I was intrigued to see this headline on the front page, March 20,USA Today--this is an excerpt. Go to the link provided to read the entire article USA Today article
HEADLINE:
To head off allergies, expose your kids to pets and dirt early. Really.
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Here's the conventional wisdom: Pets promote allergy, kids shouldn't eat peanuts until they're at least 3, and intestinal worms are nothing more than an icky reminder of life before flush toilets.

Here's the new wisdom: Early exposure to pets, peanuts and intestinal worms might actually be good for you, because they program the developing immune system to know the difference between real threats, such as germs, and Aunt Millie's cat. (Graphic: Short-circuiting a cat allergy)

Evidence to support this view has been mounting for more than a decade. But now, for the first time, researchers are beginning to test remedies based on these theories in patients. Other doctors are trying to make use of novel approaches to retrain the immune system once it's too late and allergies set in.

"What we've learned is that it may, in fact, be important to be exposed early on to a sufficient quantity of allergy-causing substances to train the immune system that they are not a threat," says Andy Saxon of the University of California-Los Angeles. "And, in people who already have allergies, we see for the first time where the problems lie, and we have new opportunities to tweak the system."

Scientists base this radical new thinking about human allergies on a deeper understanding of how the immune system works. They have begun to exploit fresh insights to attack allergies and other immune diseases in unexpected ways. No longer content just to treat allergy symptoms, they hope to outwit the immune system and stop allergic responses before they start.

"When you're born, Day Zero, your immune system is like a new computer. It's not programmed. You have to add software," says Joel Weinstock of Tufts New England Medical Center. "Between the ages of zero and 12, you're learning to read, you're learning to write, and your immune system is learning to react to things. Part of that is learning to limit reactivity."

If the new approaches work, millions might benefit. More than 50 million people have allergic diseases, which are the sixth-leading cause of chronic illness in the USA, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), costing the health system $18 billion a year.

Asthma alone accounts for 500,000 hospitalizations a year, including 2 million admissions to the emergency room, says a study in the May 2005 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Since 1980, adult asthma cases have risen by 75% and childhood asthma by 160%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. (Related: Asthmatic kids under a cloud)...

What about urban life is triggering a rash of allergies and autoimmune diseases? It's a good question, and not an easy one to answer. The immune system isn't palpable as are the heart and lungs; you can't listen to it or feel its pulse. Yet the immune system is our most sensitive link to the environment, on alert for threats of all kinds, most of the time running in the background like computer anti-virus software.

To accelerate the research, the National Institutes of Health and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in 1999 set up a seven-year, $144 million international consortium called the Immune Tolerance Network, says Marshall Plaut of NIAID. Already, research is turning up surprising results.

Dennis Ownby of the Medical College of Georgia followed 474 infants in the Detroit area from birth to age 7, hoping to identify clues about why some would pick up allergies and others would not. Ownby, then at Henry Ford Hospital, says he was unprepared for what he found.

Ownby's team compared 184 children who were exposed to two or more dogs or cats in their first year of life with 220 who didn't have pets. To their surprise, the scientists found that children raised with pets were 45% less likely to test positive for allergies than other kids. The study appeared in the Aug. 28, 2002 Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We've been taught for at least a couple of decades that early exposure to an allergen increases the risk of becoming allergic later in life," Ownby says. "So when we first examined our data, we were very afraid that something had gone wrong. It's the opposite of what we would have predicted."

The challenge now, Ownby says, is to figure out what's happening. One possible explanation is that dogs and cats shed a substance called endotoxin, from bacteria. A study by Andy Liu of National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver reported in 2000 that infants with the most endotoxin exposure were the least likely to have allergies, indicating that what researchers call the Pigpen Effect, the invisible cloud of dust and dirt surrounding us all, might not be a bad thing.

Or consider the peanut paradox. In the past 10 years, peanut allergies have doubled in the USA, United Kingdom and other countries that advise against exposing unborn children to peanuts (through their mothers' diet) and during infancy, Imperial College's Lack says. He believes children become allergic to peanuts not by eating them but by coming into contact with peanut oil in their mothers' skin lotions, according to a study published in the March 2003 New England Journal of Medicine. Studies of rodents suggest eating peanuts conditions the immune system to tolerate them....

Please go to the link provided above to read the entire article.

Peanut oil in skin lotion? Who knew? Interesting, thinking back to my early years; I grew up with a long fur cat, and a brother who at 2 yrs old used to regularly eat red clay dirt and roll marshmallows in the sand box and then eat them. Really! I often wonder if people have been too programmed to reach for the anti-bacterial cleaning products and live artificially clean lives--and damaging the immune system? What do you think?

I skimmed the article, but still have an opinion.

"To head off allergies, expose your kids to pets and dirt early. Really."

That is a theory I guess. Could allergies be partly genetic? For example I grew up with cats and never got asthma or other allergies. I would imagine people over-exposing their kids to stuff to prevent allergies. What happened to moderation? My younger siblings did not grow up with cats, but with constant exposure to dirt from their father's job. I believe that is what caused their asthma. After I grew up I would kiss my cats, but hold my breath when I did it because I felt breathing in their dander would make me allergic. I know there can be several factors that contribute to allergies including weak immune system, but then you have to find out what caused the weak immune system. About the peanut oil, that is why reading labels and correct labeling is important. I heard somewhere that alcohol kills good bacteria along with the bad so it could be that the anti-bacterial things also kill good bacteria that leaves your skin defenseless. I'm so sick of all the lying and lack of research just to make a profit. I'm glad I have access to all the new information that's meant to educate and warn us.