What if I told you that it is possible for your house to be too clean?
The OCD cleaning freaks among you would probably go into denial while the rest of you would give yourselves a high five and talk yourself out of doing any housework for the rest of the week.
Turns out our germ-busting, hand-sanitising, get-rid-of-all-the-nasties cleaning routines might be playing havoc with our families’ immune systems.
Scientists reckon we actually need 99.9% of household germs to prime our immune systems from childhood to adulthood. Exposing kids to a wide variety of household germs is said to help prevent them from developing allergies, eczema and asthma.
Children who have been raised in overly sterile environments tend to have weaker immune systems that make them more at risk when they do encounter germs.
Without exposure to dirt and germs early on in life, immune systems don’t know how to react to everyday invaders like dust and pollen.
Scientists have dubbed it a “hygiene hypothesis” and claim that this weakened immune system sees people at risk of autoimmune disease that can potentially lead to multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and even diabetes.
Researchers at Harvard Medical school studied germ-free mice who were bred in a bubble and kept in sterile cages and were fed sterile food.
They found that the bowels and lungs of the germ-free mice contained extra-large amounts of an immune cell type that’s blamed for asthma and bowel problems.
When these mice developed asthma or bowel conditions, it was more severe than usual.
So should we embrace dirt?
Health experts say it’s important that we maintain good standards of hygiene in our homes, so it’s not a free pass to stop cleaning altogether.
Having good home hygiene helps to avoid infection and prevents the spread of infection to others. We don’t need to be dirt-free or obsessively clean to achieve this. We should always observe good hygiene in the places it matters most, like our kitchens, toilets and bedrooms.
