Don't ask your doctor for antibiotics for every little illness - save these for when you really need them. And another uncomfortable truth is that using too many disinfectants and antiseptics around the house can actually be dangerous for you..19). But were we constantly sick in that flat? No. The truth is that the human immune system does a pretty good job of keeping you safe from most of the invaders that try to make their way into the system. After all, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin on a piece of mouldy bread which most of us would have thrown out in horror, if we found it in our cupboard. There may be another reason why getting a bit dirty can help deal to "superbugs". in our environment - its one strength is the ability to survive antibiotics and the like. In fact, a bit of dirt can actually be good for you. - Be sensible and minimise the amount of germs that your system has to deal with - wash your hands before eating, cook food properly and don't go out of your way to eat dirt. the average American household is more in danger from chemical germ-killers than from germs" (Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (1981) pg. But getting hands in the dirt and rolling in the grass was one prescription given by a specialist to somebody who had contracted a "superbug" while they were in hospital (probably Staphylococcus aureus, the best known antibiotic-resistant bacterium). - Have your vaccinations - this is boot camp for your white blood cells so they can deal to the really nasty illnesses. One doctor (Dr Paul Brand, the medical missionary to India who made some crucial breakthroughs in understanding and treating leprosy) claims that a commercial antiseptic is "merely a cell-killer [which] also destroys the body's good cells. A little bit of dirt doesn't hurt. It's tempting to want to kill all the germs that could possibly live in our environment, especially if we have small children who we want to protect from illness. aureus is something of a wimp in the bacteria world and usually gets dealt to by all the other bacteria, etc. But we need to stop and think before we try to give all the toys a weekly dunk in disinfectant or bring out the hospital-grade disinfectants for all food-preparation surfaces.. Dirt contains a vast amount of bacteria and micorrhizae (moulds and fungi), some of which have not yet been classified by scientists. - Don't worry about hidden dirt - just get rid of the visible stuff. Get dirty yourself once in a while. - Don't bother with antibacterial soap Smart cover Company in China - ordinary soap will do just fine. Have you ever noticed what happens to your skin if you get strong disinfectant on it? My skin, at any rate, becomes dry and cracked.. Some of these bacteria and mould are likely to be beneficial - there could very easily be a hitherto undiscovered antibiotic in the mud on the bottom of your Wellington boots. BMJ 299: 1259'1260, 1989). No doctor would dismiss the need for antiseptics completely (during surgery, for instance) or turn the body's defences totally over to the white blood cells and go about drinking dubious water, eating unsafe food and so forth, but Dr Brand certainly has a point. If you've been feeding your child decent food, he/she will probably have a pretty sound immune system. - Keep your house clean, but don't try to make it sterile. When I was in my student days, one of my flatmates was a microbiology undergraduate. This is because S. - Let your kids play outside and get dirty occasionally. I've even read one scientist hypothesising that the reason for the increase in allergies is because children's healthy immune systems don't get much to work on in a sterilised environment, so they start reacting to innocuous stuff (Strachan, DP. When the other bacteria are removed, S. This is because the antiseptic chemicals are not just killing the bacteria in my toilet, but they are also killing my skin cells. OK, we did change the teatowels daily.. Katy also kept us informed about the amount of bacteria that float around the typical house and the millions of bacteria that grow in tea towels. Hay fever, hygiene, and household size. So what do we do? How do we keep healthy without going over the top? - Eat well - give your immune system all the strength it can get. No, don't eat it deliberately. Over one fortnight, she had an experiment which involved Petri dishes being placed at odd places around the house and left to grow mould. Did we scour the place regularly with hospital grade antiseptic and boil everything in sight? No. Now, we all know student fridges can be bit dubious at the best of times, but while Katy (name changed for privacy reasons) had her bacterium cultures growing in the fridge, you just didn't want to look very hard. And let's not forget the toxic fumes that other antiseptics produce, especially chlorine bleach.