If you or your mom have been poking around the Internet, you might鈥檝e found stories like this one about kids in Louisiana after playing in a mud pit. Or this one about a that can get stirred up after heavy rains. Or this one about a few hundred people who got after hanging out in the mud at a festival. It鈥檚 enough to make you question your choice of weekend activities.
However, we posed your query to , an immunology professor at Colorado State University and author of this great big published in the Emerging Infectious Disease Journal in 2003. He said not to worry too much about getting dirty.
鈥淚f the mud was set up outside a toxic waste dump, then I would be concerned,鈥 he says. 鈥淥therwise it poses the same risks you expose yourself to by going swimming in untreated water.鈥 And many of those risks, including E. coli and skin infections, come from fecal contamination, which one would hope is not going to be an issue at your event.
鈥淚f you鈥檝e got a functional immune system and your skin鈥檚 intact, for the most part you鈥檙e going to be okay,鈥 says Callahan, who鈥檚 actually a fan of the dirt. 鈥淩egular exposure of our immune systems to pathogens鈥攂acteria especially鈥攕eems to keep our immune systems stronger and healthier,鈥 he says. The only thing that would keep him from doing a mud run isn鈥檛 the exposure to mud, it鈥檚 the scary obstacles, like jumping over fire.
Also in your favor: the fact that you鈥檙e racing in the U.S. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a number of the water-borne parasites and bacteria that they do in tropical regions of the world,鈥 Callahan says, that cause illnesses like . In the American Southwest, there is always a risk of getting from breathing in a fungus found in the soil there. If you grew up in the desert, that鈥檚 likely why your mom made you stay inside during dust storms.
A few more suggestions to avoid any post-race problems: Don鈥檛 chug the mud, and don鈥檛 hang out in it longer than necessary. Researchers who looked into some (pustular follicular dermatitis, to be exact) that students in Seattle contracted after wrestling each other in fecally contaminated mud found that the more time students spent in tainted mud, the higher their risk for developing a skin infection. And that risk goes up even more if you have any cuts or scrapes, so if you snag yourself on barbed wire, make sure to clean out your cut ASAP.
And if you鈥檙e truly concerned about what might be lurking in the dirt, run in the first wave of your race before thousands of other bodies plunge into the muck and kick up the dirt around you.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Yes, hanging out in the mud can make you ill, but if you don鈥檛 have any cuts and your immune system is strong, you generally shouldn鈥檛 worry too much about getting sick. Exposure to dirt can actually help strengthen your immune system.聽聽