Posted on 09/16/2016 4:42:21 AM PDT by SES1066
Never before in human history have babies and children grown up so cleanly, and our diets have lost many of the elements most crucial to the health of our guts. We have become very bad hosts to our microbes.
[snip]
Babies and toddlers often aren’t allowed to play in the dirt or sand, and when they are, they are wiped clean immediately. Phrases like, “Yuck! Don’t play in the mud!” or “Don’t touch that bug, it’s dirty!” have become second nature.
We need to unlearn these habits. By preventing babies and children from following their innate impulse to get dirty, we shield them from the microbial exposure that is essential for the development of a healthy immune system.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Unfortunately, this progress has come with a price, as news reports have been telling us for some years now. Our anti-microbe mission has been accompanied, in industrialized countries, by an explosion in the prevalence of chronic noninfectious diseases and disorders. Diabetes, allergies, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases, autoimmune diseases, autism, obesity and certain types of cancer are at an all-time high. The incidence of some of these disorders is doubling every 10 years, and they are starting to appear sooner in life, often in childhood.
There does seem to be a cause&effect operation here as the 'antiseptic' era dating from the post-WW2 explosion in 'clean children' being discouraged from 'natural' and innate behaviors like 'tasting' have changed behaviors and outcomes.
My sister, a lifelong delivery room nurse and breastfeeding coach, was always an advocate of letting your children ‘eat a little dirt’, so to speak.
Her children always were (and are to this day) nauseatingly healthy.
Never ever thought about that for my five children.
Central Texas fields and streams were their natural habitat.
And once we moved to Southern Arizona, climbing scrub trees and chasing dogs and goats on foot and on bikes became their normal daily activities.
The number of scratches, contusions, cactus spines and pure craziness forced my wife to make a mud room on the back porch where everybody basically stripped before coming in.
Old Adage: Unless a kid eats a peck of dirt by the time he’s four, he’ll be sickly his whole life.
All of these wipes for shopping carts, hands, etc. kill off the weak germs and the strong survive and breed stronger still.
Our neighbors used to think we were nuts letting our kids play in mud puddles while it was raining. Until their kids saw how much fun it was.
A little dirt never hurt!
Yeah, they say the farm has the healthiest soil and therefore is the best environment for a baby. Lots of healthy microbes for the child’s immune system.
I care not for the paywall and tire of such posted articles, but this should be of-interest
http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-this-amazing-video-shows-evolution-happening-in-just-days
Like most other ‘snapshots’ of health, this is only ONE SMALL PART of it, as is what’s shown in the video. Most people haven’t a clue that they’re being poisoned slowly on a daily basis. I learned the difference with little effort and hope someday to have my book finished.
When people have more children, they aren’t able to keep them all spotless.
Maybe if you live through it. Back in those days infant mortality was many times higher than when we understood germ theory, washed our hands before eating, used indoor plumbing for human waste contol, washed the cows teats with germicidal solution before milking, etc.
I was breast-fed by my mother (a city girl). Mom very reluctantly acceded to my paternal grandmother's insistence under my father's encouragement that she give me a bottle of some milk brought directly up from the barn.
The upshot was that it nearly killed me. Mom remembered that a long, long time.
I do not think that the thrust of the above article is good for babies, at all.
Raw milk is not good for babies, a little dirt is. A little common sense is always a good thing.
I’d avoid the dirt-eating aspect of dirty. Maybe lick your fingers once in awhile. Not because of microbes, but because of worms.
Not the edible kind, like you use w/fish, but the ringworm/heartworm kind. Includes their eggs in soil.
Always a matter of degree. Goldilocks problem. Not too much, not too little.
The surge in polio was due to cleaning the water supply. If exposed to the virus early enough, people got tolerance. Cleaning the water eliminated that so when a kid got exposed when a bit older, I think 7+, they got sick.
But that doesn’t mean cleaning up the water is bad. If we stopped that to avoid needing a polio vaccine, we’d just start having cholera outbreaks, etc.. again.
Goldilocks.
Never saw purifying the water linked to polio. Interesting.
My children were always allowed and even encouraged to get dirty. They were 4 little boys playing rough and tumble outside.
But we did hand washing before meals, and they were always put to bed with a bath.
“Our neighbors used to think we were nuts letting our kids play in mud puddles while it was raining. Until their kids saw how much fun it was.
A little dirt never hurt!”
Mud puddles are God’s gift to children.
There’s enough dirt and too little sense to go around. But thanks for your thought.
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