Antibacterial Products: Can You Be Too Clean?

Here is another article that rang my bell with the flu season coming up.

CVSCaremark Health Resources

"Antibacterial Products: Can You Be Too Clean?

by Elissa Sonnenberg, MSEd

In a world full of runny noses and hacking coughs, products with labels like "antibacterial" and "antimicrobial" regularly dispense hopes of germ and illness-free lives to their users. But, as the variety of germ-fighting products continues to rise, medical experts continue to disagree over their benefits and potential long-term effects."

Click this line to see the full article. (If you are reading this from the mailing list, you will need to go to a browser and read it in the blog. This link is HUGE.

Here are my own two cents on this topic...

My own experience with the, "Can you be too clean?" question came in the early days of Meaghan's diagnosis. I was trying to figure out the exact percentage of her immune compromise, then I was quickly made to understand that there is no way to know that for sure with any precision, and even if you could, it changes depending on other variables. Even without an autoimmune disorder, or taking prescription medications that suppress the immune system, every person is unique. Your "healthy baseline" is going to be different from every other human being.

So, the best advice we got was to follow the best advice we all get for staying healthy:

• Wash your hands and use antibacterial rinses when you cannot.
• Stay away from sick people
• When you get sick, stay home and get better as quickly as possible
• Lots of rest and fluids, especially water

Patients with autoimmune disorders can take that advice seriously, but come on... really... what is the answer to this how much should I protect myself from germs?

I pressed further and finally got some doctors to admit that in fact, if I protect Meaghan too much, then her natural immune system will suffer. Some researchers have suggested the immune system needs to be provoked in order to stay strong. Basically, if a person is too well protected from germs, and never has the chance to stimulate their immune system with enough crap to keep it worked out and healthy, then they are actually more likely to get sick. [The paraphrasing is my own.]

So what I took away from all that was that we should protect ourselves, but not too much... So it remains a balancing act.


Here is a good definition of "autoimmunity" you can use to describe it to others:


"The immune system can suddenly turn on itself and target its own organs, tissues and cells for destruction: what we call autoimmunity. Most of the more than 70 distinct types of autoimmune diseases are rare, but collectively they affect millions of individuals worldwide." (Editorial: Unraveling Autoimmunity, Nature Immunology 2, 755 (2001) or doi:10.1038/ni0901-755)

You can request this document from a number of document delivery services

• British Library Document Supply Centre (http://www.bl.uk/services/listings.html)
• CIST Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/ibp/cisti/faq/document-delivery/cisti-infotrieve-collaboration.html)
• Infotrieve (http://www4.infotrieve.com/default.asp)
• Thomson ISI Document Delivery (http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/ti/workflow/docdelivery/)

You can also request this document from your local library through inter library loan services.