Can medicine and excessive hygiene make us more prone to serious illness?!
Question: Can medicine and excessive hygiene make us more prone to serious illness?
I do not have a great understanding of how the body fights off illnesses, but I was under the assumption that the more a body fought an illness the better prepared it was to handle it the next time.
By reducing the number of times we get sick, are we really just increasing the sevarity when it does happen?
Answers: Can medicine and excessive hygiene make us more prone to serious illness?
I do not have a great understanding of how the body fights off illnesses, but I was under the assumption that the more a body fought an illness the better prepared it was to handle it the next time.
By reducing the number of times we get sick, are we really just increasing the sevarity when it does happen?
Yes, some drs feel that the increase in allergies especially has come from us being too clean. I'm not talking about using regular soap to wash your hands, mind you--that's a very good thing! I mean all the antibacterial soap, cleansers and wipes. Overuse of antibiotics is at fault, as well. Inflammatory bowel disease (which I have along with allergies and is why I've read about this), asthma, multiple sclorosis, and other autoimmune diseases are also thought by some to be from hyper-cleanliness. The immune system hasn't had enough to work on normally, the thinking goes, so it doesn't know how to work right. None of this has been proven but drs are studying it.
Hygiene is always a good thing to prevent disease. ALWAYS.
The overuse of antibiotics in our food supply is what's behind the severity of some of the illnesses we come in contact with. The germs have to evolve into super-strains to defeat the broad spectrum antibiotics - and that leaves an infectious agent for which there is no antibiotic to control an infection.
You are correct. The more medicine (Anti biotics) you take the more resistant the germs get. If you take antibiotics for a long time your body will actually become more prone to diseases.
Yes this is why we dont want to take antibiotics all the time to fight off any infection. And there is some bacteria on your body that you need which is why excessive hygiene can be to you disadvatage.
When the body fights off an infection, it creates antibodies that "remember" that bacteria/virus. This is how vaccines work. You are given an attenuated virus that the body can build up resistance to, without making you sick. You question can work both ways though, by maintaining your hygeine you are less likley to encounter pathogens that would make you sick. But, by getting sick, you are ensuring that you won't get sick from that pathogen again. (Is the glass half-empty or half-full?)