Monday, August 27, 2012

The weird connections between things

or why life is counter-intuitive: this story (in the New York Times [link] ) indicates that bacterial and parasite infection (common in the "native" state of humans, but increasingly rare in modern, "hygenic" societies) helps modulate our immune and inflammatory systems.  

In a world where we are shielded from such chronic infections, we are more sensitive to "out of control" inflammatory responses, which in turn lead to diseases as asthma and autism.   In a weird way, being sick (or infected) keeps us from getting sick.  

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