age, to get a better understanding
of how environments early in life affect C-reactive protein (CRP) production
in adulthood."

"The Northwestern researchers were interested in what CRP production looks
like in the Philippines, a population with a high level of infectious diseases
in early childhood compared to Western countries. Relative to Western
countries, the Philippines also has relatively low rates of obesity and
cardiovascular diseases, consistent with the Northwestern research findings."

"Blood tests showed that C-reactive protein was at least 80 percent lower for
study participants in the Philippines when they reached young adulthood,
relative to their American counterparts, though the Filipinos suffered from
many more infectious diseases as infants and toddlers."

It sounds like they're assuming that children in the Philippines eat the same
foods as Americans, exercise the same amounts, etc.

[edit for clarity]

------
electromagnetic
Many aspects of modern society thoroughly perplex me, specifically the
excessive cleanliness exhibited primarily in urban centres.

It's as though someone arbitrarily decided that humans have a limited quantity
of immunity from disease, believing that avoiding infection would be
beneficial. This asinine notion is best reserved for Intensive Care Units, but
is on display in thousands of day cares and homes around the country serving
only the purpose of weakening children's immune systems.

By all rights and justification I have no clue how I'm alive. I've been
exposed to monster cases of the flu and developed nothing. I've eaten tainted
food from restaurants and when everyone I knew who ate the same was trying to
figure out how to keep their head in and their ass on the toilet at the same
time, I was perfectly fine. I can only assume that eating the cats kibble at 3
years old induced super powers to me.

~~~
iamwil
Hookworms and other now-rare diseases, are because of better modern
sanitation. Outhouses are apparently 6 feet deep because that's further than
worms can crawl.
[http://mrhartansscienceclass.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/wnyc-r...](http://mrhartansscienceclass.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/wnyc-
radiolab-parasite-podcast/)

At the same time, I'm with you that I think people are too germaphobic. I see
people throw away perfectly good food just because of the expiration date.
It's not like food is laced with arsenic, you can taste and smell if something
went bad.

~~~
Splines
> you can taste and smell if something went bad

If something smells and tastes bad, it probably contains enough bacteria to
hurt you. The inverse isn't always true.

------
pohl
It's tempting to make a snarky comment about ivory tower geniuses trumpeting
the discovery of the obvious, but I have to concede that the compulsive anti-
microbial contingent has all but eliminated common sense. The immune system,
like the muscles and the brain, can grow stronger with use, and atrophies with
disuse. Why on earth would one go out of their way to make sure it is never
exercised?

~~~
scott_s
_It's tempting to make a snarky comment about ivory tower geniuses trumpeting
the discovery of the obvious_

Don't. Ever. If something is true, we should be able to verify it empirically.
If we can't verify it empirically, then it might not be true, no matter what
"common sense" says. We don't know until we try.

~~~
maximilian
Exactly.

 _The immune system, like the muscles and the brain, can grow stronger with
use..._

This makes sense, but is it true? Without statistically significant evidence
to back this up, we don't know for sure if it is true. It could also make
sense that we are stuck with our immune systems like I am stuck being 6'3"
tall.

I get the feeling that a lot of pseudo-scientific "natural" cures use a lot of
common sense arguments, but have never gone down the scientific rabbit hole to
make sure that the cure has been scientifically shown to be effective.

