i came across this when i was watching the discovery channel a few years ago and then i totally forgot about it.
untill a few days back i met a new friend who were doing the diamond water business and she was talking about how good is it to prevent diseases, and all those good stuffs.
while she was explaining it to me, the hygiene hypothesis pops back in my mind.

so, are we overdoing hygiene?

i mean we need to be hygienic up to a certain point like boiling the water b4 drinking, sterilizing scalpels b4 operation but if we like sterilize everything in our life and then 1 day if we come into contact with just a little germs we might fall very ill because our body is so used to a sterile environment.

because of this, our body might react to non harmful substance or pathogens. this is more commonly known as an allergic reaction.
allergic reactions arent common in developing nations but are very very common in developed and industrialized nations.

The Hygiene Hypothesis

In medicine, the hygiene hypothesis states that a lack of early childhood exposure to infectious agents, symbiotic microorganisms (e.g. gut flora or probiotics), and parasites increases susceptibility to allergic diseases by modulating immune system development.

First proposed by David P. Strachan in an article published in the British Medical Journal (now the BMJ), in 1989, the hygiene hypothesis was developed to explain the observation that hay fever and eczema, both allergic diseases, were less common in children from larger families, which were presumably exposed to more infectious agents through their siblings, than in children from families with only one child. The hygiene hypothesis has been extensively investigated by immunologists and epidemiologists and has become an important theoretical framework for the study of allergic disorders. It is used to explain the increase in allergic diseases that has been seen since industrialization, and the higher incidence of allergic diseases in more developed countries. The hygiene hypothesis has now expanded to include exposure to symbiotic bacteria and parasites as important modulators of immune system development, along with infectious agents.

further reading

so wat do you guys think?

are those products that are supposed to make us healthier in the market today might actually backfire and make us weaker in the long run?

Yes, this is in fact very true. Can be seen in this urban world. Last time my dad used to tell me that when he was young, he used to play in the drains, swim in the stream, catch frogs, play in the field, run bare footed everywhere in the street, drink pipe water etc etc. All in which is perceived unhygienic in this urban society.

I can now see urban parents are over concerned over whether food that they feed their children is sterilize enough, diamond water system in their homes...cannot play bare footed in the field, hygiene of their children is watched closely by their parents.

When children are brought up in such an environment, they will be more vulnerable to harmless disease later on in their lives. For eg. H1N1 fatality rate is low, but yet few percentage of the society die of this disease. Urban society immune system is weakened by its own practice.

In fact evolution or "natural selection" is slowed down by human beings. Natural selection acts by eliminating population that is weak, those that survived are strong population with high resistance and will reproduce to replace those that are dead. But human disturbed this phenomenon by producing medicine, built up facility, laws in which the weak are protected. In short, the natural selection does not take its natural course. The weak still survive and breed in this society and the gene pool still contains those weak individuals....

It's one thing to be clean, and another to be overprotective.

I believe the latter will make human's weaker in the long run.

Yes and no.

Yes because our bodies need some exposure to these organisms to build immunity.

No because u cannot compare with yr dad's younger days because the organisms have mutated/evolved to stonger and deadlier stuff so u have to take precaution to that. The drains that yr dad played b4 are even more dirtier now...do go to the drain n c if u wanna play in it...our factories are producing much more waste then before as well as deadly added chemicals never seen before back 20 years ago...

IMHO, yes. coz even if those factories, drains etc are dirtier than our father's, grandfather's time.. without medicine and such, in the short run people may die. But I believe in the long run we would build the tolerance against the disease/bacteria. Generally, I don't believe in manmade things. Things would be different and life would be harder, but I would prefer it that way.

Indeed, very true. In fact, human themselves are making this life more and more complicated that sooner or later we are destroying ourselves with all the things we created.

this would inadvertantly renders the full capacity our immune system can function. our system is adaptive and ever evolving to fit our surrounding condition and our consumption. best leave it to work its own course.

of course, that doesnt mean drinking chlorox to be immuned to it.

This kind of reminds me of H1N1...do you think H1N1 can really be stopped by washing your hands and wearing mask?
I wonder if flu/fever/sore throat can be cured with just washing your hands regularly...lets give free supply of dettols to every household and tell doctors to not bother working?
What do you think? *just pondering...don't kill me*

yes indeed.
even me myself if i have sore throat or flu in normal times when there are no h1n1, i'd just let it go away by itself which they normally do.
but of course if it continues for 3 or 4 days with no signs of improvement, i need to see a doctor.
but that had never happened to me b4 unless i really need to be in excellent health in a day or two.
i find myself less prone to sickness than my frens even though i dont practice hand washing b4 eating.
the last time i'd seen a doctor was like 2 or 3 years back and thats because i have exams going on and i cant afford to screw it up.

regarding this topic, yes and no will be my answer as well.

i agree the saying that nowadays those kids are being watched closely (can be said as tightly) by their parents - strict hygiene code. this is bad as the kids will develop a weaker immune system when they are exposed to those harmful environment.

but the problem is that we can't compare nowadays with the era of our old generation. nowadays, the population getting really really bad and out of control. everywhere is extremely polluted which even do harm to those older generation that used to play in so-called-dirty-nowadays environment.

I read in some post that the bacteria/viruses nowadays have evolved from the past, so they are stronger, so we cannot play in rivers anymore, so we enclose ourselves in our clean little bathtubs, so.. so.. so..

why not let your kids out into the rivers and let their own immune system "evolve" too? o.O

its common sense not to play in heavily polluted rivers and drink clean water.
but society nowadays are so hooked on sterile environment.
even playing in our own backyard needs sterilization (think dettol commercial)
i think normal tap water is enough to clean our hands from dirts and stuffs.
unless you're playing in an environment which requires HAZMAT suits and thats a different story.

as for clean water i believe normal jusco or tesco carbon filtration is enough to filter out those sediments and the chlorine in the tap water is more than enough to kill any microbes.
if still in doubt, we can always boil the water just to make sure.
we dont really need those ultra sterile water filtration systems to handle our drinking waters at home.