Comment by mynegation
4 years ago
To me, the most important question is: how did we end up in a place where there are so many food allergies and we still do not understand the reason for the increase? Is it better diagnosis? Early exposure to allergens? Lack of early exposure to allergens? Some evolutionary advantage to having an allergy? (I doubt that, but it is plausible).
My son has multiple severe nut allergies so I’ve gone from having zero awareness to having too much.
Allergies are fascinating bc they are a continuum and random.
Continuum from…
zero symptoms if you eat the protein in the nut and just a positive blood test…
all the way to…
cannot be in same room as nuts if they will have a reaction that constricts their ability to breath.
They are also random in that your outcome can be wildly different each time.
The result imo is that drs who detect any food allergy, let’s say the child has a slightly swollen lip after eating sesame will run labs on blood and skin and get some real positives and some false positives.
Next they say not to eat anything the person is allergic to in order to prevent a life threatening allergy.
If no blood or skin tests existed this person may go through life mainly avoiding the food bc it’s uncomfortable, but never think of themselves as allergic to X.
Net result is that people with allergies are safer now, but the % of people we know have allergies has increased.
As a side note, if you are reading this as a parent with a kid with a recently discovered food allergy, please note… it totally sucks, but… you will adjust over time to the higher workload and constant label reading, hang in there.
> Net result is that people with allergies are safer now, but the % of people we know have allergies has increased
Percentage of kods who are left handed has increased after we stopped beating them at school into being right handed.
Thank you for your reply and best wishes to your family! I know it can be a bit of an intrusive question, but how do people discover that children have a particular allergy? Do you get an epipen the same moment you have a newborn, just in case? Do you try some small amount or potentially cross contaminated food just to test? Do you discover it randomly and hope there is going to be enough time to get to ER? I have been lucky not to have it for myself, or a child, but how did you know?
Depends on the country, but some have a recommended list of foods to expose your kid to when they start eating solids. For example https://www.allergy.org.au/patients/allergy-prevention/ascia...
Epipen? No. But if I didn't live around the corner from the hospital, I'd probably test peanuts and shellfish while parked next to one : - )
That wasn't common when/where I was born, but then again, the cuisine there/then was more limited so I'd be exposed to most allergens naturally within the first year. (And face "I've never seen a prawn and I'm 20 - am I allergic to them?" later)
Our son had skin issues (eczema) before he was old enough to eat solid foods. Eczema and food allergies are correlated so we fed him small amounts of peanuts and he had a crazy reaction. We were lucky he didn’t end up in er first time, but swollen lips, changed “voice” for weeks etc.
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It is not settled science, but one hypothesis is the hygiene hypothesis, which proposes that exposure to certain microbes at a young age is important for the development of a healthy immune system. By over sanatozing our environment, we prevent exposure of young children to those microbes, leading to the increased prevelence of allergies.
Note that the most important of these are intestinal worms, helminths. The other would be bacteria.
Respiratory viruses, by contrast, are not on the list. It is instead chronic presences in the body which may modulate immune response and avoid allergies.
(You said nothing wrong but the name itself is confusing)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
Do you mean that a certain amount of helminths is beneficial for our health? Is this just during childhood or is helminth infestation beneficial the whole life?
Maybe helminths shouldn't be called parasites then, since they somehow bring benefits to us? Like, there's some degree of mutualism
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Anecdata and all but my food allergies as a kid were a lot more severe than after puberty. On the other hand I'm pretty sure I could eat a few things as a toddler that I couldn't anymore in/after elementary school. It's really weird.
Interestingly, age of introduction is also important. For a long time the advice was to delay introducing allergens. It turns out that that increased the chance of being allergic to the thing.
Correlation to having a dishwasher to food allergies.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25713281/
> The risk was further reduced in a dose-response pattern if ... the family bought food directly from farms.
This kind of content is not acceptable on HN.