Babies Know - A Little Dirt Is Good for You | Hacker News Reader

Babies Know - A Little Dirt Is Good for You

nytimes.com

16 pointsechair9 comments

I've been aware of this idea for many years, specifically with regards to asthma. My son is 10 months old, and for his whole life, we've been pretty careful to keep him as clean as possible. It's easy to believe something in theory, but harder to make yourself do it in practice.

Growing up on a cattle ranch, I remember all my neighbor ranch kids were all as healthy as I was. Any sickly kids, that I was aware of, tended to be town kids. But, there were a lot more town kids than ranch kids, so statistically, that would have happened anyway.

It's going to be hard to even find good clean dirt and cow pies and dead deer to poke with sticks, and frogs to catch, and all the wonderful things I had to get dirty with, for my son, now that we are city slickers. We'll hike and fish, but those events don't happen every day.

If I understand the article correctly, it's city dirt that you'd want to expose your son to, since that's where you live.

I think that's not so. For one thing, a lot of "city dirt" is contaminated with chemicals. The dirt that's supposed to be good for you, is good for you because of it's organic contaminants, not chemical ones.

Furthermore, the specific organic contaminates that make the most difference, apparently, are parasitic worm larvae, which are not so likely to be found in the city, as they come from animal feces. Of course, there are dogs and cats in the city, but I'm more comfortable with cow crap than dog crap, myself, as far as ingesting it. Plus, people worm their pets.

All matter is in the form of chemicals, including everything possibly called organic.

I remember hearing about a Japanese researcher that was experimenting with giving people parasitic worms as a treatment for asthma.

Nice counterbalance to all the "kills 99.99% of germs" commercials we see these days. I wonder if being a bit more lacksidasical about the amount of dirt kids are exposed to would also result in less cases of cleanliness OCD.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too soon. For example, couldn't changes in diet also be responsible for the rise of autoimmune diseases? At least in "The China Study" some indications seem to be given.

In any case, western diet changed dramatically over the last few hundred years, so it seems at least as likely a candidate as hygiene.

"A little dirt is good for you" strikes me as a bittersweet lesson for those of us who avoid the conflict and drudgery that's necessary to reach any worthwhile dream.

Plus now I'm hungry for some beef.

Didn't George Carlin have a bit along the same lines

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