You Might Have Fewer Allergies If You Ate More Dirt!

You Might Have Fewer Allergies If You Ate More Dirt!

The sad part is I am not joking.  According to a few sources, there is increasing evidence that exposure to dirt and dust may decrease the incidents of allergies and asthma.  

A lot of the headlines in the natural health care world are just clickbait, trying to get your eyes on their site. But this one has some legs to it.  

Now I am not advocating you eat mud pies or don't wash your hands after going to the bathroom.  Doctors finally washing their hands reduced infant and mother mortality.  Fun story on that one, the doctor that proposed that midwives and doctors wash their hands was ridiculed and beaten to the point he was institutionalized.  Only to have his theories validated 14 days after he was committed and died. 

It's not that I am saying embrace your inner pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip and not bathe.  But you don't need to have an all-out war on every single bacteria that comes near you. Even the FDA says that the chemicals in a lot of the antibacterial soaps (Triclosan) aren't all they are cracked up to be, but you do need to not have an all-out war on the germs that surround us on a daily basis.  

This will probably gross a lot of you out but imagine as we are walking around we have a cloud of germs (Microbiome, the germs the surround the outsides of our body and the inside of our gut), think of these germs as our sickness forcefield.  When we have a healthy amount of non-pathologic bacteria surrounding us (probiotics), they keep the bad bacteria at bay and help keep us from getting sick, developing allergies and possibly asthma.  

So your takeaways from this would be to get rid of all the antibacterial everything that you are using and just use a high-quality soap, keep washing your hands after the bathroom, walk barefoot and sit in the grass.  And this one I haven't tested but I like the idea of it, there is a product called Mother Dirt (think of it as a probiotic soap) The link takes you to Thrive Market where you can get that and a lot of other great products. 

Basically, live a natural life and take care of your microbiome and you will be overall healthier.  

Until next time make your health easy!

Dr. JJ