Sparse Updates

There have been pretty few updates this past week (if any) by my wife or I. The final semester of school is in full swing. Working at minimum wage in a work-study setting, I am getting valuable research related experience, but am gone most of the time. I have been getting to see my daughter for a couple of hours a night on weekdays, but it is not very much quality time. Most of the time I am home is spent cleaning up, because, well, I am sort of a neat freak. This leads into my science article for the day:

"The Hygiene Hypothesis: Are Cleanlier Lifestyles Causing More Allergies For Kids?

Science Daily — A little dirt never hurt. But in today’s super-clean world, vaccinations, anti-bacterial soaps, and airtight doors and windows are keeping dirt and disease-causing germs at bay.

While staying germ-free can prevent the spread of disease and infections, leading a cleanlier lifestyle may be responsible for an increase in allergies among children.

“It’s called the hygiene hypothesis,” says Marc McMorris, M.D., a pediatric allergist at the University of Michigan Health System. “We’ve developed a cleanlier lifestyle, and our bodies no longer need to fight germs as much as they did in the past. As a result, the immune system has shifted away from fighting infection to developing more allergic tendencies.”

Basically, we are programmed to deal with foreign substances from birth. It is our nature. Evolution does not happen in a few generations, where the rate of change from our grandparents to our kids has been enormous. Just as humans are symbiotic with many bacteria, certain parts of our immunity are made to work by exposure to foreign materials. Time to notch down the level of clean from clinical research laboratory to slightly dusty old person house!