I’m hearing lot of moms say that it’s ok to let children play in dirt, attend daycare with sick kids, not sanitize the living spaces too much, put dirty stuff in their mouths because they can only build their immune strength by getting sick first(?!).
I have read the hygiene hypothesis paper and many research papers that have disputed that paper aswell so I’m just curious to learn the science behind the idea ‘let them get sick first’.
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Things that are not especially dangerous in themselves likely give the immune system a work out that prevents it in some way turning on its ‘host’. That doenst mean that you want them to get sick with anything dangerous – that’s what we have vaccinations for. I guess its more like it allows the system to calibrate risks and responses properly?
Please note that I’m not condoning or disapproving of this practice, just explaining the thought behind it.
There are a number of common illnessess/things we can get an immunity to. If you expose a child to them slowly, over time, they are likely to gain immunity to a number of them before they go to school, at which point they’re likely to be exposed to almost all of them in rapid succession, so the thought is that, if you have some immunity, you’ll not get as sick as often once you’re in school. You “spread out” the ~~inievitable~~ *inevitable* illness.
It makes sense.
On the other hand, we were pretty much constantly sick when our kids were young because there’s always another variant of something going around, so your immunity isn’t always all that helpful.
So it also makes sense to avoid them getting sick whenever you can.
I don’t know what the best course of action is. I just am trying to present the thinking behind this.
You are right that it does sound crazy and it is not recommended health practices. There are some diseases which does not affect kids as much as adults and before we had vaccines people would try to get their kids sick with these diseases before it would be potentially fatal. However other diseases are much more harmful to kids then adults so this was only done for a few specific diseases and the practice mostly stopped once vaccines became available.
There are also studies showing that kids growing up in very clean environments have a greater risk of developing auto immune diseases and asthma. This might have something to do with the immune system not being exposed to harmless chemicals and therefore reacting too strongly once exposed to them. However this should not be taken as advice to intentionally expose kids to dirt as the risk of harmful infections are much greater then the risk of these illnesses. And while playing in the dirt is not that risky to kids unless there is a bacterial outbreak in the area intentionally exposing your kids to other sick kids will shorten their life expectancy.
There are certain illnesses that have been around for centuries where it’s better to get it younger. Like if you get it below age 7 you’ll definitely be fine, and if you get it after 15 you have a much higher chance of dying. And you can only get it once so it’s better to get it younger.
People just sort of assume that applies to everything when it really doesn’t.
Most of the bacteria we encounter in the world are harmless, some are beneficial or necessary (especially in the gut), and a few are harmful. The young immune system knows how to get rid of invaders but not which ones to get rid of. Early exposure to a wide range of them (like those found in dirt or in a normal living space) let’s the immune system figure out that it can and should leave some of them alone.
Children who were exposed to a lot more dirt and bacteria in East Germany were shown to have stronger (‘more mature’) immune systems than West Germany just after the wall came down. It was already known at that point that depriving a child exposure to bacteria or viruses means the body has nothing to work with, because that’s how the immune system develops. Some of our immune cells are innate, so we already have them and they aren’t created by meeting new pathogens (foreign bodies). Some of our immune cells (adaptive) such as antibodies are created by meeting a pathogen for the first time, then they are duplicated and stored in your body for a second time which means the body can skip the first stage and save time by going straight into attack. That’s why we fight off cold viruses and other viruses more easily when we have them again. Some viruses change more than others and may need more tweeking than others.
Some viruses are better caught in childhood than in adulthood, such as chicken pox. It is more severe in adults than children. Children can usually avoid another attack from the virus by having it’s own uniquely created immune cells , although it will remain in the cells DNA forever in the dorsal root ganglia (a nerve)).
We still don’t have well known facts to share with the world about exactly how much children should be exposed and how much it helps each individual. These are hard things to measure, and it is something people feel quite differently about. Some families want to stay very clean and hygienic, avoiding exposure to bacteria. Others feel the opposite, that exposure is vital, but they tend to not try to make it happen- more allow things to get a little bit more dirty for example.
For example, most of the bacteria on your hand is healthy and well help to prevent other bacteria sitting on your hand. If you wash your hands, you wash them all off. However, there are some bacteria that are dangerous and some people are more vulnerable that we choose a happy medium- to wash our hands regularly.
My dad, was not a scientist- he was an engineer and from the 50″s, he used to say ‘bacteria get bad press’.
TL;DR The immune system of a child is not weaker than that of an adult, it is actually stronger, just “less experienced”, sort of. Intentionally getting your child infected is an overkill and is dangerous, as is overprotecting them by isolation or excessive sanitising. Best and most risk-free way to build immunity against a disease is a vaccine.
Humans actually have two immune systems, innate and adaptive. Innate immune system consists of “general purpose” weapons that responds to threats immediately and fight off a wide variety of pathogens, but is less efficient against specific pathogens. Adaptive immune system is ridiculously efficient against almost every possible pathogen, but takes a while (a few days) to activate. In simple terms, your immune system needs to collect samples of the pathogen and find a specific type of an antibody production cell that can fight off this specific pathogen. Once you recover from the illness, most of the antibody factories will be killed recycled, but a low amount will stay and keep producing the antibodies. Also some memory cells will be created, making it faster to mobilise the antibody factories next time they are needed. This is how vaccines work – your body is provided with some non-pathogenic samples of the pathogen and will be prepared in the event of an actual exposure. It is a very efficient utility – for example, survivability of patients with rabies infection is nearly 0%, because the virus is so good at avoiding the innate immune system. And by the time responsive immune system kicks in, it would already be in the brain, where it cannot be efficiently fought off. But survivability of vaccinated patients is 100%, that’s how efficient our adaptive immune system is.
So the logic behind moms intentionally exposing their children to pathogens is to build up their children’s adaptive immune system while they are young, because our immune system deteriorates as we age. But the counterpoint is, any infection is a risk. While our body can efficiently fight off most pathogens, some can deal severe damage. It is true that getting infected as a child is in many cases less risky than getting infected as an adult, but still more risky than not getting infected at all. So since adults don’t put dirty objects in their mouth neither should children.
Getting kids sick “on purpose” is mean and arguably child abuse.
Accepting that kids get sick a lot and that’s OK is a very different thing.
Sterilizing the world so that your child is never exposed to germs isn’t going to work, makes your kid different (not in a good way), and it might make things worse for your child in the long run.
All things in moderation is probably the best strategy. Keep things moderately clean, to teach your child good habits. You child will get sick moderately often, and that isn’t a disaster either.
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