LeΓ―f Rot
Day guards in Finland built "forest roads" and changed children's immune systems.
Within 30 days of playing in forest soil and leaf litter, Finnish preschoolers had increased the number of T-cells and much more varied gut bacteria.
In a fascinating experiment, Finnish researchers have recreated the environment on a forest floor on the playgrounds in four urban nurseries.
They covered the playgrounds with forest soil, moss, meadow grass, dwarf heather, blueberries and crowberries and installed planting boxes for annual garden crops.
Childcare workers instructed the preschool-age children to play in the greenery and the soil for an hour and a half a day for a month.
Their gut and skin microbes were analyzed before and after the experiment and compared to children from normal urban nurseries with regular sterile playgrounds.
After just 28 days, the diversity of their gut and skin bacteria increased dramatically, as did their T-cell numbers and other important immune markers in the blood.
It supports the hypothesis of biodiversity and the concept that low biological diversity in the modern living environment can lead to an uneducated immune system and thus increase the incidence of immune-borne diseases.
I seems just common sense. Todayβs mania for sterilising and disinfecting (Iβm not talking about recent measures to inhibit the transmission of Covid19, but the general trend in western nations for decades to shield us from all known germs as much as possible) has left our immune systems unable to built a natural defence mechanism to fight against disease. My father used to maintain it was healthy to let children get grubby playing in the garden and woodlands, and digging in the soilβ¦βhe called it good clean dirtβ.
And he was SO right!
Great to read that someone has got round to proving something that I have believed in for 60 years.
My feelings, exactly.
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Posted by FrostyJimI usually drink coffee while planting seeds?