expose your kids to germs to stay healthy. Wisdom at last

[Guest guest]

To head off allergies, expose your kids to pets and dirt early. Really. Doing so

might program young immune systems to know what — and what not — to react to

By Steve Sternberg

USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060320/1a_cover20.art.htm

 

Excerpts:

Here's the conventional wisdom: Pets promote allergy, kids shouldn't eat

peanuts until they're at least 3, and intestinal worms are nothing more than an

icky reminder of life before flush toilets.

Here's the new wisdom: Early exposure to pets, peanuts and intestinal worms

might actually be good for you, because they program the developing immune

system to know the difference between real threats, such as germs, and Aunt

Millie's cat.

Evidence to support this view has been mounting for more than a decade. But

now, for the first time, researchers are beginning to test remedies based on

these theories in patients. Other doctors are trying to make use of novel

approaches to retrain the immune system once it's too late and allergies set in.

“What we've learned is that it may, in fact, be important to be exposed early

on to a sufficient quantity of allergy-causing substances to train the immune

system that they are not a threat,” says Andy Saxon of the University of

California-Los Angeles.