Parents Listen Up – Dirt Is Good For Your Kids

If you don’t want your kids playing in the mud and make sure they are always perfectly clean, you may not be really doing them a favor, researchers have suggested.

A study conducted in the Philippines demonstrated that a substantial dose/exposure to pathogens and germs during infancy could actually be able to reduce cardiovascular inflammation when they become adults. This is the inflammation that is usually a cause of strokes and heart attacks.

kid in dirtHigher exposure to infectious microbes early in life could be able to protect the heart against disease later in life, researcher Thom McDade, 41, an associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University was quoted as having said.

Germophobic parents who are excessively careful about their child’s hygiene are likely to be confused, even disgusted when they are told that those children who had more diarrhea and more exposure to animal feces as an infant are likely to have lower levels of the C-reactive protein (predictive biomarker of cardiovascular heart disease and stroke).

We can only conclude that hygiene is good but that excessive or obsessive hygiene probably is not, since the body does not have the chance to build up its defenses.

Source: Chicago Tribune ?

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