Rural life may boost allergy resistance
Country dwellers richer in immune-calming bacteria
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340558/title/Rural_life_may_boost_allergy_resistance
I talked about the ‘hygiene hypothesis‘ before, here is more evidence. I am starting to accept that the billion-year co-evolution of multi-cellular organisms and single-celled organisms has been more about mutualism than parasitism. It is generally well accepted that in the case of eukaryotic cells (the type of cells we are made of and as opposed to bacterial cells) at some point in the distant past (like a couple of billion years ago) one bacteria ate another, but wound up living together, and that is the origin of mitochondria (the bits in our cells that provide most of the cell’s energy (and that contain their own genetic information and actually breed inside our cells)). There was almost certainly at least one other time that happened, when chloroplasts were introduced into the plant cell progenitor (plants also have mitochondria, so the chloroplast event had to happen after the mitochondria event). It is becoming clear to me that while our bodies exclude a lot of these organisms from inside the body, having them on the outside (inside the gut, btw, is ‘outside’ from the body’s perspective) in the proper ratio and species is critical for overall health and welfare. I suspect that in just a couple of decades we will get a bacteria shake that we will imbibe to reset our gut-belly-bugs and all sorts of chronic diseases will fall by the wayside. Kinda gross, I know, but which is worse? Having some bugs in your belly you can’t even see or dying slowly from a chronic disease like diabetes (or dying quickly from a heart attack)?
