Hygiene Hypothesis and you

I was involved in an interesting conversation at work the other day about how some of co-workers manage to get out of the bathroom germ free. Some of the ideas ranged from waiting until someone else came in, the classic foot flush, and a delicate dance where you open the door with a paper towel, wedge it open with your foot, then proceed to throw the paper towel into the garbage. Now, while I do wash my hands after using public bathrooms, I've never heard of people getting so worked up over germs, and it brought to mind the idea of the Hygiene hypothesis, so I thought this would be a good time to take a look at it.



What is the Hygiene Hypothesis?

The hygiene hypothesis was developed by David Strachan as a means to explain the increased prevalence of allergies and hay fever (1). He thought that the decreased rates of infection, and cross infection, among young children was putting them at a higher risk for allergies later in life. This decrease was due to families being too protective, and hygienic, and preventing infections that actually end up improving the immune system in young children. Without proper development of the immune system in infancy, children grow up with a decreased ability to handle infection.

While Strachan started with just allergies the hygiene hypothesis has now been expanded to cover a range of disorders later in life.

Also, much the emerging data suggests that "hygiene" may not be the actual reason for the increased prevalence of such allergies. The reason may be just an increase in several lifestyle factors, and a more apt term would be a "microbial exposure hypothesis" (2).

What does it mean?

Well, for many of us, there isn't much we can do since our immune systems are fairly well developed. However, for those of us with young children, we might find them staying healthier if they encounter infections more often. Also, a lot of the research says that helminthes, little worms, are very important for immune system development (3). So, another good way to introduce your child to immune boosting agents would be to let them play around in mud and dirt!

Now, back to the bathroom scenarios that lead to this discussion. What does this mean for them? Well, probably not much. I do think it is interesting that maybe teaching your kids to not be too OCD about something like traversing public bathrooms could positively affect their life long health. Also, an interesting thing to think about is whether or not avoidance of these pathogens is what is leading to the paranoid fear of touching anything in a bathroom. Do they just fear what they don't know?