14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new scientific study, it may be that parents should allow for their children to play in the sand, and get dirty. Apparently, this is of tremendous use to the skin's development, as the organ basically learns to take care of itself, something that will come in handy later on in life. While some may have a difficult time accepting that, evolutionarily speaking, this makes a lot of sense. In most species, the way children act while still young dictates their abilities and behaviors when they grow up.
Experts add that exposure to germs early on in a child's years prevents allergies from developing later on. Numerous bacteria live at the surface of the skin, and they all help damp down the response our immune systems give off when we cut ourselves, or nick our skins. In ideal conditions, the immune system would make every single minor cut or bruise swell up and hurt for many days. But the skin, with its abilities fully formed, can easily take care of the damage on its own. The bacteria on its surface basically prevent the immune system from overreacting.
The new study was conducted by scientists at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Their complete findings appear in the latest online issue of the respected scientific journal Nature Medicine. The researchers say that parents' obsession with cleanliness may be responsible for the massive numbers of new allergy cases, registered among children living in developed countries. Many adults view getting dirty during play as a bad thing, and therefore impose it on their children not to do so.
A spokesperson for Allergies UK admitted that the body of evidence suggesting exposure to germs was a good thing was constantly growing, the BBC News reports. However, the woman also said that more research was needed in order to say for sure that this was the case. “Rates of allergy have tripled in the UK in the last decade. One in three people now has some kind of allergy. Some of this might be that people are better informed. But a lot of it is genetic as well as down to our environment,” she concluded.