Harvard Health says that avoiding infection is part of strengthening one’s immune system
I was intrigued so looked at the link. It has heading “Healthy ways to strengthen your immune system” and says in one bullet point under this “Take steps to avoid infection, such as washing your hands frequently and cooking meats thoroughly”, but doesn’t say anything about why this would help strengthen the immune system (it just links to a page with steps for reducing infection risk). A possible alternative interpretation is that this is meant as advice for not getting sick rather than making the immune system more effective, and this seems more likely to me. But it’s not clear.
Agreed—I wished I could learn more. In any case, I feel really uncertain about the hygiene hypothesis. Given that the advice to “collect bugs” for increased immunity is so widespread and even propagated by doctors it baffles me that it is so hard to find evidence for this advice. The advice also has serious bearing on people’s well-being which is another reason that this claim should be investigated much more closely.
I was intrigued so looked at the link. It has heading “Healthy ways to strengthen your immune system” and says in one bullet point under this “Take steps to avoid infection, such as washing your hands frequently and cooking meats thoroughly”, but doesn’t say anything about why this would help strengthen the immune system (it just links to a page with steps for reducing infection risk). A possible alternative interpretation is that this is meant as advice for not getting sick rather than making the immune system more effective, and this seems more likely to me. But it’s not clear.
Agreed—I wished I could learn more. In any case, I feel really uncertain about the hygiene hypothesis. Given that the advice to “collect bugs” for increased immunity is so widespread and even propagated by doctors it baffles me that it is so hard to find evidence for this advice. The advice also has serious bearing on people’s well-being which is another reason that this claim should be investigated much more closely.