Older siblings give you bugs and immunity
In a national survey, New You has found that first born children face a much higher risk of getting hay fever than someone brought up as an only child.
Only children are a whopping 40% more likely to get it than a second born child.
John Collard is from Allergy UK and says one of the reasons for this is the "hygiene hypothesis", "The immune system should develop tolerance for things we’re exposed to so we become immune to things. In allergy, the immune system makes a mistake and you react to these things instead of developing tolerance to them."
With our homes now cleaner than ever, our children are too.
John Collard says, this has an impact, "There’s some evidence that one of the ways the immune system develops tolerance to things is by being exposed to infections and dirt when we are small – second and third children are more likely to be exposed to these infections because their older brothers and sisters bring the infections home."
