Sucking Your Child’s Dummy Could Protect them From Eczema

When it comes to family wellness, do you follow the hygiene hypothesis? If you do, you may be guarding your baby’s wellbeing against asthma and eczema. This is according to researchers at the University of Gothenburg, who say that parents who “clean” their baby’s dummy with their mouth improve their baby’s health with regards to these conditions. At 18 months, babies who had come into repeated contact with their parents’ saliva were 12% less likely to have asthma and 37% less likely to develop eczema.

You may have been advised to soak your baby’s dummy in equal parts white vinegar and water, and, each time it hits the floor, to wash it in hot, soapy water. However, the “hygiene hypothesis,” posits that when kids are overly sterilised, they never learn how to fight off pathogens. Because the bacteria you pass on to your children, whether through sucking their dummy or kissing, are basically harmless, you may afford your children increased immunity, at least temporarily, from allergic diseases. Therefore, the study “Pacifier Cleaning Practices and Risk of Allergy Development”, which was published in the journal Paediatrics, sought to see who was right.

The researchers specifically targeted families in which allergic disease was prevalent, and, every six months, interviewed the new parents of 184 infants about their pacifier cleaning processes. The Swedish parents were also asked to keep journals tracking their behaviour, and the team of investigators collected the infants’ saliva in order to analyse their oral microbes. The babies were tested for an array of allergies at 18 and 36 months.

The results of the study revealed that the 18-month-olds of parents who sucked dummies to clean them were 12% less likely to have asthma, 37% less likely to have eczema, compared to children whose parents rinsed or boiled their dummies. Moreover, the children of “saliva parents” appeared less likely to be sensitive to airborne and food allergens. However, when the infants were all tested again at 36 months, there were no longer any significant differences in terms of asthma or allergen sensitivity. Yet, there was still a distinction in eczema susceptibly, with the children of parents who sucked dummies being 51% less likely to have eczema.

Categories: Baby, Children, dummy, Eczema, hygiene hypothesis, pacifier cleaning, Parents, Research, saliva, sucked dummies

Is Extreme Hygiene to Blame for Increase in Child Allergies?

These days it seems as though every other kid is allergic to something, which can make family wellness complicated. Even if your own child’s wellbeing isn’t affected by allergies, chances are that he or she will bring home a friend who is, and so you still have to deal with the problem. And the situation is only getting worse according to a recent study from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which found that allergies are on the rise. One in 20 children have food allergies today, which is a 50% increase from the 90s, while the number of children with skin allergies or eczema has risen by 69% to a whopping one in eight.

 

The odds are that you know a young child who has a food or skin allergy, which is why it’s now common practice for childcare settings and schools to ban potential allergens like tree nuts from all children’s lunches, in order to protect the wellness of these affected children. However, it’s difficult to determine whether these allergies have actually increased, or whether we’ve simply become more aware of what to look for, and so are just reporting more allergies in kids than we used to. Even the CDC study was based on parents’ self-reports of allergies in their children, and didn’t clarify whether or not the allergies were diagnosed by medical professionals, so some cases may have been misdiagnosed by hypersensitive parents.

 

Nonetheless, wellness experts seem to agree that recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in instances of both food allergies and hereditary atopic disorders such as eczema and asthma. This is at least evident in so-called developed countries, and herein lies a potential clue: we’re experiencing more allergies in the West because our culture is too good at controlling or eliminating exposure to microbes. As microbes are central to training our immune system to deal with allergens, excessive hygiene may be the cause of increased child allergies.

 

However, researchers like SF Bloomfield of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warn against too simplistic a reading of this so called “hygiene hypothesis,” as broader, societal change is a more likely culprit. In their paper “Too clean, or not too clean,” Bloomfield et al argue, ‘The increase in allergic disorders does not correlate with the decrease in infection with pathogenic organisms, nor can it be explained by changes in domestic hygiene. A consensus is beginning to develop round the view that more fundamental changes in lifestyle have led to decreased exposure to certain microbial or other species, such as helminths, that are important for the development of immunoregulatory mechanisms.’

 

The researchers continue, ‘Although this review concludes that the relationship of the hypothesis to hygiene practice is not proven, it lends strong support to initiatives seeking to improve hygiene practice. It would however be helpful if the hypothesis were renamed, e.g. as the “microbial exposure” hypothesis, or “microbial deprivation” hypothesis, as proposed for instance by [Bengt] Bjorksten [professor emeritus at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden]. Avoiding the term “hygiene” would help focus attention on determining the true impact of microbes on atopic diseases, while minimising risks of discouraging good hygiene practice.’

 

This broader, societal reading of the “hygiene hypothesis” is seemingly backed up by studies, as, for example, kids are less likely to develop asthma if they grow up on farms. Moreover, if your child lives in a city, he or she is more likely to have a food allergy than kids who reside in the country. This is possibly because of increased exposure to air pollution in cities, and so we can see that it’s not as simple as blaming good hygiene.

Categories: allergies, broader societal, Child, child allergies, food allergies, hygiene, hygiene hypothesis, hygiene practice, hypothesis, Research