Raising Healthy Children
It's starting to look like the best method may be to let them play in the dirt, stick all sorts of things in their mouths, and, generally, be exposed to everything.
From the linked article:
Here's the new wisdom: Early exposure to pets, peanuts and intestinal worms might actually be good for you, because they program the developing immune system to know the difference between real threats, such as germs, and Aunt Millie's cat.
"When you're born, Day Zero, your immune system is like a new computer. It's not programmed. You have to add software," says Joel Weinstock of Tufts New England Medical Center. "Between the ages of zero and 12, you're learning to read, you're learning to write, and your immune system is learning to react to things. Part of that is learning to limit reactivity."
Although trying to link allergies to autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's might seem like a stretch, scientists say both types of ailments result from an immune system run amok. In allergies, the immune system goes on alert when ragweed or some other allergy-causing protein wafts through the air, settles on the skin or tickles the tongue. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system can no longer distinguish between the self and foreign proteins. Mistaking the self for those proteins, the immune system attacks the bowel in Crohn's disease or insulin-producing cells in Type 1 diabetes.
Weinstock, Elliott and other researchers believe that a low-grade infection with intestinal worms "” pig whipworms because they can't reproduce in people "” can restore the immune system's natural balance. A small-scale study in which 29 people with Crohn's disease drank whipworm eggs in Gatorade found that 23 responded to treatment and 21 of the 23 experienced complete remission.