Old News (Sort of)

This story, Rat study shows dirty better than clean (AP via Yahoo News), repeats something I’ve said for years (I’m not a scientist, although I was a Sr. Lab Technician at one time).

Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick.

The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people’s immune systems aren’t being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body’s natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.

My theory is a bit of a tangent off of that, based on a column I read in the Philadelphia Bulletin in the early seventies. I think it was written by Art Buchwald, but I can’t be sure. His hypothesis, to which I subscribe, had to do with the saccharine type cancer scares of the time. It went something like this, the problem with a, b, or c causing cancer isn’t with the substance, but with the test rats. Giving doses of whatever to a lab rat is one thing. Give that same thing to a big ol’ Philly sewer rat and and it would probably thrive.

His article was written tongue in cheek, but I think he does have a point (which this study indicates as well). Even in the human body, struggles make us stronger. I think the speed with which children are rushed off to a doctor at the first sniffle is detrimental to their long term ability to fight off even weak illnesses.

Again, I have no empirical evidence for my theory, but I know in my own life that I hardly ever take any medication, not even pain relievers. However when I do, they are remarkably fast to act and act effectively — especially when compared to those I know who are taking them constantly.

To carry this out a bit further, I think this theory also works when you talk about mental toughness. Maybe even more so. Children can be over protected in many ways. Schools that have outlawed games like dodge ball and other games where someone “may get hurt” are one thing, but even worse are things like no score sports where there are no “winners and losers” and where everyone gets a trophy. It’s no wonder that some of the kids who had only that type of experience growing up are wondering why they don’t “get a trophy” for just showing up at work.

I’m just saying.

Tweet