New research offers evidence for a claim made regularly by country music singers: Growing up with a little dirt under his nails may make a country boy a little shy. But compared to a born-and-bred city slicker, that country boy will grow up to be a stronger, healthier and more laid-back man.
In ways large and small, farm kids and city kids grow up worlds apart from each other. A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the possible consequences of that divergence for the health of modern men.
German researchers recruited men under 40 whose childhoods fit one of two starkly different patterns. Either they had spent the years before they turned 15 in a city of more than 100,000 people and had never had a pet in their childhood home. Or, they spent those years on a farm that raised livestock.
The researchers laid before these healthy young men the kind of wide-ranging social challenge sure to induce a potent case of sweaty palms: giving a job talk on short notice, answering to a jury of white-coated judges, and performing a mind-bending arithmetic feat under time pressure.
Then, the researchers compared the two groups' reactions using a battery of physiological and psychological tests.
In their responses to questionnaires as well as in measures of acute physical stress, the study's 20 country boys clearly felt the heat of the social challenge more strongly. Their levels of cortisol — a "fight or flight" hormone — spiked higher, and they reported higher levels of anxiety.
But the young men who had grown up petless in big cities showed a more sustained immune response to the social challenge.
The immune systems of both groups rushed to release chemicals consistent with a strong defense against a perceived enemy. But while this response in the country boys waned after five minutes, the city boys' immune systems stayed on high alert for at least two hours. And the urbanites were less able to tamp down their stress-related inflammatory response with the release of anti-inflammatory chemicals.
The finding strengthens the suspicion that growing up in sanitized urban environments is making many of us more fragile when it comes to warding off certain diseases.
Called the "hygiene theory," the idea is that early exposure to dirt, and to animals who maintain their link to the earth's microbial fecundity, trains our developing immune systems to handle stressors large and small and tamps down the immune system's occasional penchant for overreaction.
The hygiene theory is often held up as an explanation for the dramatic uptick in the incidence of childhood auto-immune diseases such as asthma, allergies, Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. And it's often cited as a contributor in diseases that involve unchecked inflammation, including cardiovascular disease, some cancers and such common mental health disorders as depression.
For those raised in areas offering what the authors called "a narrow range of microbial exposures," the new study points to "possible biological mechanisms underlying increased risk for inflammatory diseases, as well as increased vulnerability to mental health disorders where inappropriate inflammation is thought to be a risk factor," they wrote. The authors noted recent Danish research suggesting that rates of autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were higher among urbanites, and other research suggesting that depression, anxiety and mood disorders were more common among city dwellers.
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¿Eres feminista? ¿O eres machista? Es una pregunta capciosa: son lo mismo, dice Natalie Ritchie (@nataliearitchie) , madre de dos hijos y periodista de una revista para padres.
Cinco décadas después de que comenzara el feminismo, las mujeres están atrapadas en un callejón sin salida. Las feministas dicen ser amigas de las mujeres, pero sus acciones dicen lo contrario. El feminismo anima a que las mujeres tengan carreras idénticas a las de los hombres, pero se burlan de su trabajo como madre y ama de casa. Ponen a las mujeres en puestos de nueve a cinco diseñados para un hombre con una esposa disponible las 24 horas, los 7 días de la semana, en su hogar, pero no logra dar forma a los trabajos en torno a la carga de doméstica. Exhorta a las mujeres a simular el estilo de trabajo de los hombres, y evita el desarrollo de un estilo de trabajo verdaderamente femenino. Celebra el "liderazgo" de una mujer que copia el liderazgo de un hombre en la economía y la política, pero desluce al impresionante liderazgo de una mujer fuera del lugar de trabajo como el que moldea las almas de la próxima generación y que vive, ama y difunde la alegría en nuestros hogares, círculos de amistad y comunidades.
Lejos de retroceder a medida que la era feminista madura, esta masculinización de la sociedad se intensifica con llamados a "cerrar la brecha de género". Las mujeres son consideradas seres inferiores que solo pueden ser "iguales" mediante el trabajo remunerado (fuera de casa), dicen las feministas. A través de su impulso por autorrealizarse como mujer emulando a los hombres, las feministas buscan un mundo "igualitario", donde el cien por ciento de las mujeres hacen lo que cien por ciento de los hombres hacen, y los intereses, las contribuciones y las prioridades de las mujeres se erradican. En su intento por acabar con el patriarcado, el feminismo se ha convertido en el patriarcado.
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BUSINESS INSIDER.- Israel's spy agency Mossad stole a huge trove of documents from Iran earlier this year, in one of its most brazen missions to date.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the mission in a speech accusing Iran of "brazenly lying" about its nuclear capabilities. Netanyahu unveiled a collection of documents, which he said were stolen directly from Tehran facilities in "a great intelligence achievement."
Among the stolen intel were 110,000 documents, videos, and photographs that Netanyahu claimed showed Iran lied about its nuclear ambitions and deceived powers involved in the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
Netanyahu said that stash was made up of 55,000 pages of documents, and another 55,000 files stored on 183 CDs. He said the haul collectively weighed half a ton.
Netanyahu didn't confirm how Mossad, which are known for their stealthy missions, obtained the material, but did say they had been stored in a "a dilapidated warehouse."
"Few Iranians knew where it was, very few," Netanyahu said.
And now more details on the Iran mission have since emerged. A a senior Israeli official told The New York Times that Mossad first discovered the unnamed warehouse in Tehran in February 2016, and began its surveillance from there.
The official also claimed that Mossad agents broke into the building one night in January this year, took the 110,000 documents and returned them to Israel that same night.
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