Girls, Eat Your Mud Pies

There is a picture of me as a little girl, I'm probably four or five, I'm grinning from ear to ear and presenting to the photographer - likely my mother or father - and the camera a delightful pile of mud, about the size and shape of a biscuit. My hands are smeared in mud, and some has dried on my cheek where I assume I tried to brush away a strand of my blond mop.


Mud pies. A delicacy. Well, not now. But, when you're five...  


I'm not quite sure what the mud pie allure was, but there was one. Probably because it involved getting dirty and making something that resembled what adults did. Kind of like playing house. 


I wasn't afraid to get dirty as a kid. And, now, according to a recent study, I might be able to attribute my adult health to that mud-pie-making habit I had as a little girl. 


Sharyn Clough, a philosopher of science at Oregon State University, has published an article in the journal Social Science and Medicine that finds that the high frequency of autoimmune diseases and chronic illness in women may be attributed to the societal stipulation that girls are kept to a higher cleanliness standard as children. 


With little or no exposure to bacteria at a young age, the body can't develop a resistance, making it more likely that the illness will be contracted later in life. 


Clough tells NPR's Whitney Blair Wyckoff that boys are more likely to have asthma at a younger age, while girls are more likely after puberty and into adulthood. Clough says, "boys are exposed to more of the allergens and things that inflame their immune systems more often than do girls. So boys will have higher rates of asthma early on. But then after puberty, girls have higher rates of asthma and then for the rest of their lives."


I guess I have my happy hippie parents to thank for my immune system. And all those glorious mud pies.