As my wife sat in the emergency room with my 4 year old son on Christmas eve, I began to wonder why he seems to get sick so much more than anyone else in the family. He is young with his immune system still developing, but none of the rest of us were this prone to illness when we were four. There are many thoughts being tossed around the immunology circles about why today's kids are more prone to illness and allergy including that we may be too clean. Huh? Too clean? I don't now about you, but I don't think we are any more clean than our parents were.
The week after Christmas saw me being as sick as (or maybe more sick than) my son had been. As I thought again about why, I looked at my illness. I am a few years into my forties, I have been overweight for as long as I can remember (and beyond according to old photos) and I am not into health practices such as vitamin and herbal therapy. But have I always been as prone to illness as my son? In fact, no. As a child, I was not sick very often. I was injured many times being the wimp I was, but illness was fairly normal with chickenpox when very young, strep throat early, the flu a few times and colds maybe one or twice a year. As I have gotten older, it seems to have increased, but not until I moved to Northern Alabama has it seemed to become worse. I have been here for just over a year and have been sick more than I can remember in a past year.
Allergies are probably a major part of the illness my son (and now I) experience so often, and there may be some merit to the idea that we are too clean. I point to a couple of perspectives related to this idea: 1) children are exposed to less dirt, pets and other potential allergy causing agents while young preventing the immune system from adapting properly and 2) we are using more chemicals to clean and these chemicals may be weakening our protection to diseases.
It seems that as very young children are exposed to a variety of pollens, pet danders, and other "dirty" things, their developing immune systems begin to accept most of these materials as "not harmful" and will "ignore" it in the future. But if those exposures are not made during this developing period, those materials will be considered "harmful foreign" particles and the immune system could develop allergic responses. With kids spending more times indoors and not being allowed to get dirty as often, the exposure to these potential "allergens" is reduced thereby causing more allergy symptoms which often are similar to the common cold.
My own illness last week, I believe is partially linked to chemical effects. With my son being ill with Respiratory Synticial Virus (RSV) over Christmas and into the weekend, I began to develop symptoms on Sunday. On Saturday, I cleaned parts of the house in anticipation of a houseguest with a new cleaner. This bleach based cleaner was to be sprayed on tubs, sinks toilets, etc, and left to "eat away" the dirt. Use in a well ventilated area sounds easy enough unless it is freezing outside and there is not a fan in the bathroom. The overwhelming smell of bleach as the chemical fumes penetrated deep into my sinus passages should have been a clue to the potential damage. I am convinced that the weakening of my protection against upper respiratory infections along with the presence of RSV led me to the infection which took me out for a week. My son who was not exposed to the cleaner was up and about after a day of fever, I was out for the entire week. I know I am a wimp, but it was not simple me trying to get out of work. In conclusion, I advise all of us to consider the cleaning products we use and evaluate if they may be causing more illness due to harmful effects on our bodies.
