In case you didn’t know, parents who clean their child’s pacifier by sucking on it could help them reduce their susceptibility to asthma in childhood. Although they also avoid suffering from itchy skin eruptions, according to a study carried out by the Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital in Gothenburg in Sweden.
Said work maintains that carrying out this hygienic habit by sucking on the pacifier facilitates the transmission of microbes from the parents’ mouths to that of the babies, which “can help increase the bacterial diversity of the child’s digestive system and improve their immunity.” .
Childbirth exposes newborns to bacteria from their mother
Although it is true that this study does not prove that sucking on this object protects minors against diseases such as “eczema, asthma or other allergies”. But, in any case, these bacteria “are important for development,” said Dr. Wilfried Karmaus, a member of the University of Memphis (United States).
In this sense, Karmaus has explained that natural childbirth exposes newborns to bacteria from their mother. In his opinion, this type of delivery “has been associated with a lower number of allergies in the child’s childhood.” To reach the conclusions obtained, the researchers studied 184 children and their respective fathers and mothers for three years through telephone calls and tests. Of all the minors, 80 percent had at least one parent with an allergy.
Sucking on the pacifier could also signify sensitization to other common allergens
There were 65 parents who sucked on their children’s pacifier during their first six months of life, who also confirmed washing this object with water. After that, at 18 months and after performing the first allergy test, it was observed that these children were 63 percent less likely to have eczema than the rest of the children and that they were 88 percent less likely to suffer from asthma than the rest of the children.
Bill Hesselmar, a member of the hospital that carried out this study, for his part, determined that “there is no clear evidence that sucking on a child’s pacifier leads to sensitization to common allergens such as cat and dog dander, eggs and peanuts…However, protection against these might also be possible.”