(ORDO NEWS) — An experiment in Finland showed that playing among greenery and debris in a small forest for one month could be enough to change a child’s immune system.
When kindergarten workers created a lawn, planted forest growth, and allowed children to care for crops in plant boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of young children appeared to be healthier in a very short period of time.
Compared to other urban children who play in standard urban kindergartens with pavement, tiles and gravel, 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds in these green kindergartens in Finland were found to have an increase in T-cells in their blood within 28 days and other important immune markers.
“We also found that the gut microbiota of children fed greens was similar to the gut microbiota of children visiting the forest every day,” explained environmental scientist Marja Roslund from the University of Helsinki in 2020.
Previous research has shown that early exposure to green spaces is somehow related to a well-functioning immune system, but it’s still not entirely clear whether this relationship is causal or not.
While the results do not answer all questions, they do support the core idea that changing microbes in the environment can relatively easily affect the established microbiome in children, helping their immune systems.
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