Dirt, Bugs & Bare Feet: Why the “Cleanest” Generation of Kids Is the Sickest
Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Duration: ~41 min
Key Takeaways
- Children today spend less time outside than the average prison inmate, and this loss of outdoor exposure is a major hidden driver behind the rise of chronic illness in kids.
- A child’s immune system is roughly 60–80% located in the gut, so low microbial diversity from a too-clean, indoor lifestyle directly weakens immune defense and resilience.
- A Finnish daycare “rewilding” study that replaced rubber, gravel, and plastic with soil, moss, and real plants produced fewer harmful skin bacteria, a healthier gut microbiome, more regulatory T-cells, and better immune regulation in just two to four weeks.
- Chronic worry, fear, and anxiety about getting sick are among the most damaging stressors to the nervous system, pushing it into sympathetic dominance and exhaustion, meaning the fear of germs can be more harmful than the germs themselves.
- Building resilient children depends on biodiversity exposure, sunlight, real food, and a regulated nervous system, not on sterilizing their environment with antimicrobial chemicals.
Why Does Spending Time Outside Make Children Healthier?
Spending more time outdoors strengthens a child’s immune system by exposing them to the diverse microbes, bacteria, and natural inputs the body needs to build resilience. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, children who grow up on farms or in the country consistently have stronger, more resilient immune systems than children raised in cleaner, more indoor environments. The mechanism is microbial: outdoor exposure increases the diversity of “good” microbes in the gut microbiome, and because 60–80% of the immune system is concentrated in the gut, greater microbial diversity translates directly into a stronger immune defense.
The problem, Dr. Tony argues, is that modern children spend less time outside than ever before, on average, less than the typical prison inmate, because of time spent in classrooms, in front of screens, and in indoor activities. At the same time, the indoor environments they do occupy have become excessively sterile, scrubbed with antimicrobial chemicals and air “fresheners” that introduce toxins while eliminating the very microbial exposure children need. The result is what he calls a hidden-in-plain-sight contributor to having the “cleanest” yet sickest generation of children.
Crucially, this isn’t only about chemistry. Dr. Tony emphasizes that the mentality of fear around germs is itself one of the worst stressors a child can carry. Chronic worry and anxiety drive the nervous system into fight-or-flight dominance and exhaustion, so raising kids who are unafraid of dirt, bugs, and ordinary illness builds both immunological and mental-emotional resilience.
Why a Farm Upbringing Builds a Stronger Immune System [1:11 – 13:48]
Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: I’m going to have so much fun with this one. If you’ve listened to the podcast at all, you know I draw on my experiences as a parent, on my background as a neurologically focused pediatric chiropractor, and on a third pillar that really shaped the story God’s given me, growing up on a farm. I grew up on a cattle, corn, and soybean farm in the middle of nowhere, northwest Iowa.
Once the overmedicalization of healthcare took over, we were told we’re all genetically programmed to be sick. Autism is genetic. ADHD is genetic. Asthma is genetic. The medical system claims to be so scientific, but it missed the boat. That massive shift toward overmedicalizing our whole family’s healthcare, especially pediatric healthcare, has left us with the sickest generation ever. But that path to chronic sickness doesn’t only happen inside the pediatrician’s office. It also happens because we don’t get outside enough.
The world our kids are growing up in demands more resilience than ever. They need a more adaptable nervous system, a naturally boosted-up immune system, and a better shield to go out into this chaotic, Perfect Storm world. What we know is that kids who grow up on a farm, kids who grow up out in the country, have a stronger, more resilient immune system than those who don’t.
“Kids spend less time outside than most prison inmates. It’s true. They are simply not outside enough hours in the dirt, in the soil.”
What’s interesting about how I grew up is that we were not a chiropractic family. We didn’t get adjusted, didn’t take supplements, didn’t have homeopathic remedies. But we also didn’t run into town to see the doctor the moment we had a sniffle. We didn’t have time, and we didn’t have the belief that God made us to be sick. By being “in the middle,” we actually shifted toward natural resilience, the antithesis of germ theory.
I’ll never forget working cattle with my dad, Steve, my number one mentor and best friend, who barely spoke but always modeled the way. The mom heifer stormed the gate, and my dad’s index finger went through the latch mechanism. When he pulled it out, the top half was hanging off at a 90-degree angle. Everyone would say we needed to stop and rush to town to sew it back up. But we had a job to finish. And here’s the point of the story: I never saw my dad get sick once in 50 years of farming. Never a cold, never a cough, never a day off. His immune system was so strong that even a wound exposed to all those germs didn’t take him down.
Germ Theory vs. the Hygiene Hypothesis: The Role of Fear [13:48 – 17:36]
Dr. Tony Ebel: When we look at the conversation between germ theory and what we’ll call the hygiene hypothesis, eat dirt, grow up in dirt, the biggest thing that shifts when you move into this lifestyle isn’t actually the gut microbe physiology. It’s the mentality.
The absolute worst thing we can do for our kids’ immune health and their mental-emotional well-being is to be worried all the time. If you think toxins create chronic illness, you should see what chronic fear, anxiety, and worry do to the nervous system. It tanks it. It pushes the nervous system into that fight-or-flight dominance we talk about all the time, and then leads to immediate exhaustion. Chronic worry is the worst of all the stressors we could be exposed to.
“If you just eradicated one thing, the worry about being sick, we’d be a whole lot less sick.”
There’s an immunological, physiological benefit to being outside, getting exposed to microbes, and getting stronger through them. But there’s also a mental and emotional benefit to raising resilient kids this way. Being outside means you’re not on a screen and not breathing recirculated air. You’re getting real sunlight, so your body makes its own vitamin D, which is far better than what you absorb from a capsule. And you sweat when you move, which is one of the best detoxification mechanisms there is.
Why Chiropractors Are Exposed to Sick Kids but Rarely Get Sick [17:36 – 22:39]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s an action step: pause and think about the net amount of time your family has spent outside over the last seven days or three months. Is it enough? Over the next 90 days and the next seven years, can you flip that on its head? Don’t worry about all the bullet points, can you just get outside?
In our pediatric practice, when kids are sick, they come in for boost adjustments. They’re not really “sick”, they’re expressing health, doing what the body is designed to do. We don’t ask you to stay home or sit in a separate waiting room, because that’s based on the fear of germ theory. Instead, we put our hands on those kids and make Neuro-Tonal Adjustments to boost the nervous system and immune system so they can move through the challenge faster. We can adjust to help with cough and mucus, and to stimulate gastric motility to move things out of the body.
“We are literally physically connecting with sick patients and making adjustments, and we are the least sick people on earth.”
So shouldn’t chiropractors be the sickest doctors on the planet? We’re not wearing masks or hiding from patients. Yet we’re among the least sick people there are. For me, that comes from lifestyle, getting adjusted, nutrition, supplements, daily connection with patients, but it also goes back to those first 20 years building immune resilience on the farm. We didn’t grow up healthy because we were genetically lucky, and we didn’t grow up healthy because of adjustments, supplements, or a perfect diet, we had none of that. Simply being outside all the time was enough.
Why We’ve Left “Home Base” With Natural Health [22:39 – 28:01]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Moving to the country is the best thing our family ever did for our mental, emotional, and neuroimmunological health. I’ve never met someone who moved out to the country, quieter, more stars, more fresh air, more time outside, who didn’t love it.
But here’s the problem we don’t talk about. Over the last 5 to 10 years, we’ve gotten so fancy with functional and integrative medicine, peptides, BPC-157, glutathione, mushroom extracts, herbal remedies, that families forget to crush the basics. The rising tide of chronic illness came with a massive shift in birth interventions (birth trauma is a hugely overlooked upstream trigger), the overuse of antibiotics, vaccinations, and medications, and changes to our food, air, and water. Toxins were even there in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, lead paint, asbestos, cigarettes. But the one thing we don’t talk about enough is simply getting outside.
“We’ve gotten really good at preventing infection, but we’ve gotten terrible at building resilient kids.”
When we look at rates of allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, eczema, chronic sinus infections, sensory processing dysregulation, PANS/PANDAS, and food sensitivities, and then look at microbiome testing, we see kids have far less microbial diversity than ever before. City kids and kids who are outside less have less diversity, which means a weaker immune system. We need a strong gut full of microbial diversity, because that means more “good guys” ready to ward off the bad guys. Yet many kids now have nearly “sterile” labs from spending so much time in sterile, chemicalized environments, schools sponsored by hand sanitizer, bathrooms auto-spritzing toxins into the air. We’ve overused antimicrobial chemicals to kill the bad guys, but they were never the real problem. The real problem is the lack of resilience and the lack of exposure to the good guys.
How a Weak Immune System Can Lead to Autoimmune Disease [28:01 – 33:02]
Dr. Tony Ebel: If you follow this rabbit hole, you can look at the families most afraid of germs, the most “Purell-infused” lifestyles, and find they’re often the most sick. In my experience, the teachers most afraid of germs are the most sick themselves, and their kids are sick far more often than ours, who aren’t afraid of germs at all.
Now, do we actively seek out germs, send our kids to lick shopping carts? No. That’d be weird, and it’s not good for their emotional well-being or socialization. We’re finding the sweet spot: healthy and resilient, but not a weirdo about it.
Our friends at Documenting Hope, Beth Lambert and her team of researchers and neuroimmunologists, have taught me about the building connection between type 1 juvenile diabetes and autoimmune dysfunction. The conventional system calls it purely genetic, but it’s not black and white. Here’s the key: the immune system is pre-programmed to do work. If we weaken it enough, make it more dysregulated, dysfunctional, and disconnected through our current lifestyle, the immune system will start to turn on itself. That’s where conditions like asthma, allergies, juvenile arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, eczema, juvenile diabetes, and PANS/PANDAS can come from. We’ve gotten good at preventing infection but terrible at building resilient kids, and that starts with a mindset that sets up our whole lifestyle.
What the Finland “Rewilding” Daycare Study Found [33:02 – 41:16]
Dr. Tony Ebel: This is the final chapter, and it’s the study that brings it all together. Countries like Finland just naturally get outside more, and now the research is proving how effective that is. In the rewilding study, researchers took 43 daycares and replaced the rubber mats, gravel, and plastic with soil, moss, forest floor, and real plants. They got the kids outside and encouraged them to dig, touch, and explore every single day.
You do not need to go to those lengths with your own kids to get the benefit, keep it basic and change your lifestyle. But this study went dramatic, and they actually ran labs. Here’s what they found after the shift:
“In just two to four weeks, not from a prescription, not from a supplement, the kids had fewer harmful skin bacteria, a healthier gut microbiome, more regulatory T-cells, and improved immune regulation overall.”
Regulatory T-cells are the good guys, the Army, the Navy, the Marines of the immune system, brought in to take out what needs taking out. The kids showed fewer harmful skin bacteria, a healthier shift in their gut microbiome, increased regulatory T-cells, and improved immune regulation overall, all in two to four weeks.
Now imagine combining that with everything else: getting adjusted through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, eating clean organic food with more protein and healthy fats, and taking quality supplements. We have research showing chiropractic adjustments also improve immune strength, resilience, and T-cell function. But the foundation, the basics, is simply getting kids outside. The immune system needs a training ground, and nature is that training ground. You can’t get too much of it.
Every time my kids are stuck inside on screens, they’re more anxious, exhausted, sensory-overloaded, and dysregulated. Every time they’re outside, even in winter, when we bundle up, go sledding, and trudge around the farm, they’re calmer, happier, and so are we. This is where health is designed to be built: not from a pill bottle, but from God’s creation. Don’t go to the plastic playground; go to nature’s playgrounds, the woods, the creeks, the fields. Let them get really dirty. Take their shoes and socks off and go barefoot. If you live in town, get planter boxes and a little garden and get your kids involved.
“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing and bad preparation.”
This isn’t about going back in time. It’s about going deeper and more congruent with God’s design. Finland didn’t invent anything new, that study is just like organic food beating fake food on every lab marker. Biodiversity exposure, plus nervous system regulation and neurosensory input, builds kids who are resilient, adaptable, and thriving. The most advanced intervention you could do for your child’s immune system might be the one we started leaving behind 75 years ago: dirt, sunshine, animals, real food, and a nervous system that knows how to regulate itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does playing in the dirt actually make kids healthier?
Yes. Exposure to soil, microbes, and the outdoors increases the diversity of beneficial bacteria in a child’s gut microbiome, and because roughly 60–80% of the immune system lives in the gut, that diversity directly strengthens immune defense. Dr. Tony Ebel points to a Finnish daycare study in which adding soil and real plants improved kids’ immune markers in just two to four weeks.
Can keeping kids too clean make them sick?
According to Dr. Tony Ebel, yes. Excessively sterile, chemicalized environments and overuse of antimicrobial products reduce children’s microbial diversity, leaving them with weaker, less resilient immune systems. This is part of the hygiene hypothesis, the idea that too little microbial exposure can contribute to allergies, asthma, eczema, and autoimmune conditions.
What was the Finland “rewilding” daycare study?
It was a study of 43 daycares that replaced rubber, gravel, and plastic play surfaces with soil, moss, forest floor, and real plants, while encouraging children to dig and explore daily. Within two to four weeks, the children showed fewer harmful skin bacteria, a healthier gut microbiome, more regulatory T-cells, and improved immune regulation overall.
How does worrying about germs affect a child’s health?
Dr. Tony Ebel teaches that chronic fear, worry, and anxiety are among the most damaging stressors to the nervous system. Constant worry about getting sick pushes the body into sympathetic dominance (fight-or-flight) and eventually exhaustion, which can weaken immune function, meaning the fear of germs can be more harmful than the germs themselves.
Can a weak immune system cause autoimmune disease in kids?
Dr. Tony Ebel explains that the immune system is pre-programmed to stay active, so when it becomes dysregulated and disconnected through a sterile, indoor lifestyle, it can begin to turn on itself. This dysfunction is linked to conditions like asthma, allergies, juvenile arthritis, eczema, type 1 diabetes, and PANS/PANDAS.
How do I find a chiropractor who supports natural immune resilience?
You can find a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractor trained in this approach through the PX Docs Directory. These practitioners use INSiGHT Scans and Neuro-Tonal Adjustments to support nervous system regulation and immune function alongside lifestyle changes like getting kids outdoors.
Resources & Related Content
- The “Perfect Storm,” How stacked stressors set the stage for chronic childhood illness
- Vagus Nerve, The key to parasympathetic regulation and immune balance
- Find a PX Docs Office Near You, PX Docs Directory