Sucking Your Child’s Pacifier Clean May Have Benefits

[Renew Deal]

For years, health officials have told parents not to share utensils with their babies or clean their pacifiers by putting them in their mouths, arguing that the practice spreads harmful germs between parent and child. But new research may turn that thinking on its head.

In a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, scientists report that infants whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to clean them developed fewer allergies than children whose parents typically rinsed or boiled them. They also had lower rates of eczema, fewer signs of asthma and smaller amounts of a type of white blood cell that rises in response to allergies and other disorders.

The findings add to growing evidence that some degree of exposure to germs at an early age benefits children, and that microbial deprivation might backfire, preventing the immune system from developing a tolerance to trivial threats.

The study, carried out in Sweden, could not prove that the pacifiers laden with parents’ saliva were the direct cause of the reduced allergies. The practice may be a marker for parents who are generally more relaxed about shielding their children from dirt and germs, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the research.
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http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/why-dirty-pacifiers-may-be-your-childs-friend

Gross

[mopinko]

1. that last line-

is prolly true. that would be me.
plenty of other immune problems, tho.

[Warpy]

2. It's also a great way to pass along oral herpes

The kid won't have allergies but it'll get cold sores.

Personally, I think a rinse and a wipe is all you need. Most pathogens are destroyed by gut bacteria and the ones that aren't help to build the kid's immune system. Unless the parent is a helicopter nutcase, the kid will be out there eating dirt anyway.

What Mom's saliva does do is provide some antibodies. That's why when we get superficial cuts on our hands, our first impulse is to lick it. It actually works, especially against some varieties of strep.

My own guess is that pacifier boilers are the people who are going nuts with antibacterial sprays and soaps and generally keeping things just a little bit too clean. We were designed to survive in filth. Keeping things antiseptic around kids is counterproductive.