How Cats and Cows Protect Farm Children from Asthma #Science #Health #Environment

Milking cow (stock image).

Credit: © Ror / Fotolia

Note:  is there seriously anyone on the planet who would not know what this kid is doing?


It is a known fact that microbes on farms protect children from asthma and allergies. But even non-microbial molecules can have a protective effect: Immunologists from the University of Zurich have shown that a sialic acid found in farm animals is effective against inflammation of lung tissue. This study opens up a wide variety of perspectives for the prevention of allergies.

Science Daily:  How cats and cows protect farm children from asthma

While asthma hasn't been such a big deal in my adult life, it plagued me as a child.  I know some of you have a hell of a time with it and know well the sensation of not being able to get enough air.

Note: my asthma disappeared quickly after leaving Australia while I had been getting adrenalin injections for it as early as eighteen months when I was there.  In the Army, some Dagwood said, "Asthma is incurable."

Those are the kinds of moments in which the temptation is to unload, "Hey, Doctor fucking Kildare, did I not tell you what just happened.  Consider opening your eyes or moving your cracker ass back to Oklahoma."


More and more people suffer from allergies and asthma. In the past decades, these diseases have massively increased in industrialized countries. Today, about 30 percent of children have allergies -- with the exception of farm children. Among farm children, the disease is increasing less dramatically than in the case of their friends who live in the same village, but not on a farm. Microbes that occur in higher amounts and greater diversity on farms protect farm children from allergies and asthma. An environment that is not highly hygienic has a positive effect on the development of the immune system as it learns not to react to harmless materials as is the case with allergies.

- SD

That seems to be counterintuitive relative to the general perception in America particularly where everything must be hypoallergenic for health.  Well, apparently not since the obsessive drive toward an antiseptic environment doesn't seem to have a positive result since the immune system won't develop in the same way.


Not only microbes protect against asthma evidently, but also farm animals: Petting cats and cows and drinking farm milk can also prevent asthma, as the team of researchers headed up by Remo Frei of the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research from the University of Zurich in cooperation with the Center for Allergy Research and Education (CK-CARE) in Davos and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Switzerland in St. Gallen: "Early childhood contact with animals and the consumption of food of animal origin seems to regulate the inflammatory reactions of the immune system," says immunologist Frei. His study shows that a non-microbial substance, a sialic acid, is responsible for this mechanism. This substance is wide spread in vertebrates -- and therefore in many farm animals -- but missing in the human organism: N-Glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc).

- SD

The interested student is invited to review the article but it concludes with the need for more research into the chemicals listed above rather than offering of some type of magic sprayer so city kids can get the same benefit.

However, conceivably it will at some point.