Hate to Clean? Shreveport Expert Says Your Home Can Be Too Clean

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Keeping your house clean is the most Sisyphean of all tasks.  Basically, by the time your done with it - it's time to start again!  If you have kids, it's practically impossible.  Thankfully, a new hypothesis being investigated by health care experts may prove that all of the endless cleaning may not be healthy after all - and I'm not talking about mentally.

A report from KTBS on the "Hygiene Hypothesis" outlines the danger of keeping your house and home "too clean."  It suggests that completely sterilizing your home and removing all effective traces of germs could cause your immune system to become extremely weak.  The hypothesis also suggests that this might be the cause of chronic upper respiratory conditions like Asthma and could be responsible for severe allergies.

According to Kenneth Betzing, a physician assistant with CHRISTUS Primary Care Partners, removing germs from our environment prevents our body learning how to defend itself from everyday bacteria thus making easier for to get sick.  This is especially true with infants.

Even though it is a new parent's instinct to furiously clean any and every thing a newborn might come into contact with, it's vitally important to allow their immune system to react to everyday germs.  Without a robust defensive system, infants are far more likely to catch and have a hard time beating potentially deadly diseases like the dreaded respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.  According to Lung.org, RSV is the #1 leading cause of hospitalizations for children under the age of 5.

It's important to note that this is just a hypothesis, and has not been proven as a scientific fact.  That being said, it does make sense - and, I will absolutely use this study to get out of cleaning the house this weekend.  I'll just tell my wife I'm worried about our health.