Researchers at Yale & the University of Chicago were faced with a surprising conclusion based on their scientific experimentation on mice. Unlike the common belief that microbes are in fact “bad” & possess a harmful threat to our health, some of these bacteria prove their innocence. Mice, that were exposed to common bacteria in the normal gut flora, were protected against the development of Type I diabetes. Previous research had shown that mice, exposed to killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis, were also protected. So, this means that mice that grow in their natural habitat are better off than the ones raised in the much improved sanitary conditions of the lab.
This comes to support the hypothesis many scientists have lately adopted. They tend to believe in a directly proportional realtionship between a person’s exposure to parasites, bacteria, worms, etc.. within the surrounding evironment and his immunity. The more, the better..that is within limits of course.
This actually makes perfect sense to me. It is really obvious when you see, for example, people living in third world countries with mosquitoes hovering around and considered normal. But when they travel abroad for a while and come back, they get different sorts of allergies & rashes from those previously “harmless” mosquitoes. What parasites and microbes do for you is not all bad. Unfortunately, I had to experience this dilemma.
Source: ScienceDaily
Tags: bacteria, diabetes, flora, immunity, mice, tuberculosis, Yale