I've always assumed that the cleaner your home, the less likely you are to have asthma and allergy symptoms. Is that still the t

The overly-sanitized Western world may be why the rates for allergy, asthma, type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis are soaring. Our immune systems aren’t being challenged by disease and dirt early in life and the result is they end up overreacting to small irritants.

When kids grow up with two or more pets, they develop far fewer allergies and kids on farms rarely have asthma. Does that mean we shouldn’t shower or bathe? I hope not. But we can relax a lot more, ease up on the anti-bacterial soap and let our kids play in the dirt and sit on the grass. Why not get in the dirt ourselves? Whether it’s gardening or sports, getting in to it, will do us a world of good. Somewhere along the way, too many of us have lost our primal connection with the natural world. The dirt, the insects, the worms and bacteria that make us strong, connected with the earth beneath our feet.

Even as we wall ourselves off, and think ourselves safe behind our walls of glass, wood and cement and secure with our soaps and sprays, we lose what would make us strong.