How Farm Life can Prevent Allergies

Asthma is a a respiratory condition marked by spasms in the bronchi of the lungs, causing difficulty in breathing. It usually results from an allergic reaction or other forms of hypersensitivity.  This condition is increasing all around the world so much that it can almost be considered an epidemic.

The unlikely cure might be found in farm dust. Children how grew up on dairy farms had a much smaller chance of developing asthma than the average child who did not grow up on a dairy farm.

In order to verify this, researchers from Europe have performed experiments on mice and believe that the reason for this might be bits of bacteria that are found in farm dust. The bacteria cause an inflammation in the lungs of the mice which later protects them from asthma.

By taking mice and exposing them to the dust found around farms the mice were inhaling bacteria found in the dust which resulted in fewer mice having asthma over their lives. This experiment goes against common thinking which states that in order to be healthy we need to avoid bacteria and use antibiotics as often as possible. The study is based on 26 year old idea, that overuse of antiobiotics have removed essential bacteria which helped train our immune system so that it does not overreact to foreign substances.


Pulmonologist Bart Lambrecht and immunologist Hamida Hammad believe that parts of the bacteria are inhaled by small children where a small inflammation in the lungs prevent larger, more severe inflammations from happening in the future when the children are exposed to substances which might cause a life threatening allergic reaction.

To test their theory they collected these parts of bacteria called endotoxins and allowed young mice to inhale them. They found that in fact the mice which were exposed to the endotoxins had less asthma then the mice which were not exposed to the endotoxins. The team went ever further and looked at the genetics of those mice to find that a specific gene found in mice with no asthma called A20 might be responsible for reducing the inflammation in the air passage way.

Other scientists have found that drinking raw milk also reduced asthma in children living on dairy farms and warn against the farm dust being the only possible reason for reduce asthma.

Overall it is a new piece of the puzzle to help with this growing respiratory condition that so many children around the world are developing. So do not go just yet to a farm to breathe in the fresh air hoping to reduce your asthma, but at the same time take a little break from overusing antibacterial products everywhere in your home.

You can find the article here :

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-farm-life-can-prevent-allergies


 Discussion Questions:

1. In their research the scientists state that bacteria are not always bad and can in some cases be a way of training our immune system to work better for the long term.  Can you think of any other situations where in order to perform better, one must be exposed to a little bit of danger in order to prevent more serious problems?

2.  We live in a world where bacteria are our enemies, yet we have thousands of them living in our stomachs. In fact when we eat yogurt or cheese we are eating food that is made by bacteria. When babies initially start interacting with their environment they explore objects by putting them in their mouth. Is there a balance that can be reached between a home that his covered in bacterial killing produces versus a home that is covered in bacteria?