Many studies, including this new international report, suggest that farm life helps ward off allergies and promotes the “hygiene hypothesis.” As an old farm kid, I’m in agreement, but we need to notice words such as “indicate,” “suggest,” and “possible” in the studies. They usually don’t address cause and effect. And they don’t include another possible ingredient in the mix—the fact that part of farm kids’ healthiness came from a free-range mode. We had room to move, in the open air, away from tech devices… and we had fun (see below).
July 2016: Germs, Nail Biting, and Thumb Sucking
2016: Let 'Em Play
A British study notes that the time that children have for exploratory, hands-on play--the kind where they go out and get dirty--is worryingly on the decline and that as a result, today’s children risk losing out on learning essential skills that will set them up for the future.
Farm Kids Build Immunity--Dirt, Fresh Air, and Fun
Research suggests that farm kids have fewer allergies than city kids do—and the hygiene hypothesis might demonstrate
why. According to some experts, we’re
too clean nowadays. Our immune systems protect us by learning how to fight
bacteria and other invaders. We need to “get down and dirty.”
I’m a bit skeptical of this theory, but
because of my upbringing, I want to believe it. Raised on a Midwest farm a long
time ago—in a galaxy far, far away—my brothers and I were the perfect study
group for the “unhygienic theory.”
About the time JFK was asking the country to
ask not, we were exposing ourselves to just about any germ that had ever heard
of central Iowa. During summer—before we
were old enough to do much farm work—mom would open the screen door after
breakfast, letting us out and a few flies in. Dad and his brother ran the
traditional corn, soybeans, pigs, and cattle farm, but in reality, it was a 400-acre
magic kingdom for my brothers, cousins, and me.
The creeks, barns, pastures, and groves
provided the types of playgrounds no modern designer could match. And even
though we never thought of it, these places must have been crawling with enough
germs to make a bacteriologist drool.
During a typical day, we might crawl through
poison ivy, build dams in murky stream water, and run through clouds of ragweed
pollen. Our kid quests would take us under rusty barbed wire fences, through
tick infested groves, and across pastures laden with fresh cow pies hidden in
the grass. By lunchtime, one of the gang
had been stung by a bee, stabbed by a fish hook, or hit in the back with a mud
pie.
We didn’t call it locavore food back then,
but the hearty noon meal gave us a few minutes to pick cockleburs out of our
socks and flick a few garden peas at a brother when the folks weren’t looking.
For their part, Mom and Dad would take a head count, tell us to be safe, and
then release us hounds again after the 12:30 cartoon show was over.
We’d had the usual school vaccinations, and
in those days, the folks might “cleanse us” with deworming medicine or take us
in for a tetanus booster shot if we stepped on something nasty in the
creek. By the time we returned to the
house each summer day, Mom could shake the dust off our overalls, but we had
spent the hours as host organisms in a rural petri dish, so I imagine a half
billion or so germs stayed attached.
After supper, we slid out into the yard where
we played ball or set up miniature farms in the dirt. The barn cats scratched around with us, and
my brothers occasionally shared their tootsie roll pops with our dog, Smoky. By
the time the mosquitoes let up and the lightning bugs started flashing low
along the grass, we knew it was time to go in.
I don’t know if we farm kids ended up
with fewer allergies and illness, but if having fun is a way to immunize
yourself from disease, then we had a heavy dose of some powerful medicine. by
dan gogerty (photo from corbisimages.com)
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