Okay, I’m with you on everything but the worms
Bookworm on Mar 20 2006 at 6:15 pm | Filed under: Health
Shortly after my first child was born, I heard that the best house for raising a healthy child is one that is fairly well-organized, and slightly dirty. “I can do that,” I thought. I mean, that’s how my house has always been. I grew up in the immaculate house of someone still responding to years in a Japanese concentration camp, and I’ve spent my life as an adult feeling vaguely guilty therefore about the slight velvet of dust on my furniture, the dishes left overnight in my sink, and the clean laundry that somehow never gets folded. I also am fairly well-organized, despite the superficial appearance of chaos. I can get my hands on anything in my house in a matter of minutes which, to my mind, is the sign of an organized environment.
I’ve also been one of those mothers who believes in my kids getting sick. As far as I’m concerned, every cold they had at two or three years, while inconvenient to me, was a cold they wouldn’t have at seven or eight years, when school work and sports commitments make it even more inconvenient to be sick. I was therefore grateful to those who sent their kids to school with the snuffles, and I returned the favor, by sending my snuffling kids to school as well.
So, it was with some feeling of vindication that I read the following:
Here’s the conventional wisdom: Pets promote allergy, kids shouldn’t eat peanuts until they’re at least 3, and intestinal worms are nothing more than an icky reminder of life before flush toilets.
Here’s the new wisdom: Early exposure to pets, peanuts and intestinal worms might actually be good for you, because they program the developing immune system to know the difference between real threats, such as germs, and Aunt Millie’s cat.
So, as I said, I’m with that program, although I have my doubts about the worms. We just dewormed the new dog, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am not to have the visceral feeling of revulsion every time I looked at her. It just freaked me to think that she was shedding worm eggs. To have her dewormed — and to assume that my kids remain unwormed — is a great comfort to me.
Talking to Technorati: Allergies, Dirt, Organization, Worms, Parasites
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6 Responses to “Okay, I’m with you on everything but the worms”
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A little relaxation in a parent can go a long ways……if a baby’s source of nourishment for the first six months is breast milk, one needn’t spend a lot of time worrying about food allergies. As to pets, dirt, worms, and eating food off the floor, Let the kids be kids!
As our civilization grows more decadent, more civilized, and more sterile, methods to maintain our “vitality” and our vigorous outlook on life is a challenge.
We don’t want to become those spindly gray aliens we always see on tv, where they can’t lift a 10 pound dumbell… except with their mind that is.
I always believed in versatility and adaptability. So, yes, lifting stuff with your telekinetic hyper-evolved through pristine sterile conditioned, mind, is a good thing. But so is ultra-dense bones, computer implants, and cyborg upgraded muscles and organs.
Nature has designed us a certain way. And now we shouldn’t accede to Nature’s designs ALL the time, we do have to recognize when best to do it nature’s way and when best to tell nature off.
Because our technology is not at the level, that we can exist independent of nature. We are not immortal, we can’t be resurrected, we can’t recombine our DNA and repair it for forever youth, and other various things we can’t do.
So it is best to try and find comparative advantage that can be acquired when a person is a child, and is growing up through a stage that they will never encounter again. A stage where their muscles and mental capacities are at their greatest potential, and whatever experiences they witness, will shape their future being.
For example. If you train a 10 year old in calisthenics, body weight exercises, like the ones that the Marine Corps uses and Combat Conditioning uses, then that 10 year old will grow up to 21, and have superior bone density. Superior muscle density, superior endurance, superior flexibility, and superior strength.
They will be, Olympic level and far above the average.
A man who had not undergone the same training at 10 years old, can’t compete on an equal level. Even at the same age and if he tried to catch up.
The body’s “natural defenses” are more geared at neutralizing microbial threats, like bacteria and viruses, that can be flushed out through the kidneys or expelled through skin pustules. Against multicellular parasites, like worms, the only defense it has is to form cysts, a process that most parasites actually take advantage of as part of their life cycle. Such cysts not only weaken the body structure, but can serve as lifelong sources of chronic re-infection.
I’m with ya on the worms. That’s way more casual than would work for me.
Well, I know it’s counter-intuitive, but there is growing evidence that intestinal worms act to influence our immune systems. Here’s a link suggesting that asthma can be significantly (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18725164.200.html) moderated by the presence of hookworms in the gut. My son found that there is a study of the effect of a different kind of parasitic worm on inflammatory bowel disease, including ulcerative colitis.
This is not to suggest that you refrain from worming your pets. However, a case of Ascaris isn’t going to hurt anyone if it’s diagnosed and treated in any reasonable period of time. It’s an aesthetic problem more than a health problem.
I think you just need to lay off the anti-bacteria when you’re young. It tends to kill off a lot of the good bacteria in your intestines. Now I don’t know what worms have to do with good bacteria in your intestines, I do know that there may be unintended consequences in the future from young children taking broad spectrum anti-bacteria tablets all the time.