Hard to believe isn’t it??

[charzysbebe]

I know for some of you, (as well as myself) we can remember back in the "non-emet" days (or milder emet) when we never even thought about washing our hands all the time. Stranger than that...how often did we get sick from NOT washing our hands frequently?


What about when...yeah, seeing/hearing someone vomit was nasty, but we went on with our days? We never obsessed.


What about when we never dissected our food, and NEVER got food poisoning?


Or just imagine how long we went with no stomach bugs during our "non-emet" times, but yet we never took precautions whatsoever to preventing it. (heck, we even remember hanging around some friends that were sick, and it never phased us, nor did we get sick)


*SIGH*


I have always had anxiety about vomit since I was 4-5 years old...but never did it consume my life. I guess I just wished I had that same frame of mind. I mean, why can't I act that way now? Isurvived then! It is hard to believe isn't it? I just can't imagine being that way again. [img]smileys/smilies_12.gif[/img]


Does anyone else have any memories of when germs, andvomit never phased them? What were those memories?


Charlotte

[yenn]

I don't really have any specific memories, because I guess until it becomes a problem you don't see any need to concentrate on it. However I remeber being a kid who would eat a sweet she'd dropped on the floor, usually not wash her hands after the bathroom (appalling I know!) and certainly not wash her hands before eating. Not that I'd like to go back to the days of eating food off the floor and so on, but I know there are people who use this site who say they don't feel the need to wash their hands before touching food. I envy that.


My stepmum and mum both have used a phrase that the dirtiest kids in the neighbourhood were the ones who got ill the least and that eating the odd bit of dirt does you good!!

[tcsarah]

I don't have memories of before the emet started as I've been terrified as far back as I can remember! What I can say though is it works the other way, that is, I used to be a lot worse with my emet thanI am now, so can look back and think what a horrible time I went through and breathe a sigh of relief I am no longer quite that bad!


Regards the hygiene thing, I do think you can go overboard on that and cause more harm than good. Too sterile an atmosphere will not help build your body's defense system up as well as being exposed to a few germs and dirt! On that matter this following article is interesting:
<H1>Hygiene Hypothesis: Are We Too "Clean" for Our Own Good?


</H1>


Increased hygiene and a lack of exposure to various microorganisms may be affecting the immune systems of many populations - particularly in highly developed countries like the US - to the degree that individuals are losing their bodily ability to fight off certain diseases.


That's the essence of the "hygiene hypothesis," a fairly new school of thought that argues that rising incidence of asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and perhaps several other diseases may be, at least in part, the result of lifestyle and environmental changes that have made us too "clean" for our own good.


"Medicine has a lot of history behind it related to why certain diseases are so widespread and certain diseases are not widespread," said Subra Kugathasan, MD, Medical College of Wisconsin Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Gastroenterology), who has made a study of developments in hygiene hypothesis research.


"The immune system is there for a reason, said Dr. Kugathasan. "It's there to recognize 'the bad guys.' The immune system allows your body to kill those bad guys and allows you to survive. In order to harden the immune system, the immune system requests some kind of stimuli all the time."


"The hygiene hypothesis suggests that the more hygienic one becomes, the more susceptible one is to various autoimmune diseases. The autoimmune diseases, the diseases that result from all the activation of your immune system, are increasing. The hygiene hypothesis - and we don't yet have a proof of it - acknowledges that the maturation of the immune system needs some kind of hardening, some kind of resistance. Put another way, you cannot really build up good muscles without doing exercise."


From Pet Dander to Pig Worms
The common belief that has driven medicine, as well as public perception and hygiene practices, is that when we get sick it is because of something we ate, or inhaled, or were exposed to in other ways. The hygiene hypothesis points in a different direction, proposing that in many diseases it is a lack of exposure to the "bad guys" that causes harm.


While the evidence was by no means clear-cut, one study indicated that in some cases contact with certain pet dander in the home actually decreases a child's risk of wheezing from asthma later in life. Other studies show that children who lived on farms when they were very young have reduced incidence of asthma, which has led several researchers to conclude that organisms in cattle dust and manure may be the stimuli that their immune systems needed to fight off asthma.


In another study, conducted by University of Iowa Division of Gastroenterology director Dr. Joel Weinstock, intestinal worms were shown to have a very dramatic effect on mice in offering protection from inflammatory bowel disease. This was followed up using whipworms from pigs, Trichura suis, in a small number of humans. The worms were selected because they are "safe," as many pig farmers come in contact with them every day, they do not enter the human bloodstream, and they cannot live in the human intestine for more than a week.


All of the six patients who were given the worm treatment for their bowel disease eventually went from chronic illness to complete remission with no diarrhea, no abdominal pain a