Why Parasites May be Good for You
Your great-grandparents faced infectious diseases that hardly threaten you today: tuberculosis, polio, cholera, malaria, yellow fever, measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, tapeworm, hookworm…But there’s also a long list of modern illnesses that your great-grandparents barely knew: asthma, eczema, hay fever, food allergies, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis. The coincidence of the rise in these “inflammation” diseases, characterized by an overactive immune system, with the decline of infection is almost certainly not a coincidence.
Matt Ridley in the WSJ.
I read another report years ago on this very same subject. Kids used to pick things up and put them in their mouths all the time, drink from the water hose, etc and lived to tell the tale. Now parents strive to build as sterile of an environment as possible for their kids, creating a boy-in-the-bubble syndrome for them later on.
Infectious diseases now days can be our own fault…diabetes,
( http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57407203-10391709/sugar-and-kids-the-toxic-truth/food )allergies, asthma……
Velasquez-Manoff actually infected himself with hookworms to test their effect on his hay fever and eczema? Wow.
“The author briefly cured his own hay fever and eczema by infecting himself with hookworms—before concluding that the price in terms of diarrhea and headaches was too high.” hahaha. Good for him.
Growing up on a farm greatly cuts allergy risk.
This is a very interesting post, and I can particularly relate to the statement above. I’ve always been very allergic, especially to animals and dusty environments. I always wondered why most people, especially here in the U.S. where 3 out of 5 families have a dog (or a pet for that matter), didn’t have any symptoms of asthma or allergy from being around animals 24/7…and everytime I walk in their houses, I always break out in allergic reactions within a matter of minutes.
Several friends have told me that when you grow up around animals or environments with specific characteristics (e.g. not very clean, dusty…dirty), then your body simply becomes immune to these traits and they don’t really have any negative effect on you as you grow older.
Going back to the statement above, it makes sense that living in a farm would cut allergy risks…dirty, filthy environments might not be that bad after all then.
I dont think I could deliberately experiment on myself in order to find a remedy to a disease.
Interesting. It certainly raises the question of how much is too much, in terms of disease exposure.
a lot of modern diseases our great-grandparents didn’t have to deal with can be attributed to many lifestyle changes
If you look at the work being done in epigenetics, you’ll find that the various ailments your grandparents had set YOU up for disease in later life. It’s not as simple as it seems: the combination of our industrial Franken food along with the epigenetic traits that are ‘tagged’ and passed on thru several generations have much to do with the world-wide health problems we’re seeing now, including obesity.
And kids died of asthma in the old days – or were addicted to increasing amounts of laudnum. The ones who survived lived very restricted lives.
For a brief but enlightening essay on epigenetics, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetics
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For a look at health problems in present-day Netherlands that are rooted in the Nazi-induced famine of 1944. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944#Legacy
Who knows, our obesity problems may be more complex than anything government lunches can fix. But don’t tell the central planners that.