How Mud Boosts Your Immune System
October 15th, 2022Via: BBC:
Children love getting dirty. They are drawn to puddles like muddy magnets, with no regard for footwear or the colour of their clothing. But getting mucky could have a powerful effect on their wellbeing, too.
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Instead, it is the non-infectious organisms that are now thought to be key – rather than the ones that actually make our children sick. These “old friends” have been around for much of our evolutionary history. They are mostly harmless, and train the immune system to moderate its activity, rather than overreacting to any potential invader.
Importantly, our bodies meet these old friends whenever we spend time in nature. With increased urbanisation, and reduced outdoor play, many children now lack that exposure – meaning that their immune systems are more sensitive to any threat, and more likely to go into overdrive.
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People who grow up on farms are generally less likely to develop asthma, allergies, or auto-immune disorders like Crohn’s disease – thanks, apparently, to their childhood exposure to a more diverse range of organisms in the rural environment that had encouraged more effective regulation of the immune system.
Much of the healthy stimulation, afforded by these bugs, is thought to come through the digestive system – it is now well known that friendly microbes in the gut can improve our health in multiple ways. But they may also act on and through our skin, according to Michele Antonelli, a doctor from Reggio Emilia, Italy, who has researched the ways that mud therapies can influence health.
