hygiene hypothesis

Sushma carries her hand sanitizer everywhere. She hyperventilates everytime she finds out that her daughter didn't wash her hand or sanitise after eating, playing,dancing or any other activity where she believes there is a remote chance of the cooties attacking her little one.

Sometimes the little girl gets annoyed and yells at her mother as she finds her 'weird'.

Well! This is the story of every germophobe. Being a germophobe isn't necessarily bad, but having to live with one can get annoying and at times contagious. The girl gets called a 'freak' when she tries to imitate her Mother at school.

The emphasis towards health and hygiene in the western world, impressed and inspired Sushma. She dreaded every trip to India as she believed that the pollution and population were responsible for her daughter catching infections and falling sick. The little girl loved her visits to her grandparents and it sometimes made Sushma guilty that she avoided taking her daughter on regular trips.

People admired her at work as she cleaned her desk each day with disinfectant and wiped pens and other stationary regularly often drying out the gloves and scrubs she used to disinfect everything from her mouse to the oven buttons in the cafeteria. But back home her husband and daughter usually joked about her obsession and it didn't help that her daughter often got infected with one allergy or the other!

When Sushma realised that there must be something wrong and consulted doctors, they informed her about hygiene hypothesis. Experts believe that due to obsessions with cleanliness, bodies no longer need to destroy germs, resulting in an immune system less capable of warding infection.The logic being that the immune system is work in progress and develops during the course of one's growing years. In the case of a child, if his/her immune system isn't challenged, it will not develop into a successful germ fighting force, or in worse cases, may attack itself causing severe complications in the said child.

She also found out that germs need specific environments to cause harm.The right factors need to line up - enough germs on the finger need to be transmitted to the nose for instance. For people with compromised immune systems, everyday germs can become a threat.

Exercising caution does keep us healthy, however, not letting ones immune system fight is a different matter all together. Sushma felt a certain peace descend over her. She let her daughter pop a candy into her mouth from the vending machine in the hospital and didn't worry about the germs on the counter, the buttons and so on. She felt reassured that she was letting her daughters immune system work.