Dirt can be good for children, say scientists

Very true.Our obsession with cleanliness and rushing to Doctor even for small ailments is not healthy.Our system’s defense mechanism gets weakened to fight disease and use of antibiotics help the the disease inducing agents to become immune, they mutate and more violent forms are created for which we need to go in for still heavier dosage of medicine and these medicines more than curing disease creates serious side effects.
Best is to wait for sometime excepting in the case of high fever and allow the system to take care.
Story:
Children should be allowed to get dirty, according to scientists who have found being too clean can impair the skin’s ability to heal.
Normal bacteria living on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt, the US team discovered.
The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses that can cause cuts and grazes to swell, they say.
Their work is published in the online edition of Nature Medicine.
Experts said the findings provided an explanation for the “hygiene hypothesis”, which holds that exposure to germs during early childhood primes the body against allergies.
Many believe our obsession with cleanliness is to blame for the recent boom in allergies in developed countries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8373690.stm