I have found a most interesting non-fiction book that should satisfy any curious person. It is called "Riddled with Life" and is subtitled "Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are." The author is Marlese Zuk.
This is quite an eclectic work, and touches on many subjects. From time to time, I think I'll post little excerpts because they will undoubtedly strike a chord with some readers and stimulate their curiosity enough to make them go out and read the whole work.
I had the experience this past year of allowing to stay free of charge at my home a 61-year-old woman, the mother of a friend of mine, who turned out to be the most extreme cleanliness freak I have ever met in my life. One thing I discovered about her quickly was that she was allergic to almost everything. She couldn't stand the smell of PineSol, could rake leaves because she had an allergy to them, and generally couldn't do anything that brought her in contact with foreign substances. The list of food she could not eat was immense. And she disliked dogs (I have three) because she was allergic to them, too.
Recently I came across a section of "Riddled with Life" that may have explained her allergies.
It seems that later in life children brought up with a dog in the family are significantly less allergic to various things and have less asthema to a statistically significant degree than those brought up without a dog. The theory scientists have to explain this is that children brought up in hyperclean environments do not have fully developed immune systems. Or to put it another way, we need exposure to a certain amount of dirt in our lives if we are to be able to function normally.
Maybe that little, squirming cocker-poodle my brother and I used to cavort with 75 years ago, though she has long been gone, gave us a legacy of better health than we would have had without her.
And in a related way, a brief aside in "Riddled with Life" also revealedf another inhteresting fact. If you have a dog, you are likely to get licked by your pet. People who think this is just dirty and disgusting miss one or two points about that. First, getting licked by a dog isn't going to give you significant germs unless the dog is rabid. And in fact there is some indication that if a dog licks a wound on you, this may actually help the wound heal. I checked with a nurse about that and she said she had heard it slsewhere, too..
This is quite an eclectic work, and touches on many subjects. From time to time, I think I'll post little excerpts because they will undoubtedly strike a chord with some readers and stimulate their curiosity enough to make them go out and read the whole work.
I had the experience this past year of allowing to stay free of charge at my home a 61-year-old woman, the mother of a friend of mine, who turned out to be the most extreme cleanliness freak I have ever met in my life. One thing I discovered about her quickly was that she was allergic to almost everything. She couldn't stand the smell of PineSol, could rake leaves because she had an allergy to them, and generally couldn't do anything that brought her in contact with foreign substances. The list of food she could not eat was immense. And she disliked dogs (I have three) because she was allergic to them, too.
Recently I came across a section of "Riddled with Life" that may have explained her allergies.
It seems that later in life children brought up with a dog in the family are significantly less allergic to various things and have less asthema to a statistically significant degree than those brought up without a dog. The theory scientists have to explain this is that children brought up in hyperclean environments do not have fully developed immune systems. Or to put it another way, we need exposure to a certain amount of dirt in our lives if we are to be able to function normally.
Maybe that little, squirming cocker-poodle my brother and I used to cavort with 75 years ago, though she has long been gone, gave us a legacy of better health than we would have had without her.
And in a related way, a brief aside in "Riddled with Life" also revealedf another inhteresting fact. If you have a dog, you are likely to get licked by your pet. People who think this is just dirty and disgusting miss one or two points about that. First, getting licked by a dog isn't going to give you significant germs unless the dog is rabid. And in fact there is some indication that if a dog licks a wound on you, this may actually help the wound heal. I checked with a nurse about that and she said she had heard it slsewhere, too..
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