You Could Protect Your Baby From Allergies by Sucking on Their Pacifier

Parents have all had their baby's pacifier fall on the floor at one point or another, and they usually wash it off and give it back to their child.

Although that could change after a new study has found that mothers who clean their kid's pacifier with their saliva lower the number of allergy-causing proteins on the piece.

"The idea is that the microbes you're exposed to in infancy can affect your immune system's development later on in life," Dr. Eliane Abou-Jaoude says.

The sample size of the study is quite small, so saying that a mother's saliva is a direct factor for reducing a child's risk to allergies is not conclusive.