If you want your child to be allergy free, try taking them outside and introducing them to some good ol’ dirt. Even better — the dirt found where cows live.
Why? Researchers have unlocked a link between farms — particularly dairy farms — and a lower incidence of allergy and asthma in kids.
Farms have the absolute best germs going for preventing respiratory issues and allergies. Apparently the old-fashioned ways are still the best. Put away the ever-present bacterial wipes and expose your kids to some healthy environmental microbes.
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“People in rural areas — rural Africa, New Guinea, Bavaria — have a much lower incidence of allergies and asthma,” Dr. Clifford Bassett, founder and medical director of Allergy and Asthma Care of New York, told LifeZette. “It’s the same with farms. It’s called the farming effect.”
“Many factors contribute to allergies and asthma. But this is an important discovery.”
“We have it backwards,” Bassett said. “While we’re running around keeping kids away from every germ we fear, exposure to certain germs lowers our risk instead, decreasing these respiratory conditions. Dirt can be good!”
An estimated 50 million people in the U.S. suffer from allergies, but the Amish, famous for their farming lifestyle, have a startlingly low incidence of reaction to common allergens like dust mites, pollen, mold and animal dander. According to a new study published Sept. 3 in Science magazine, a whopping 45 percent of children in general reacted to these allergens, while Swiss farm children reacted at just 25 percent. And the Amish, who exclusively farm? A very low 8 percent.
But why? It’s called hygiene hypothesis, where the lack of exposure to environmental microbes as a child leads to both allergies and asthma. It was at first thought by researchers that it was the cells of the immune system that reacted to allergens, but that may not be the case.
“The first cells that recognize the allergen are not so much the cells of the immune system, but the structural cells that make up the lining of the lungs,” Bart Lambrecht of Ghent University, co-author of the study, told the Washington Post.
How do they know? Bring on the lab mice. The researchers induced dust mite allergies, the most common allergen, in mice. The mice that had been exposed to dairy farm dust early in their lives were immune to the allergen.
What is at play here is a genetic protein called A20, which the mice were producing when exposed to the farm dust. When the researchers studied children who lived on dairy farms and still had allergies, they found the A20 protein was mutated, effectively causing it to malfunction.
“A20 was not a coincidence, it was really necessary,” said Lambrecht. “This is linking, showing a cause and effect link, between exposure to farm dust and fewer allergies.”
Bassett said he is encouraged by the new study.
“There is three times more occurrence of asthma and allergy in urban areas, as compared to rural areas,” he said. “We need more exposure early in life — not less.”
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