Let the children play . . . outside

IF YOU are a parent who is terrified of letting her child crawl on the floor out of the fear that he will eat dirt, then you may be doing him a disservice after all. Many doctors are of the opinion that exposing kids to dirt may have health benefits.

Immunologists believe that children exposed to germs and animals are less likely to develop modern diseases such as diabetes, Crohn’s disease, asthma and heart problems.

"Our lifestyles are slowly getting westernised. Our children are now growing up in 'hyperclean', sterile environments resulting in under developed immune systems because of inadequate exposure to bacteria," senior consultant of paediatrics at Rockland Hospital, Dr Vandana Kent, said. This draws attention to the paradox in Western healthcare.

Old epidemics, such as cholera, having disappeared from advanced nations, a set of new ailments — including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and multiple sclerosis — have become more common. Many of these seem linked to our immune systems.

Rob Dunn, an eminent professor of biology and the author of The Wild Life of Our Bodies , urges us all to adopt a radical approach to the 'hygiene hypothesis'. He believes that our lives have become too clean and that this is making our immune systems so disoriented that they over- react massively to harmless everyday substances, such as house dust.

He believes our healthy future lies in what he calls, 're-wilding our bodies' and that we should be able to convince ourselves that our bodies are still in the natural state of our ancestors: roaming bug-infested forests and living in unsanitary hovels. We can do this, he says,  by having worms living in our guts.

"We have gone from lives immersed in nature to lives in which nature has disappeared but our bodies continue to expect to meet our old companions, the parasite species with which they tangled for generation upon generation,” Dunn said. It might sound disgusting, but research scientists across the world are taking this idea very seriously. Tests have shown when parasitic worms are put into the digestive systems of mice, it could stop them from getting irritable bowel disease. 

"It's just how a vaccine works. It first introduces foreign substances in our body and then prepares it to develop antibodies. Similarly, when we are exposed to bacteria as children, our body learns to fight infections. We build an army of soldiers to fight diseases,” Dr Kent said.