Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children

And like sibling comment said, you can just also just take them outside and let them be kind of outdoorsy.

et = and, so just _et voilà_.

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/search-results?page=...

There is extensive evidence that the incidence of severe peanut allergies is significantly increased by the practice of avoiding early exposure in the absence of particular risk indicators, which is why that practice is now advised against.(IIRC, some of the first targeted studies were motivated by observed differences in incidence between the US where early avoidance had become common and Israel where peanut-based puff snacks were a common thing to give to babies not long after starting solid food.)

He also had a grape allergy, and reaction was quite severe, but he seemed to outgrow that by his 40s.

The hygiene hypothesis is widely accepted, including by allergists, and there's definitely data supporting it, but we don't understand the mechanism, so it's hard to say that it's about any one specific thing vs. many contributing causes that correlate with hygiene and other aspects of the environment around the kid.

The advice about early exposure clearly works though, and there's data to support that early exposure even after confirming the allergy can increase the chances of outgrowing the allergy.

You say they live in bubbles, but is that before or after discovering the allergy? After the allergy is discovered, some amount of bubble-ing is necessary due to how difficult it is to be certain than something is peanut-free.

Children of Gen X and Millenials have been ruined by their helicopter/bubble parents, they have allergies and that's that. Future generations can and must learn from their mistake, but we can't force allergic people to simply grow out of it. We're not talking itchy throats here.

On the other hand, I've seen kids have a bad reaction to peanuts and the tiniest dose can be dramatically dangerous.

I think of how allergies to wheat were fashionable before COVID but seem to have been forgotten about in all the confusion. Now there is such as thing as a wheat allergy and I know people who eat the tiniest amount of gluten and their GI tract purges everything in both directions. I know about 10x as many people who have vague symptoms such as "bloating" or nonspecific fatigue who get told by an alternative health practitioner to go gluten free... and instead of eating traditional preparations of other cereals and pseudo-cereals (e.g. a bowl of rice) they seem to think life begins with sandwiches and ends with baked goods and eat nothing but sawdust "bread".

> Anaphylactic shock is extremely rare

~5% of people in the US have experienced anaphylaxis, but I don't know your definition of rare.

> it's only fatal in an even rarer number of cases

Could this be due to epipens being commonly carried by people likely to experience anaphylaxis?

> anaphylactic shocks is a biological reaction of your body to save itself, not kill itself

Because it is an immune response? Is the implication here that anaphylactic shock is actually a good thing?

And focusing on the conspiracy part itself

> the majority of the fears that we have been sold on allergies was a direct result of marketing efforts by the inventors of the Epipen.

Implying the increase in EpiPen prescriptions caused people to be more cautious about food allergies feels exactly backwards.

Ok but who want's to be the one that needs it and can't get it?

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/family-of-teen-who-died-...

>anaphylactic shocks is a biological reaction of your body to save itself, not kill itself

The idea that everything the body does is harmless natural magic that should be allowed to run it's course is killing people.

Also, our bodies are good at doing things which are technically trying to save us, but actually kill us that doesn't mean we sit idle and do nothing about it, the same is for fevers.

Anaphylactic shock is the body reacting to protect itself against something that isn't actually harmful, but it is doing so to such an extreme that in many cases it kills you.

It's easy to look back at something as a conspiracy when the very impact of it has been mitigated for the average person due to proper healthcare.

"breathing into a brown paper bag"? An anaphylatic reaction is literally a life-threatening event requiring prompt medical intervention. It's not "anxiety".

  In the U.S., the rate of childhood peanut allergies more than tripled between 1997 and 2008. 

  ...

  In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a (now-outdated) recommendation in 2000, which directed parents to avoid feeding baby peanuts until they reached the age of three, especially if a baby was at high risk for a peanut allergy.

  But when these recommendations to delay feeding peanut were introduced, there was no study to support these recommendations. Rather, they were just based on physicians' guesses.

  As Dr. Spergel explains, "Back then, we gave people really bad advice. We told people to avoid food allergens... But there was never any evidence for this. It was just based on a few physicians’ best guess. There's never been any study that ever proved that food avoidance worked. "

  Today, we know that this approach to delay peanut introduction actually increases food allergy risk, and that delayed introduction was a major factor that led to the sharp increase in peanut allergies.

And why the body does not recognize it ? Because it is tainted. Putting all kind of pesticides and other substances on plants does modify the "original".

This is not even remotely common sense. E.g. why can this allergy be desensitized via ingestion but not via skin contact?

Hindsight is 20/20. In this case, it was figured out after a lot of scientific research.

Just because we can understand it now doesn't mean it's "common sense". It's very much the opposite, and you discredit the scientific research this has required.

I'm almost certainly indexing too heavily on the ideas in birch pollen cross reactivity. But I see basically no reason not to think that same process generalizes quite well into a lot of the things we used to gladly pollute into our environments.

And yes, I know we can still get better at pollution management; but I think people should probably acknowledge just how much progress we have made. Especially in the US. Our air quality is amazingly clean today compared to just 60 years ago. Strikingly so.