[alnorth]

Originally Posted by Fish

Something I've always suspected. I never had allergies until I moved away from the farm.

Newborns exposed to dirt, dander, germs may have lower allergy, asthma risk

We've had A LOT of recent studies over the last few years confirming this. Being too clean is very bad for children.

In a typical healthy child when the immune system is learning how to protect the body its constantly getting bombarded with new crap doing damage that its never seen before, so when peanut dust or pet dander comes by the immune system goes "pfft, whatever, I have real shit to worry about right now"

In a child that lives in a sterilized world, its not that the immune system gets "bored", its more like the immune system is programmed with the absolute knowledge that THEY WILL find stuff they need to defend against, and if they don't, then that just means they failed to detect it and need to work harder. So the immune system starts overreacting to stupid shit, and they grow up being allergic to peanut butter, cats, pollen, etc.