Today more than ever we disinfect our hands and everything they come into contact with, but what does this excessive hygiene mean for our immunity and that of our children?
Would you like to pop into the bakery? Disinfect hands. Want to visit the supermarket quickly? Hands under the disinfection pole. Have a nice coffee? Oh yes, again press the alcohol gel pump. Come home, make food, visit the toilet? Always wash hands … And so it goes on.
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Would you like to pop into the bakery? Disinfect hands. Want to visit the supermarket quickly? Hands under the disinfection pole. Have a nice coffee? Oh yes, again press the alcohol gel pump. Come home, make food, visit the toilet? Always wash hands … And so it goes on. For years we have been told that we live too cleanly in the West, but in corona times we now live very cleanly in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses. Some wonder whether current hygiene recommendations could have a detrimental effect on our immunity. Immunologist Bart Lambrecht of UGent / VIB reassures us. ‘We do wash our hands a little more than usual, but that is still not enough to affect our immunity, so to speak. It is also not the case that our hands are completely sterile due to excessive hand hygiene. If it were, surgeons could perform operations without gloves. In addition, the hands cover barely two to five percent of our body surface, which is just a small part of the entire microbiome. It is true that the frequent use of soap and alcohol gels affects the skin barrier, so that the allergens present in the environment, such as dust mites, penetrate through the barrier and can cause a temporary eczema flare. “But what about the so-called” hygiene theory ” who argues that more hygiene and potable water in the industrialized world are undermining our defense training and are thus the cause of the rising incidence of asthma and allergies? Won’t the current collective fear of contamination confuse our immunity even more? “The hygiene theory only relates to the first years of life,” explains Bart Lambrecht. ‘That is the crucial moment when the entire immune system is built up. It is in that short span of time that a child learns to deal with the various bacteria present in its environment. If a child comes into contact with other children and animals too little, its immune system is disrupted and it starts to overreact, sometimes even to its own body in the form of autoimmune diseases. It may seem like a contradiction, but by not coming into contact with a wide variety of germs enough, the immune system will work too hard and react to harmless substances. ” More allergies due to corona hygiene? , you would think. This way you train their immune system for later. However? That is a misunderstanding, suggests Lambrecht. ‘Hygiene theory does not say that a child should be constantly sick in bed during his first years of life in order to develop a better immune system. The amount of germs must stimulate the immune system just enough to not overreact to allergens. Compare it to a vaccine in which a small exposure to germs allows the body to build a memory for when a real infection strikes. ‘Allergies are more common today than they used to be. 30 to 35 percent of Belgians today suffer from it. Before the Second World War, that was only five percent of the population. Still, Lambrecht, a world authority in the field of asthma and allergy research, does not think that the corona measures will lead to even more allergies in the long term. ‘The current measures are too short to have an impact and it is especially the first year of life that is crucial for the proper development of immunity.’ But hygiene measures should not take two years now, says the immunologist. “ Then you might start to see an effect. ” The hygiene theory is not the only explanation for the rapid rise of allergies in the Western world in recent decades. More antibiotics are also available, which means that children experience fewer common infectious diseases. Because we have moved to better insulated houses, the humidity level is higher and the dust mite population and therefore dust mite allergy are increasing. Air pollution makes natural allergens more dangerous and because of climate change our summers are warmer and drier and the pollen season lasts longer. Antibiotics, immaculate houses, climate change, … These are all consequences of our progress. Nevertheless, for some things we do better go back to the good old days, when children were still romping in the field or rooting in the sandbox between the cat droppings and were put in the bath ‘black with dirt’ in the evening. The very best cards for optimal immunity are reserved for children born on a farm, Lambrecht knows. Children who spend their first two years on a farm are less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease. Farm dust contains components of dead bacteria, called endotoxins. These are, among other things, in cow dung. When the cow dung dries up, those endotoxins are released into the air, giving a farm its distinctive scent. The best thing a mother can do for her baby is to put it in a cowshed in the Maxi-Cosi. ” Since not everyone grows up on a farm in deeply concreted Flanders, fortunately there are other ways to make children ‘get dirty’. to be. ‘Half of the allergies can be prevented if children grow up in a family with pets’, says Lambrecht. “ The more pets, the better. ” But the most decisive element in hygiene theory is family size. In our country, this has decreased drastically in the past 50 years to 1.6 children per family. ‘A baby is more likely to develop allergies if it comes into a small family because there is less exposure to infection from siblings, or from the mother infected by an older child who goes to daycare. That is exactly what British epidemiologist David Strachan suggested in his original hygiene hypothesis in 1989: ‘Large families living together in agricultural communities and often in contact with nature are things that are much more common in developing countries than in regions with a Western lifestyle. Lambrecht is therefore convinced that non-Westerners have better immunity and that this could possibly explain why SARS-CoV-2, for example, strikes less hard in Africa. ‘The way in which the immune system learns to deal with infections in the first years of life also has an influence on the pathogenic potential of a virus. Our studies show, for example, that laboratory animals that were first exposed to farm dust did not become ill from infection with a lung virus, while a clean laboratory mouse did. I think that is exactly what is happening with covid-19 right now. Children in agricultural communities in Africa and India are not less infected with the new coronavirus, but they are less likely to get sick from it. ‘Another important hygiene measure that we have faced this year, much to the dismay of many, is the mouth mask. Now that the schools have reopened, children sometimes sit with mouth masks on for up to eight hours a day. The mouth mask obligation is currently under discussion because it causes complaints such as headaches and may pose a serious threat to the development of children. Corona doubters even claim that the accumulated CO2 leads to a toxic acidification of the organism, which in turn would affect our immunity. Lambrecht, who is also a lung specialist in addition to being an immunologist, puts the finishing touches on the i. “This is one of the many things in this corona crisis that are sent out into the world without much scientific support,” he sighs. ‘Toxic acidification with CO2 is the reverse process of hyperventilation. The phenomenon is in principle possible when wearing a mouth mask, but only in circumstances that are so extreme and where the mouth mask fits so perfectly on the face that you will succumb to it after a few hours. Most face masks, such as the surgical ones everyone wears, let air pass through the sides, making toxic acidification unlikely. ”Finally, there is another misunderstanding to be cleared up. Now that we are overloaded in corona times with all kinds of tips and ways to give our immunity a ‘boost’, Lambrecht believes that this is a futile effort. ‘There is no such thing as a substance with a general stimulating effect on the immune system. You can “train” your immune system by giving it repeated stimuli, such as with the annual flu vaccine. Anyone who receives a different variant of the flu vaccine every year will ultimately be better protected than someone who never received a flu vaccine because the risk of cross-reaction is greater. But that is not a “boost” for your immune system as a whole, it only protects against variants of the flu. Your immune system boosts through natural infections in your first years of life, ‘Lambrecht concludes.
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