When I was a kid, I picked my nose. Sometimes I even picked my nose while digging potatoes out of the woods behind my house to throw at the neighbors. Afterward I often unloaded whole pockets full of sand into my poor mother's shower. And as much as my mom probably wanted to toss me out to live in the yard like a dirty monkey, it may be why I'm more allergy-free than almost everyone I know.
Why? According to the operating hypothesis employed by most health scientists, allergies may be caused by a lack of natural challenges to the immune system in our excessively clean environments. So might appendicitis, multiple sclerosis and violent outbreaks of Salmonella and E. Coli, all either attacks by our own immune systems or deficient immunities we should have developed by playing in crap as children.
Clearly we can't respond to these threats by allowing kids to bask in their own filth. We'd end up with higher rates of illness, cranky neighbors and probably a social worker on the doorstep.
No, cleanliness in itself is not the problem. Neither is hand-washing or penicillin, per se. Our obsession with hygiene-and the resulting increase in the incidence of allergies-is a symptom of an entirely different problem, one that crosses the borders of disease into child rearing, diet and almost every facet of modern life.
We do not believe in moderation.
The American diet alone is notoriously gluttonous, but we're just as extreme about the things we don't eat. Months after the finding that dietary fat caused weight gain hit the news, the market was glutted with fat-free cookies and chips that turned out to cause a host of other problems. A few years later, carbs went out of style and carb-free menus offering formerly verboten fatty fare popped up in restaurants under "healthy" headings.
Our relationship with medicine is almost as outrageous. Antibiotics cure strep throat, so patients hound their physicians with requests for powerful antibiotics to treat sniffly noses and coughs that are often viral. A related overuse of antibiotics has resulted in the evolution of terrifying antibiotic-resistant strains of staph and tuberculosis.
Americans crave guarantees, antibacterial soap and entire diets made out of antioxidants. We have a habit of figuring that if one of anything is good, a whole bunch of them has to be better. Why else would there be warnings on bottles of Advil not to take more than six in a day?
Of course, this is all a generalization. Not very United States citizen pounds ibuprofen like candy, eats nothing but beef jerky and bathes in Lysol. But even in my own relatively moderate existence I went through a phase where I eliminated almost all fats from my diet. Right now I am probably growing a Fresca-shaped tumor somewhere in my small intestine from my three-a-day habit.
In all our extremism, we seem to forget that, for the most part, we have existed pleasantly alongside dirt and bugs for as long as our species has been alive. While humans were evolving, moderation in health and eating was often the only option because of the scarcity of food and medicinal treatments. Now that most of the dangerous diseases that tormented our forbears, like polio, smallpox and the plague, have all but been eliminated, there's really no reason to pull out the big guns for every little bacterium that strolls along. In fact, strictly adhering to the vagaries of scientific progress has only served to counteract millennia worth of evolutionary advantages, leading to hypersensitive immune systems, obesity and superbugs.
So chill out on the antibacterial wipes already, only take antibiotics if they're absolutely necessary, and for Christ's sake, have a piece of chocolate with your bacon-wrapped-turkey-stuffed chicken breast. Just don't pick your nose and wipe it on me. That's sick.
Jacqui Detwiler is a graduate student in psychology and neuroscience. Her column runs every Friday.
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