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Sometimes unnecessary (or just plain bogus) health advice just sticks in our brains. For example, you don’t necessarily need to drink eight glasses of water a day, and an apple a day may not keep the doctor away if you have fructose intolerance. But what about overly sanitized homes that ruin our immune system?
Although it has been debunked many times, this incorrect interpretation of the “hygiene hypothesis” has remained in our collective. consciousness. Now researchers in the UK have published a paper consistently rejecting the idea that we are just too clean for our own good.
“For more than 20 years, there has been a public discourse that hand and household hygiene practices, which are essential to stop exposure to pathogenic pathogens, also block exposure to beneficial organisms,” said said Graham Rook, senior author and scholar. Microbiologist from the College of London.
“In this article, we set out to reconcile the apparent conflict between the need for cleaning and hygiene to keep us free from pathogens, and the need for microbial inputs to populate our gut and build our systems. immune and metabolic. “
Researchers point out that microbes are extremely important to us. Our entire body, including our intestines, skin, and lungs, needs it in order for us to function efficiently.
The hygiene hypothesis specifically relates to early childhood exposure to particular microbes that have co-evolved with humans to help develop a robust immune system, particularly with respect to allergies and other immune disorders.
Doing things like not washing your hands before eating isn’t going to help you build a better immune system, it just means you’re more likely to get gastroenteritis. (However, it’s important to note that your choice of detergents may breed more resistant germs, so it’s best to stick with regular soap.)
In the new article – which is a review of the previous literature – the team presents four particular nails in the coffin for the adage “a clean house is bad for immunity.”
First, babies and children develop their own small microbial systems, seeded first by their mothers, and then mostly by family members and their environment. Individuals’ microbes spread and mix, creating a specific household microbiome shared primarily by those who live together (including pets).
“Exposure to our mothers, family members, the natural environment, and vaccines can provide all of the microbial inputs we need,” said Rook.
“These exposures do not conflict with smartly targeted hygiene or cleaning.”
Second, vaccines are actually surprisingly good at priming our immune systems for other things as well, much like a life-threatening disease.
“In the 1980s, it began to be reported that vaccination with a live measles vaccine in Africa reduced overall infant mortality to a degree that could not be explained by the incidence of measles itself,” wrote the team.
“The nonspecific effects of the vaccines are similar to the nonspecific survival benefits seen after recovery from the corresponding infections.”
Third, we are now well aware that exposure to the outdoors is important in helping us develop a robust immune system. But no one cleans the great outdoors, and the team notes that nature’s bacterial profiles are completely different from those found indoors anyway.
“Children’s exposure to the biodiversity of the natural environment in their playgrounds has resulted in an increase in peripheral blood biomarkers of immunoregulation,” the team wrote in their article.
“Thus, evolutionary and epidemiological considerations suggest that children need to be exposed to the microbiota of the natural environment rather than the unnatural microbiota of modern buildings.”
Finally, although this last point is not yet final, the team suspects that when there are health issues related to a clean environment, it may not be the elimination of the organisms that are causing the problems. health benefits, as well as the harsh cleaning products used.
The team suggests that targeting our cleansing could help limit these kinds of issues, as well as our exposure to the kind of germs that could make us sick.
“So house cleaning is good and personal cleanliness is good, but, as explained in detail in the document, to prevent the spread of infection, it should be targeted on the hands and surfaces most often involved. in the transmission of infection, ”said Rook.
“By targeting our cleaning practices, we also limit the direct exposure of children to cleaning agents.”
The review was published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
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