All about the Hygiene Hypothesis

The hygiene hypothesis, and all the practical applications of it like worm therapy, is not really about about cleanliness, it is something of a misnomer. It is more about the changes that we have made to our lifestyles, and to our immediate environment. To the ecosystem our bodies constitute and to our immediate surroundings.

The hygiene hypothesis states that a lack of early childhood exposure to infectious agents and parasites (hence worm therapy) increases susceptibility to allergic diseases by preventing the natural modulation of immune system development by those same infectious organisms and parasites or worms. We and our genetic forbrears were creatures of the soil, and of the organisms it contains. Our immune systems were calibrated and trained by constant and early exposure to a "library" of mostly benign or non-lethal organsims and while we paid a high price in terms of infant mortality the survivors' immune systems were tuned to their environment.

Over millions of years our immune systems evolved to "anticipate" or were prepared for a larger and larger library of potential pathogens. The one eventuality we did not evolve the capability to deal with immunologically was the one we face now: a microbial desert. An environment swept clean of bacteria, viruses and parasites by antibiotics, vaccines, anti-bacterial handwash and toys, sewers, refrigerators and handi-wipes. Scouring our immediate environment and our bodies of microo rganisms is an environmental change that we have wrought in just a few generations, an eyeblink in genetic time.

What the hygiene hypothesis tells us is that the price paid for increased longevity and decreased infant mortality due to modern sanitation, hygiene and antibiotics, etc., is the rise in allergy, atopy and autoimmunity. Your friend or relative with Crohn's or Multiple Sclerosis, or lupus or rheumatoid arthrits, or type I diabetes or asthma, or food allergies and autism, is the unintended consequence of our quest for cleanliness and the benefits it brings.

Proposed by David P. Strachan in an article published in the British Medical Journal, in 1989, the hygiene hypothesis was developed to explain the observation that hay fever and eczema, both allergic diseases, were less common in children from larger families, which had been demonstrated to have been exposed to more infectious agents via siblings.

The Hygiene Hypothesis has been widely investigated and with adaptation has become largely accepted as an important theoretical framework for the study of allergy, atopy and autoimmunity. It has also lead to the development of things like worm therapy and therapies based upon stimulation of the immune system with vaccine like therapies based on lypholized bacteria.

In retrospect, as the research mounts, it is tempting to view the hygiene hypothesis as one of the most important ideas in medicine during the 20th Century. Odd that it should be so poorly known and understood.

Why this site?

It seems to us that the Hygiene Hypothesis is the best available explanation for the rise of autoimmune diseases. Further, we believe that almost all autoimmune diseases will one day be explained by a variation on this idea. Further, that cutting edge experimental therapies derived from this theory, like worm therapy, will one day be widely used.

We aim to aggregate the available information here until the world beats a path to our door making us rich enough to sit on a beach on the money off Google Ads.

That's right, we are just as lazy and unrealistic as you.