--- title: Home Remedies for Asthma: Animal Fur Lowers Asthma Risk description: A study finds that sleeping on animal rugs may make infants less susceptible to asthma canonical: https://time.com/3303622/animal-fur-lowers-asthma/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-08T15:36:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:03:30.088Z article:section: Health og:title: Sleeping On Animal Fur Lowers Asthma Risk og:description: A study finds that sleeping on animal rugs may make infants less susceptible to asthma og:url: https://time.com/3303622/animal-fur-lowers-asthma/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Sleeping On Animal Fur Lowers Asthma Risk twitter:description: A study finds that sleeping on animal rugs may make infants less susceptible to asthma twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Sleeping On Animal Fur Can Lower Asthma Risk > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 8, 2014 3:36 PM UTC  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 8, 2014 3:36 PM UTC Animal fur might be protective against asthma and allergies, a new study finds. The [research](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub%5Freleases/2014-09/elf-soa090314.php), just presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress, examined data from 2,441 German children and found an association between sleeping on animal fur, like sheepskin rugs or throws, during their first three months and a decreased risk of asthma later in childhood, by age 10\. Snoozing on fur was also associated with a lower risk of hay fever and wheezing. Using animal fur as bedding was a common practice in Germany during the 1990s when the data was collected—about 55% of the children examined had slept on animal fur. Sheepskin is among the most popular kind, said lead study author Christina Tischer of the German Research Center for Environmental Health in an email. The fur rugs aren’t typically treated with pesticides or strong chemical agents, she said. “We think that this animal fur might act as a reservoir for diverse kind of microbial components which \[accumulate\] over time within the animal fur,” she wrote. Other studies have shown that diverse microbial environments seem to be protective against allergies, supporting the “hygiene hypothesis” that our hypersanitized lives weaken our defenses by not exposing them to enough bacteria to build proper immunity. The live kind may work, too. If you don’t have a spare bear rug in which to swaddle your infant, other [studies](http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/09/study-why-dogs-and-cats-make-babies-healthier/) have shown that infant exposure to pets might make infants less prone to allergies. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3303622/animal-fur-lowers-asthma/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3303622/animal-fur-lowers-asthma/"},"headline":"Sleeping On Animal Fur Can Lower Asthma Risk","datePublished":"2014-09-08T15:36:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:03:30.088Z","description":"Study says sleeping on animal fur is associated with a lower risk of asthma in infants","url":"https://time.com/3303622/animal-fur-lowers-asthma/","keywords":["Research","Asthma","allergies","microbes","microbiome"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/research/","name":"Research"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3303622/animal-fur-lowers-asthma/","name":"Sleeping On Animal Fur Can Lower Asthma Risk"}}]}] ```