Raising our children, I can't tell you the number of times they dropped the pacifier or the "binky." With our first child we would make sure to pick it up and wash it with hot water, then wipe it off and cool it off before giving it back to the baby. As we had more children, we did what many other parents do and just rinse it off by sticking it in your own mouth. Gross? Not so.

A story out today  says parents might be able to boost their babies' immune systems by sucking on the pacifiers. The researchers say transferring mouth microbes from parents to infants might help babies grow into toddlers who are less likely to have asthma and itchy rashes.

Dr. Samuel Friedlander is an allergy specialist at University Hospitals in Cleveland and he says the study supports the "hygiene hypothesis" - that more people are getting allergies because our world is too clean, and the immune system ends up fighting allergens instead of bacteria.

[Source: Metro Networks and ABC News]

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