{"id":4351,"date":"2024-04-17T14:50:39","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T14:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=4351"},"modified":"2024-04-17T15:30:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T15:30:45","slug":"the-health-benefits-of-getting-dirty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=4351","title":{"rendered":"The Health Benefits of Getting Dirty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Scientists have long known that a little dirt can be good for you. Research has suggested that people who grow up on farms, for instance, have lower rates of Crohn\u2019s disease<\/a>, asthma<\/a> and allergies<\/a>, likely because of their exposure to a diverse array of microbes.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, scientists even found a soil-dwelling bacterium, called Mycobacterium vaccae,<\/em> that has an anti-inflammatory effect<\/a> on our brains, possibly both lowering stress<\/a> and improving our immune response<\/a> to it.<\/p>\n

More recently, there\u2019s been an explosion of interest in the human microbiome<\/a> \u2014 with people taking probiotics<\/a>, seeking food with live cultures and \u201crewilding<\/a>\u201d their microflora. At the same time, scientists have been discovering how broad a role dirt microbes can play in our mental and physical health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When we\u2019re touching soil or even just out in nature, \u201cwe\u2019re breathing in a tremendous amount of microbial diversity,\u201d said Christopher A. Lowry, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A recent Finnish experiment<\/a> found that children attending urban day cares where a native \u201cforest floor\u201d had been planted had both a stronger immune system and a healthier microbiome than those attending day cares with gravel yards \u2014 and continued to have<\/a> beneficial gut and skin bacteria two years later.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just good for kids; adults can also benefit from exposure to soil-dwelling microbes, Dr. Lowry said. So this spring, make a little time to go outside and get grimy.<\/p>\n

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Scientists have long known that a little dirt can be good for you. Research has suggested that people who grow up on farms, for instance, have lower rates of Crohn\u2019s disease, asthma and allergies, likely because of their exposure to a diverse array of microbes.In the 1970s, scientists even found a soil-dwelling bacterium, called Mycobacterium vaccae, that has an anti-inflammatory effect on our brains, possibly both lowering stress and improving our immune response to it.More recently, there\u2019s been an explosion of interest in the human microbiome \u2014 with people taking probiotics, seeking food with live cultures and \u201crewilding\u201d their microflora. At the same time, scientists have been discovering how broad a role dirt microbes can play in our mental and physical health.When we\u2019re touching soil or even just out in nature, \u201cwe\u2019re breathing in a tremendous amount of microbial diversity,\u201d said Christopher A. Lowry, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder.A recent Finnish experiment found that children attending urban day cares where a native \u201cforest floor\u201d had been planted had both a stronger immune system and a healthier microbiome than those attending day cares with gravel yards \u2014 and continued to have beneficial gut and skin bacteria two years later.It\u2019s not just good for kids; adults can also benefit from exposure to soil-dwelling microbes, Dr. Lowry said. So this spring, make a little time to go outside and get grimy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4353,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4354,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4351\/revisions\/4354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}