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by Susan Dunn
Have you wondered whether you should allow your child
to have a pet or not? Does your family have a history
of allergies? Have you been told by your doctor that
pets aren't a good idea for your children because they
may cause allergies?
Parents have
always been warned that pets can cause allergies in
children. So many families have traditionally sacrificed
the joys and benefits of pet ownership so that their
children wouldn't be susceptible to allergies.
And this is
perfectly understandable. After all, no loving parents
wanted their children to have allergies, so the logical
thing to do was to do without the pets.
But now there's
some encouraging news from the Medical College of Georgia
(MCG). Their recent study about pets and children (published
in the Journal of the American Medical Association)
indicates that having pets may actually help prevent
allergies in your children!
Dr. Dennis R.
Ownby, head of MCG's Department of Allergy and Immunology,
has followed 474 babies from birth to age 7. He found
that children who were exposed to two or more in-door
pets were only half as likely to develop common allergies
as those raised without pets.
"Allergists
have been taught for several generations that cats and
dogs in the house are a bad idea because they increase
the risk of allergic reactions. We know that before
you can become allergic to something, you must be repeatedly
exposed to it."
He and his
staff were just as surprised as everyone else at the
results of their study! "The data simply didn't come
out the way it was supposed to. It was actually the
very opposite of what we expected to discover," said
Ownby.
He believes
that the reason so many children have allergies and
asthma now is because we force them to live too clean
a life. "When children play with dogs and cats", he
says, "they usually get licked. And that lick transfers
lots of Gram-negative bacteria that may change the way
the kid's immune system responds." The "lick" gives
them exposure to higher levels of substances called
"endotoxins," the breakdown toxin from the Gram-negative
bacteria.
According to
the article from the MCG, studies from Switzerland and
Germany are confirming that the children of farmers,
who are regularly exposed to animals, have fewer allergies
than city kids.
You should discuss
it with your physician, but it just may be that getting
a pet or two would help boost your children's allergy
resistance, in addition to all the other benefits they'll
receive from their pets.
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Welcome
to MTatHome's May Newsletter.