The surprising benefits of thumb sucking

Just another example of what we have done to ourselves by being too clean. When I was a child, it was never a discussion about germs - it was a discussion about giving yourself buck teeth. Is that an old wives' tale?

Kids are often urged to stop biting their nails or sucking their thumbs because their fingers are teeming with germs. But new research suggests these “bad” habits could actually reduce children’s risk of developing allergies, reports The Washington Post. The findings support the “hygiene hypothesis” of allergies, which contends that exposure to microbes early in life educates and strengthens the immune system; when kids aren’t exposed to enough germs, that “priming” process doesn’t occur and their immune systems overreact to new substances. Researchers in New Zealand put this theory to the test by monitoring the oral habits of more than 1,000 ­children from birth to adulthood and conducting skin-prick tests to identify those who suffered from allergies. They found that 49 percent of those who weren’t thumb-suckers or nail-biters as kids eventually developed allergies to things like pets, grass, and dust mites. But allergies were found in only 31 percent of those who both bit their fingernails and sucked their thumbs when they were younger, and in 38 percent of those who did one or the other. The study’s author, Malcolm Sears, says that doesn’t mean parents should encourage kids to bite

Taken from the July 29th edition of the Week Magazine.