Getting dirty could help your kids be healthier - and this is why

Parents are always nervy of cleanliness around children - after all, kids top the list for spreading germs.

A University of Warwick study revealed that children were top of the table for social contacts, making them most at-risk for catching and transmitting infection.

But did you know that a little bit of dirt could be doing your wee ones some good?

At least when it comes to food allergies.

Paediatric neurologist and parent, Dr Maya Shetreat-Klein says that while food allergies are dictated by many factors, there are more and more studies which show kids are allergic because they are being kept too clean

Thanks to the sanitising culture, microbes and bacteria can attack their immune system and leave them worse off.

Dr Shetreat-Klein, who lives in New York, says that she encountered the limits of conventional medicine when her son suffered a severe episode of asthma on his first birthday and began a backward slide in his development.

While treatments failed to reverse the condition, she started her own scientific investigation, and her finding stunned her.

She says she discovered that food was at the root of her son’s illness, affecting his digestive system, immune system , and brain.

Her answer is set out in her new book, The Dirt Cure , where she says that the alarming studies showing the dramatic rise of chronic disease in children, from allergies and ADHD to mental illnesses and obesity, can be arrested.