A good number of kids I see in the office come for evaluation of asthma. After going over what asthma is and reviewing the medications they need the inevitable question is why does little Johnny/Jill have asthma. To that question we don’t have good answers. A few months back an article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that confirmed previous studies that showed the risk of asthma in children living on farms was 30-50% less than children not on farms. What was interesting though was the broader range of bacteria and fungi in the farm houses versus the non-farm homes. They speculate the microbes found on farms stimulate the body’s immune system early life and thereby promote tolerance. Whereas those who don’t live on farms are not exposed and when exposure occurs later on in life it can lead to the development of asthma.
So maybe Jules was wrong to dismiss the animal that doesn’t have sense enough to disregard its own feces.
Probiotic supplementation will (alongside vitamin D) be one of the biggest medical wake-ups in the next few years. It seems as though proper gut flora can alleviate as you mentioned asthma as well as other mental and physical ailments. In our increasingly sterile world, a little dirt goes a long ways haha.