Are you the parent of a young child, infant or toddler?
If so, you probably instinctively reach for a cleaning wipe every time your child gets a little dirty.
And why not? It’s only human nature to want to protect our youngsters from all the germs that are floating around in their little world.
But guess what? As explained by the folks at WebMD and Texas A&M University Health Science Center, keeping a young child squeaky clean can actually do more harm than good for their future health.
In order to ward off serious illnesses and allergies later in life the human body must build up an immunity to the common germs and allergens that we all come into contact with on a daily basis.
Numerous studies have found that the human body develops immunity to germs most effectively during the first few years of life, and washing germs away before they have a chance to spur the immune system into action can be detrimental to a child’s life-long health.
That means kids really need to be exposed to common germs while they’re still infants and toddlers in order to build up the immunity they’ll need to avoid serious illnesses and allergies later in life.
I can attest to this fact based upon my own personal experience…
My seven siblings and I grew up around farm animals and a wide variety of pets.
As kids were were constantly getting slobbered on and coming into contact with all manner of truly disgusting things one typically encounters on a farm.
What’s more, on most non-school days we stayed “dirty” all day long. Such is life growing up in farm country.
But despite all of that exposure to germs (or more likely because of it) we were always generally quite healthy, and to the best of my knowledge none of us ever developed any aggravating allergies or became afflicted with asthma later in life.
Compare our experience to that of today’s kids…
Nowadays most every home and classroom has a dispenser of disinfectant for the kids to use every time they come into contact with anything that’s deemed to be less than clean.
And you know what? More kids than ever are getting sick on a regular basis and developing allergies to every substance known to man.
I don’t believe that’s just a coincidence, and all the available scientific evidence seems to back me up.
In conclusion, I recommend that you check out the short video below.
It discusses how getting dirty helps farm children stay healthier than other kids from the same surrounding neighborhoods.
Note: As always, you can watch the video at full screen by clicking the “square” icon that will pop up in the lower-right corner of the video after it begins playing.
Photo credit: German TR