Would You Infect Yourself With Worms For Better Health?:
By Peter Smith ,Peter Smith
Jim Lahey, founder of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, fosters an obsession with microorganisms. Yeasts and bacteria give rise to his leavened sourdough breads--and he recently infected himself with intestinal worms to stave off a wheat sensitivity he attributes to working around flour dust. "These worms are meant to be in our bodies as part of human evolution."
Lahey may be taking the experiments further than most, but he is not alone in thinking that a modern, industrialized world may be making us sick because our good, clean standard of living is too easy on the body. Hygiene is a mixed blessing: Washing your hands, drinking clean water, and eating safe, refrigerated foods comes with vast reductions in childhood mortality. Yet, the hygiene hypothesis--an idea first put forward by epidemiologist David Strachan in 1989--suggests that chronic underexposure to germs and pathogens also corresponds with the rise of allergies and chronic inflammatory diseases.
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