My mom (who is almost 75) has been saying this for years. It drives her crazy that everyone is so germ-phobic these days. She says that we (my brothers and I) were, and are, healthy as horses because we live like them - unafraid to run and play in the dirt, and unafraid to chew on a stalk of grass now and again!

By the way... if the problem is simple environmental allergies, she swears by LOCAL honey. During summer, find honey produced as close to your home as possible, and eat/serve at least 1 tbs per day (spread it on toast or drizzle over fruit). Don't cook it, as heating it robs it of its benefits. The pollen in the honey will be introduced into the body in very small amounts, allowing your system to build it's defenses - much like a vaccine.

Good luck.

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Psst....hand sanitizer is a disinfectant, not an anti-bacterial. Doctors actually recommend using hand sanitizer to prevent spreading viruses since it doesn't contribute to superbugs like anti-bacterials can. Using alcohol based hand sanitizer is no more harmful than washing your hands.

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For those people who are nervous about kids and alcohol based sanitizers, there are non-alcohol based hand sanitizers. Check out the cleanwell company. As a family, we dont over-sanitize. But there are times when your kids touch something gross and there isnt a bar of soap around. And thats when my bottle of cleanwell comes in handy.

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LS, your friend Ann is almost 70 and has been saying the same thing for almost as many years.

I think I'd like your mom.

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If the hygenic hypothesis is true, I'd like to test another hypothesis:

That most kids with allergies are first-borns.

I ask because parents tend to be more "anal" about cleanliness with their first born kids, and when the later ones come along, it's harder to keep everything as clean.

It would be interesting to know....

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When we were kids, the super-sanitary people were the exception rather than the rule, but we knew a few. These were the ones who would say "oh my gosh, Little Suzy just ate ___" [insert anything small, organic or inorganic, from the ground outdoors] and my mom would say, "ah, extra protein / minerals!" And when discussing whether our chores had been done properly, she would say, "Look at E, you can eat off her floors." But, guess whose kids later developed allergies?

I only wish my mom could have known then how much her "second-rate" housekeeping would be appreciated, even lauded . . . .

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SKL, I like your post.

Really, the phrase "over do it" means just that. The constant wiping down little Jimmy's envilroment is out of control... so I'm buying stock in all the hand sanitizer companies.

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Bob, you buy that stock - but I'm going to reschedule the next 17 years of my life to exclude housework - got lots of better things to do, and who needs allergic kids?

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My baby has been an allergy since she was born. The diagnosis were the sources of allergic might come from food together with the unclean environment, such as dust, pollution, etc. Her pediatric allergist keeps saying: her allergies become weaker by getting older. His advices are mostly related with the food such as avoiding seafood and quite rare food. Furthermore, he said that children have to be adapted with the neighborhood (environment). It is good if everything is clean and fresh. Your baby may become very healthy in that condition, but you cannot always choose the condition. At home everything is clear, however out of home there are many conditions that we cannot avoid. So, just let your child body accepts the situation that she has to live in. I follow all doctor’s advices. I find his advices are very right The allergies of my baby are getting less and less until now (4 years old). She almost never has a problem with any condition even sometimes she often joints with me to any different places in the world. So, I cannot more agree with the word "let your kids be kids. Let them play in the dirt and touch stuff in the yard and -- gasp! -- Come into contact with germs. It will make them healthier in the long run". (http://www.childandhealth.com)

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And have more babies!!

Of course, the more babies I have, the less sanitary my house becomes (as if it could ever have been accused of being sanitary!). Actually, my house is getting cleaner and neater with more kids...more folks to pitch in as the kids are getting older.

My firstborn is "the allergic one". He's not too bad, but I wouldn't say it's because I worked to keep his environment super clean. I think that maybe it was naturally cleaner because there weren't a bunch of kids running around, messing it up.

Allergies exist in all kinds of homes and families. I do think that lack of exposure to "normal stuff" can aggravate them, but I don't suppose we'll ever be able to completely get rid of them.

I also second the advice about local honey. Just make sure that it's local or it won't do a bit of good. Honey is The Perfect Food. It never goes bad and can be used in all manner of ways. We even put it on cuts around here.

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I think that this study has more to do with your environment that with personal hygene. Cleaning your hands after sneezing or using the potty is sanitary. Steralizing your environment for fear of germs is what can lead to a weakened immune system.

My sis-in-law is this way, she's almost phobic about germs and her house and her kids are almost always "sick" with something.

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@Cynthia -- I'm pretty sure you have it exactly backwards. That is, high % alcohol kills bacteria (we used it for that in the lab all the time), but does little to viruses, which have thick protein coats. However, hand sanitizer *is* better than so-called "anti-microbial" soaps and other products, which contain mild antibiotics that do little other than select for hardier strains of bad bugs.

[Take this as a brief plea to all to avoid antimicrobials, an increasingly difficult but incredibly important goal, if we want to have antibiotics that work in our children's time.]

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oh, and more generally, I read recently that homes with more than one cat or dog have lower allergy rates, which is easy to attribute to the hair and other mess of pet ownership...

(yay! :)

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SKL,

I wish somehow people would come to their senses and realize the waste of time and money spent on the products we did not have or need only a few years ago.

I giggle when I see someone shake a persons hand and then run directly to the hand sanitizer as though the person just met was a leper. Then they spend more time putting on hand cream because their hands are drying out and cracking from the alcohol in the hand sanitizer, which of course creates an opening for germs to get into the body. Somewhat stupid if you ask me, which of course you didn't, but there it is anyway.

So go raise those kids in your "normal" house, which is what I did, and except for my son occasionally ducking from the attacks of the imaginary dust bunnies, he is just fine. However, I am still buying that stock in the sanitizers because I have great faith in the lemming-like nature of the masses of gullible people.

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