When it comes to family wellness, do you follow the hygiene hypothesis? If you do, you may be guarding your baby’s wellbeing against asthma and eczema. This is according to researchers at the University of Gothenburg, who say that parents who “clean” their baby’s dummy with their mouth improve their baby’s health with regards to these conditions. At 18 months, babies who had come into repeated contact with their parents’ saliva were 12% less likely to have asthma and 37% less likely to develop eczema.
You may have been advised to soak your baby’s dummy in equal parts white vinegar and water, and, each time it hits the floor, to wash it in hot, soapy water. However, the “hygiene hypothesis,” posits that when kids are overly sterilised, they never learn how to fight off pathogens. Because the bacteria you pass on to your children, whether through sucking their dummy or kissing, are basically harmless, you may afford your children increased immunity, at least temporarily, from allergic diseases. Therefore, the study “Pacifier Cleaning Practices and Risk of Allergy Development”, which was published in the journal Paediatrics, sought to see who was right.
The researchers specifically targeted families in which allergic disease was prevalent, and, every six months, interviewed the new parents of 184 infants about their pacifier cleaning processes. The Swedish parents were also asked to keep journals tracking their behaviour, and the team of investigators collected the infants’ saliva in order to analyse their oral microbes. The babies were tested for an array of allergies at 18 and 36 months.
The results of the study revealed that the 18-month-olds of parents who sucked dummies to clean them were 12% less likely to have asthma, 37% less likely to have eczema, compared to children whose parents rinsed or boiled their dummies. Moreover, the children of “saliva parents” appeared less likely to be sensitive to airborne and food allergens. However, when the infants were all tested again at 36 months, there were no longer any significant differences in terms of asthma or allergen sensitivity. Yet, there was still a distinction in eczema susceptibly, with the children of parents who sucked dummies being 51% less likely to have eczema.
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