I am an only child. My mother was divorced before I was a year old. It means my mother got her druthers and I grew up in a house that was nearly sterile. In those days, I was called a Clorox Kid. My mother had been a pretty sickly kid and had grown up on a farm with all the “nastiness” that involves. Living in a super clean environment substantially improved her life and I bear her no grudge as I believe she was also doing what she thought was best for me as well. Unfortunately, I’ve come to believe it was incredibly harmful to me, largely because my mother, amongst the Super Smart humans, figured it out and passed the knowledge to me long before the scientists were even looking at the subject but in time for me not to have passed along the tradition to another generation. My child got DIRTY as a kid.
I became a pretty sickly kid too. If we hadn’t lived with my grandparents for a while and I hadn’t gotten to spend time at the family farm, I would be even more “sickly” than I am. Although my mother didn’t care for pets in the house (they come with an “ick” factor for the Clorox Moms), she allowed me to have a cat. I became quite ill very quickly and my pediatrician said I was allergic to the cat but suggested a wait and see approach. I have known ever since then that removing pets from my home makes me VERY ill and bringing them back in results in some temporary illness but improves my general health over time. Doctors traditionally treated this as similar to the placebo effect, no real basis in science to support the phenomenon. In reality, there was no basis because it hadn’t been studied and the presumption was on the side of the Clorox Moms; cleaner is ALWAYS better. Turns out it’s just not so.
The Hygiene Hypothesis was formally proposed in 1989. “The hygiene hypothesis was developed to explain the observation that hay fever and eczema, both allergic diseases, were less common in children from larger families, which were presumably exposed to more infectious agents through their siblings, than in children from families with only one child. The hygiene hypothesis has been extensively investigated by immunologists and epidemiologists and has become an important theoretical framework for the study of allergic disorders. It is used to explain the increase in allergic diseases that has been seen since industrialization, and the higher incidence of allergic diseases in more developed countries. The hygiene hypothesis has now expanded to include exposure to symbiotic bacteria and parasites as important modulators of immune system development, along with infectious agents.” I certainly think there are some confounding factors from exposures to pollutants and some other problems but the Hygiene Hypothesis gets more support as more studies are done and published.
Super clean is NOT necessarily better so let your kids get dirty. Oh, but I’m not done yet. The Hygiene Hypothesis inherently presumes exposure to some elements that are actually a side effect of animals in our environments; something we have less of and certainly less variety of in our neighborhoods than past generations when backyard chicken coops were common.
In the 1980’s, a study was started in the Phillipines that tracked children into their early twenties. “Among items that the researchers assessed were the hygiene of the children's household environment – ‘whether domestic animals such as pigs and dogs roamed freely’ -- and their families' socioeconomic resources.”
“Filipinos suffer far more infectious diseases as infants and toddlers than their American counterparts [who were also] exposed to less animal feces in the home as kids [which results in increased levels of CRP as adults, indicator of inflammation, autoimmune disorders, and other health problems]” BUT that results in better long term health; “the message to take home from the study is the importance of being exposed early in life to common microbes and bacteria”. "The immune system also needs engagement with its environment to drive its development, and without that environmental input, we're depriving it of a necessary source of information that it needs to promote its development".
Now you can bet your boots that will mean Western medicine will likely be shoving more and more vaccines and drugs at us instead of telling us to move in some chickens and pigs. I disagree! As I’ve pointed out before, they don’t really know exactly how/why vaccines work nor what the side effects are nor the impact of many of the add-on ingredients in vaccines and other drugs. How could they when they’re just now getting a glimmer of the natural process? The fact they’ve been in denial about the natural process for so long (telling mothers to sanitize their homes was ALWAYS wrong) tells me they couldn’t possibly have been comparing the vaccines to potential natural effects of exposure.
Corporate food production and the animal rights (AR) NUT JOBS telling us we mustn’t have animals and we certainly mustn’t have them living in “dirty” circumstances (like yards) are negatively affecting our and our children’s health. Not only do they tread upon our fundamental property rights but they are harming our health with their nonsensical arguments, now proven by science to be so.
Note to self: Nail up those “Trespassers WILL be Shot” signs. If the EPA is going to regulate GHGs to improve our health but in the process make food more expensive; then I’m darn sure inclined to raise my own food, especially if that will also improve my health. Now I know from personal experience that I can’t “fix” not being exposed as a kid but I can darn sure mitigate some of the effects.
Do I need to point out that this increases what a true travesty was done to the 2 livestock owners in Texas who lost their animals to over zealous humane activists acting under color of law?
And I have to toss this in. We’ve probably all seen the stories of CPS stepping in to snatch up fat kids or “supervise” them. Government child protection bureaus presume the parents are the reason these kids are fat. Well, as usual, they’re WRONG. These kids may lack portions of needed DNA. Far from the first time they've been wrong on this particular issue!
I approve of doing what’s best for children but, when the government steps in and applies gunk science presumptions, they tread upon a very fundamental right in a grossly illegal and unconstitutional way. The whole system that attempts to protect children is broken beyond repair and should be obliterated entirely because it clearly can’t be fixed internally; those attempts have been going on for years and it just keeps getting worse.
I mention this because the AR whack jobs also want pets and other animals elevated to some special status nearly equivalent to children and protection bureaus set up as well. They can’t help but do an even worse job than is being done for children when they operate off the false belief that pets should be kept in Clorox homes, away from yards, dirt, each other, and even us.
Perhaps it’s time we look into the possibility of civil commitments for some of the AR folks; they are clearly a danger to themselves and others when they promote removing animals from our environments and diets.