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I’ve always believed that germs make you stronger.

Lots of problems with the study…
One big problem is that rats in sewers have large families, and the weak ones die off, so only the strong ones live and breed.
Lab mice are interbred, which makes them weaker genetically, and then because they live in a clean area, most of their babies, including the weaker ones, will live.
So you are comparing two different populations…
A similar problem occurs in humans.
If you are willing to let half of your children die, the remaining ones will have more immunity.
But some of us would rather be alive.
I have asthma. In a “natural” environment, I’d be dead.

Well, yeah, that may be the case, but it’s understandable in the face of human history, where human health in general didn’t begin to improve until Public Health became a concept and humans started to improve their hygienic practices. Especially in cities. Sure, we swung too far, but given what’s happened throughout history, can anyone be surprised?

Though I absolutely hate being asthmatic, I’ll take that any day over the shorter lifespan of city folks in the previous centuries. Asthma is treatable, at least.

But yeah, there is a point of excess – I’ll be the first to admit that – and we humans may have finally found it. I think that’s why parents nowadays are told to not be overly fastidious about their children playing, to not get too panicked when they expose themselves to dirt & stuff outdoors. It’s a balancing act, of course. You don’t want them so grubby that they get sick from overexposure to stuff, but at the same time, you don’t want to bathe and sanitize them just because they walked through a dirt patch instead of the sidewalk.

Isn’t that exactly what’s wrong with our utopianist fellow Americans from the left side of the aisle who’ve never been challenged by the soul-crushing imperatives of living in a fear society? They’ve got no resistance to fight back when p.c. and islamofascism move into the neighborhood. Eurabia comes to mind. They haven’t a chance.

Isn’t asthma an allergic reaction,exaserbated by stress, to airborne particle?.

An allergy is your immune system with nothing to do. It evolved to have something to do. With nothing to do it will find something to do, even when that something is totally inappropriate, or even harmful. Much like adolescents as a matter of fact. So give your immune system something to do and get your asthmatic ass outside.

This is not a new discovery. It was observed that polio became more virulent in places where there were good sanitation.

Polio was initially seen as a disease of immigrants in primitive living conditions. Public health officials were obsessed with eradicating filth and enacted strict sanitation policies. But as the 20th century progressed, polio disproportionately struck the middle class, and began striking adults as well as children. Scientists believe this was the result of the improved sanitation. When water supplies were consistently contaminated with the polio virus, as they were in impoverished areas, people were typically infected during infancy, but only rarely developed paralysis — most suffered little more than diarrhea, and then had lifelong immunity against polio. In contrast, middle-class people with access to clean drinking water might not encounter the virus until later in childhood, when the virus was more likely to spread to brain and spinal cord and cause paralysis.

Achhh, what a complicated world. I happened to grow up during the “let him eat dirt” gestalt. I encountered the usual, chickenpox, measles, mumps and various other illnesses. But, in adulthood, I rarely am ill. What does it mean in regards to this study? Not much I think. There are a multitude of factors that affect us. Very complicated. Though my gut says, get out there and get dirty, is good advice.

It’s like going to the hospital or the doctor’s office–that’s precisely the first place where you’d actually go if you were TRYING to get sick. Where else you gonna find plenty of contagious sick people?

This is not a particularly new observation.

The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup
were playing in the garden when the Bunny gamboled up…

Strictly Germ-Proof

Regards,
Ric

As a doc, may I say the thesis is correct, BUT totally fails to recognize the larger truth, which is the loss of life of the many who were infected. The relatively few survivors thereof (the evolutionarily selected) are being compared to the many that today are with us just because they didn’t get killed off.
It is the old eugenics argument in new dress.

I think the point was less one of advocacy and more one of rue–in that Mother Nature disregards intention, that–within the post’s premise–the last fraction of hygiene spiked the mentioned maladies and perhaps has diminished total wellness. I’d hate to see the long-settled basic human belief that eugenics is an evil science, prevent moms and dads from easing off the antibiotics and antiseptic-bubble ideal.

“So give your immune system something to do and get your asthmatic ass outside.”

You mean like yesterday, when I went to the golf course? Or, the day before, when I was out fishing? In my normal (i.e. frequently visited) spot?

It takes a bit more than going outside to treat this problem.

Stress, btw, is a possible trigger, not the determinant one.

Also, asthma is a hypersensitivity to triggers; it isn’t just “an immune system with nothing to do”.

Please don’t imply that asthma is something us asthmatics brought on ourselves by not going outside enough. That’s demeaning.

She obviously didn’t know about the “Hygiene Hypothesis” when she would be angry at me for tracking in half the mud holes from Van Cortlandt Park

Are you talking about Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx? My dad tracked mud from that park into his apartment for years. If you can survive that, (and the two-fifth street subway station) you can survive anything.

My grandma has been living in the gritty Bronx for more than half a century and she’s still going strong.