Are we too clean?

A baby cannot resist stuffing anything within reach into her mouths, often to the chagrin of her paranoid parents.

Biologists are studying why a baby's instinctive behavior -- specifically, stuffing dirt into her mouth -- would be in fact beneficial. They propose a 'hygiene hypothesis," eating dirt and the billions of microbes and, yes, worms inside that dirt may sicken the child (and parent) in the short term, but will reduce the chance of developing immune-related illnesses in the long run.

According to immunologist Mary Ruebush, children raised in a hyper-clean environment are not exposed to the organisms that help them develop appropriate immune circuits. Research suggests that the increase in immune system disorders (e.g., asthma, allergies, multiple sclerosis, Type I diabetes, and inflammatory bowel disease) in the US may be due to our restrictions on the environment and behavior of our children.

Dr. David Elliott of the University of Iowa cites specific evidence in developing countries; for example, he claims that the eradication of worms in some villages in Gambia have led to an increase in children's skin allergies.

Obviously, dirtiness is not a desirable outcome. But too much cleanliness is harmful, too. Professor Ruebrush suggests that we rue antibiotic products and stick with plain soap and water whenever our hands need washing. Dr. Joel Weinstock of Tufts Medical Center goes even further: “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat." He also suggests that kids have two dogs and a cat, which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.

Read the NYT article here.

9/17/09 Update:
A man infects himself with hookworm to cure his asthma and hayfever. Listen to his account on Radiolab (his story begins at ~32 minute mark in the show).


This cute little bloodsucker can cure your asthma.

What if?

Imagine a women’s magazine that positively featured round models, short models, old models – or no models at all, but real individual women. Let’s say that it had a policy of avoiding cruelty to women, as some now have a policy of endorsing products made free of cruelty to animals. And that it left out crash diets, mantras to achieve self-hatred, and promotional articles for the procession that cuts open healthy women’s bodies. And let’s say that it ran articles in praise of the magnificence of visible age, displayed loving photo essays on the bodies of women of all shapes and proportions, examined with gentle curiosity the body’s changes after birth and breast-feeding, offered recipes without punishment or guilt, and ran seductive portraits of men.

It would run aground, losing the bulk of its advertisers. Magazines, consciously or half-consciously, must project the attitude that looking one’s age is bad because $650 million of their ad revenue comes from people who would go out of business if visible age looked good. They need, consciously or not, to promote women’s hating their bodies enough to profitably hungry, since the advertising budget for one third of the nation’s food bill depends on their doing so by dieting. The advertisers who make women’s mass culture possible depend on making women feel bad enough about their faces and bodies to spend more money on worthless or pain-inducing products than they would if they felt innately beautiful.

from The Beauty Myth (1991) by Naomi Wolf

The Downside of Pornography

Naomi Wolf deconstructs the "Porn Myth" in New York magazine:

Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated—or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.”

The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.

Le voyage fantastique

Le Gentil Garcon, a contemporary artist from Nice, France, has put together a delightful mash-up of prints. The characters, who are all originals from Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, venture inside the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. It's "a kind of remake, retro, on paper, of a famous science fiction B movie about a team of scientists hurled inside a human body."