Your home can be making you sick! Here’s how to fix it

Ah, the great indoors. It’s where we spend over 90 percent of our time — whether it’s sleeping, eating, watching the tube, or just going about our daily routines.

So, although you may be inclined to blame the outdoors if you suffer from ongoing allergies and recurring respiratory infections, it makes perfect sense that what might be causing it is coming from the inside.

Now, a group of doctors and scientists are trying to bring more attention to what they call a dynamic “community” of microbes with whom you share your home.

And keeping yourself and your family healthy may all depend on taking a few simple steps to keep these uninvited guests under control as well as putting out the welcome mat to beneficial ones.

An inside job
You’ve likely heard of “sick building syndrome” — toxic air inside a home or office that can make people seriously ill. It’s often caused by toxic off-gassing from chemicals used in construction, furniture, cleaning agents and even the paint that coats our walls.

But what a large group of premier experts in the field of human health want to shine a spotlight on is the fact that buildings — our homes, schools and offices — have their very own thriving communities of microbes living in them right along with us.

And like the witches in The Wizard of Oz, there are good microbes and bad microbes!

As Yale’s Dr. Jordan Peccia (who participated in the report) noted, if lots of people kept getting sick from their drinking water, it would be addressed right away. But, the fact so many of us — including our kids and grandkids — suffer from ongoing allergies triggered by things we encounter on the inside, it’s mostly ignored instead of being “better controlled.”

The whole topic is so complex, and with so many different aspects to it, that these researchers have filled over 250 pages in their just-out book! And although their work is far from complete, there are plenty of things they’ve uncovered that you can make use of immediately.

To start, you can take these three steps — all of which will help you boot the bad bugs right out the door:

• Increase ventilation: That can be as simple as opening up your windows to create an air exchange and get the air moving around in your home.
• Decrease humidity: As we both know, moisture and mold go hand in hand. And with over half of the homes in the U.S. being found to have dampness and visible mold, this is obviously a bigger problem than you might think. One way to put a damper on dampness, especially if you live in a hot and humid part of the country, is to invest in a dehumidifier to suck all that moisture out of the air. And be sure to address any water issues from plumbing or outside flooding ASAP — which means immediately!
• Clear the air: Having one or more portable HEPA room air filters is an excellent, and relatively inexpensive way to keep the air you breathe as clean as possible. Just make sure you get one that uses a “pre-filter” so the actual HEPA filter (the more expensive part!) will last longer. They vary in price by how big a space you’ll be using them in.

And remember those “good microbes” I mentioned? Well, the authors even have a section devoted to “interventions to encourage” our exposure to “beneficial microbes.” It’s sort of like probiotics for your house!

Believe it or not, one way these useful housemates can be easily introduced is to adopt a dog! Studies have found that when lab animals were exposed to dust collected in homes with canine residents, it resulted in a significant increase in their beneficial gut bacteria. And lots of other research has found that kids who grow up with pets are far less likely to develop asthma and tend to stay healthier than children raised in squeaky-clean homes devoid of furry companions.

Another simple method of making your house more open to friendly microbes is to introduce plants.

And one more thing — if you want to have a healthy home, ditch that arsenal of bleach and other heavy-duty disinfectants. These researchers warn that this approach to cleaning may end up doing a lot more harm than good by killing off beneficial microbes.

“Buildings have microbiomes, too, that affect human health” Joyce Frieden, September 12, 2017, MedPage Today, medpagetoday.com