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 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.

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.