Pets and Dust Boost Mental Health

There is nothing healthier mentally and physically than getting outside and interacting with your environment.

Children raised in a rural environment, surrounded by animals and bacteria-laden dust, grow up to have more stress-resilient immune systems and might be at lower risk of mental illness, asthma and allergies than pet-free city dwellers, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

If you are not exposed to these types of organisms, your immune system can't develop a balance between inflammatory and anti-inflammatory forces. This leads to chronic, low-grade inflammation and exaggerated immune reactivity that makes you vulnerable to allergy, autoimmune disease and, we propose, psychiatric disorders.

You can read the full article here: https://www.colorado.edu