Tendo City

Also MS, allergies, and more. But why?

In part because babies in our nice clean antibacterial-soap environments don't eat enough dirt.

Nothing new, just another interesting article on the subject. Things like antibacterials are far, far too widely used in the US...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27brod.html?em

Quote:Personal Health
Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You

By JANE E. BRODY
Published: January 26, 2009

Ask mothers why babies are constantly picking things up from the floor or ground and putting them in their mouths, and chances are they’ll say that it’s instinctive — that that’s how babies explore the world. But why the mouth, when sight, hearing, touch and even scent are far better at identifying things?

When my young sons were exploring the streets of Brooklyn, I couldn’t help but wonder how good crushed rock or dried dog droppings could taste when delicious mashed potatoes were routinely rejected.

Since all instinctive behaviors have an evolutionary advantage or they would not have been retained for millions of years, chances are that this one too has helped us survive as a species. And, indeed, accumulating evidence strongly suggests that eating dirt is good for you.

In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.

These studies, along with epidemiological observations, seem to explain why immune system disorders like multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and allergies have risen significantly in the United States and other developed countries.

Training the Immune System

“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

One leading researcher, Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, the director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said in an interview that the immune system at birth “is like an unprogrammed computer. It needs instruction.”

He said that public health measures like cleaning up contaminated water and food have saved the lives of countless children, but they “also eliminated exposure to many organisms that are probably good for us.”

“Children raised in an ultraclean environment,” he added, “are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.”

Studies he has conducted with Dr. David Elliott, a gastroenterologist and immunologist at the University of Iowa, indicate that intestinal worms, which have been all but eliminated in developed countries, are “likely to be the biggest player” in regulating the immune system to respond appropriately, Dr. Elliott said in an interview. He added that bacterial and viral infections seem to influence the immune system in the same way, but not as forcefully.

Most worms are harmless, especially in well-nourished people, Dr. Weinstock said.

“There are very few diseases that people get from worms,” he said. “Humans have adapted to the presence of most of them.”

Worms for Health

In studies in mice, Dr. Weinstock and Dr. Elliott have used worms to both prevent and reverse autoimmune disease. Dr. Elliott said that in Argentina, researchers found that patients with multiple sclerosis who were infected with the human whipworm had milder cases and fewer flare-ups of their disease over a period of four and a half years. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dr. John Fleming, a neurologist, is testing whether the pig whipworm can temper the effects of multiple sclerosis.

In Gambia, the eradication of worms in some villages led to children’s having increased skin reactions to allergens, Dr. Elliott said. And pig whipworms, which reside only briefly in the human intestinal tract, have had “goodeffects” in treating the inflammatory bowel diseases, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, he said.

How may worms affect the immune system? Dr. Elliott explained that immune regulation is now known to be more complex than scientists thought when the hygiene hypothesis was first introduced by a British epidemiologist, David P. Strachan, in 1989. Dr. Strachan noted an association between large family size and reduced rates of asthma and allergies. Immunologists now recognize a four-point response system of helper T cells: Th 1, Th 2, Th 17 and regulatory T cells. Th 1 inhibits Th 2 and Th 17; Th 2 inhibits Th 1 and Th 17; and regulatory T cells inhibit all three, Dr. Elliott said.

“A lot of inflammatory diseases — multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and asthma — are due to the activity of Th 17,” he explained. “If you infect mice with worms, Th 17 drops dramatically, and the activity of regulatory T cells is augmented.”

In answer to the question, “Are we too clean?” Dr. Elliott said: “Dirtiness comes with a price. But cleanliness comes with a price, too. We’re not proposing a return to the germ-filled environment of the 1850s. But if we properly understand how organisms in the environment protect us, maybe we can give a vaccine or mimic their effects with some innocuous stimulus.”

Wash in Moderation

Dr. Ruebush, the “Why Dirt Is Good” author, does not suggest a return to filth, either. But she correctly points out that bacteria are everywhere: on us, inus and all around us. Most of these mi cro-organisms cause no problem, and many, like the ones that normally live in the digestive tract and produce life-sustaining nutrients, are essential to good health.

“The typical human probably harbors some 90 trillion microbes,” she wrote. “The very fact that you have so many microbes of so many different kinds is what keeps you healthy most of the time.”

Dr. Ruebush deplores the current fetish for the hundreds of antibacterial products that convey a false sense of security and may actually foster the development of antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing bacteria. Plain soap and water are all that are needed to become clean, she noted.

“I certainly recommend washing your hands after using the bathroom, before eating, after changing a diaper, before and after handling food,” and whenever they’re visibly soiled, she wrote. When no running water is available and cleaning hands is essential, she suggests an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Dr. Weinstock goes even further. “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases.

Also helpful, he said, is to “let kids have two dogs and a cat,” which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.

This is a notable issue with a lot of news sources that aren't medical journals, they lack the ability, or the will, to do the research.

There actually has been a noted increase in diseases that were previously nearly eradicated in the first world. What's notable is that the main culprit is parents unable or unwilling to vaccinate their children against said illnesses. The unwilling ones do so out of a fear of the dangers of vaccines. Autism chief among them. This, in spite of a total lack of any evidence that vaccines cause autism, is a fear that's on the rise. It's a sad reality that this irrational fear of autism is outweighing a very rational fear of kids dying from small pox.

Quote:There actually has been a noted increase in diseases that were previously nearly eradicated in the first world. What's notable is that the main culprit is parents unable or unwilling to vaccinate their children against said illnesses. The unwilling ones do so out of a fear of the dangers of vaccines. Autism chief among them. This, in spite of a total lack of any evidence that vaccines cause autism, is a fear that's on the rise. It's a sad reality that this irrational fear of autism is outweighing a very rational fear of kids dying from small pox.

This is also very true. How someone could actually think that an almost certainly nonexistent risk of getting autism is worse than maybe having your child die of Measles is beyond me... it's tragic and sad and never had to happen, but some people have let their fear for those diseases cloud their knowledge of the great good that vaccines do. :(

Quote:This is a notable issue with a lot of news sources that aren't medical journals, they lack the ability, or the will, to do the research.

What do you think about antibacterial products, though? Or do you just mean that we don't really know because there isn't enough research on the subject...

Well actually antibacterial soap, aside from being tested to not be any more effective than just plain regular soap, also runs the risk of producing resistant strains.

Handling disease is a good health concern, but throwing antibacterial stuff at everything is excessive and ineffectual at best and downright dangerous in the long term at worst. The better ways are to simply prevent the spread of disease, and that's as simple as regularly washing your funky bad self down now and again combined with doing your part to prevent the spread of things like flu by, say, staying home when you have it or if you MUST leave, try to wear a mask and not touch everything everywhere you go. Also, keep your food away from your garbage. Yoiu know, stuff we know as obvious but the dark ages were totally unaware of.

As to autism, the chance is 0 from all available evidence. Even trying a concillatory "next to 0" isn't accurate enough. Firstly, autism is a genetic disorder. Secondly, all testing has shown no effect. That's all there is to it.

Recently the anti-vax movement have changed their argument in the face of the rising tide of outbreaks of measles and the like. Now they're saying they are "in favor of vaccinations when they are made safe". Who gets to decide when it's "safe"? You've yet to give good reason to believe it's unsafe to begin with. What, will the next change in how vaccinations are distributed come under fire the moment some kid starts showing signs of autism? News flash, there's such a thing as culture, the vast majority of kids get vaccination shots. Soime kids suffer from autism. There's a good chance of overlap, so a single anecdotal case of "my kid had a shot and then later got diagnosed with autism" proves nothing.

But such a change assumes that the medical industry would actually be willing or capable of finding new ways to distribute it, and they'd have no good reason to. Heck, the new solution would itself be totally untested and would have to undergo years of clinical trials! Would the parents suddenly think they've won the second it's announced and start demanding it be applied even without testing? Considering how all these parents are using completely unproven and untested "natural" remedies of all stripes out there in the wild with complete abandon and no questioning whether THOSE either help or harm, I have to wonder.

It also suggests that the scientists would be put in a position of potentially being forced to lie just to get people to take their medicine, treating the public like a dog and having to sneak the medicine into their food. It's a rather horrible moral scenario that would make for an episode of Star Trek.

And what of the more unsrupulous companies? Well consider the fact that many food companies will put labels like "fat free" and "sugar free" on products that never contained either to begin with (Fat free candy? You don't say!). I can see doctor's offices everywhere putting big labels on their advertisements saying "Our vaccines now safe!", which aside from just delaying the conflict also furthers the real issue of general public ignorance of the scientific method and when it's exposed as how silly it is will just raise public distrust of modern medicine even further.

The other scenario is simply that parents NEVER accept ANY changes made to vaccines, ALWAYS thinking that no matter what they make it's just unsafe, which is very well possible as some vaccines HAVE had improvements and changes over the years since this ridiculous fear was brought up. I remember back then the argument was that vaccines were no different than antibiotics and just created "immune strains", even though vaccines are an entirely different thing which are not just a substance to kill bacteria but rather are a trigger to get one's own immune system primed to fight disease it hasn't encountered in the "wild" before by using a heavily damaged version.

Parents are afraid, and this is not in itself a bad thing. It's when they don't decide to do the research that the fear ends up hurting them. They just react, they don't check their premises, and in their desperate attempt to protect their children from a fantasy threat, they expose them to a very real one, and worse expose many more indirectly to that same threat. Parents do not "own" their children. Their kids have a right to have the latest medicine and a right to be protected from bad choices made by their parents. Before one assumes I'm talking about the state removing rights of the parents to raise their children and care for them any way they please, let me say that YES I'm suggesting that to a limited extent, and YES our society ALREADY agrees to that on a number of things. One can already get arrested for depriving a child of food and shelter, abandoning them, or abusing them. Depriving a child of immediate emergency care is also a criminal act. I suggest that depriving them of long term medical care such as vaccinations should also be criminal, and in this case the extra charge of public endangerment should be added to that.

At a certain point, the beliefs of the parents have to be ignored. The parent can fervently believe that relying on a hospital to fix a broken bone is wrong and will make the child worse, but in the end they should never have held such a belief to begin with and are responsible for what happens. The same in this case. A parent may very well fervently believe that they are making their child sick by giving them a vaccination, but if it is not based in sound evidence, their belief is again irrelevent and harmful to the child.

The time they give booster shots, Is close to the same time autistic symptoms are first appear,its just coincidental.

There was a study done, That showed a correlation between the age of the father and the rate of autistic progeny,Apparently if the father is in his 40 and 50's the chances of his children being born autistic go up.

As the males biological clock times down, His sperm begins to mutate and degrade in quality.

I saw case on a documentary about several women being artificially inseminated by the same sperm donor, Most of the women bore autistic children.

The dude was in his late 40's when he donated the Jiz.

They say your 20's and early 30's are the most optimal time to have children.

Apparently it isn't just autism, Schizophrenia and manic depression are also found to be linked with advancing paternal age.