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Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

bbc.com

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Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#171

Post by sitkack »

criddell wrote: post #135
INTPenis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes timotej is my allergy as well. And I got it as an adult, in 2009. So 26 years without any allergies, then suddenly, one summer in Helsingborg, the air was thick with pollen. I remember the smell was like cheese doodles in the air, musty. Once I got back from an errand in the city my face was leaking, I walked to the pharmacy with blurry vision to get my first antihistamines. Ever since then every year june is a n…

> modern city planning One theory has to do with sanitation and how well we've done at eliminating parasites. Some people have reported successfully curing allergies by giving themselves a hookworm infection. > The fact that some local African languages contain no words to describe allergic symptoms could support this hypothesis, indicating that allergic diseases have never been a problem among these populations http…

If only the US department of health had a bold vision on how to solve this.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#172

Post by Tor3 »

anotherevan wrote: post #88

Allergies are weird. I definitely became more sensitive to hay fever after a gastric bypass. I have a friend who for no apparent reason developed strong allergies in their sixties. Particularly to goats milk. So much so that they will not go to a restaurant that has goat milk products (e.g.: halloumi cheese) in their kitchen due to one too many visits to the hospital emergency ward.

My father also developed allergies in his sixties. And it got worse and worse. Soon he was becoming lactose intolerant as well, and had to start with gluten-free food. He could never be near oranges, unless they were grown without pesticides - the remains on the outside was enough to trigger a reaction. Then he couldn't eat farmed salmon, though he could still eat wild salmon. But there was more and more wild fish he couldn't eat either, which did hurt a fish lover like him. And on and on it went, until he was severely limited to what he could eat and what he could get exposed to.

Then one day he noticed that the mayonnaise he enjoyed every day contained a conservation additive (an E-type, as is how they're labelled in Europe) which he knew he used to have some reaction to in the past, another food product included it and he had avoided that one since like forever. So he quit the mayonnaise when he noticed that. But what happened next was astonishing - all his allergies, lactose intolerance and everything disappeared, and not much later he didn't have any issues with anything.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#173

Post by Tor3 »

dv_dt wrote: post #24

Hmm, I'm also wondering about studies about overly sanitized environments for children being correlated with higher allergy rates. I guess poking around for a good representative study, it's actually low diversity of microbial exposure, not "cleaning" per-se that is correlated - e.g this is one reason why households with dogs have lower allergy rates. A monoculture of certain tree species also implies less microbial…

I grew up on a farm and was constantly exposed to all kinds of soil, vegetables, animals, trees, well forests, grasses and hay.. and I never had any kind of allergies. However, when I moved to another European country I had severe reactions to the local mosquitoes. Not that it was itching very much or anything, just that it was bleeding like crazy. I would wake up in the morning and look like I had been through an especially messy vampire attack during the night. Bloody forearms, ankles.. It took a year, and then I got used to it and stopped having any reaction whatsoever (same as in my home country). No bumps, no itching.

Then Japan.. and the same happened, with the local mosquitoes. Bleeding like hell. It took slightly longer, but I did get used to that as well, so now there are no problems.

And.. I got itchy eyes when I travelled to Japan. As I said, I've never been allergic to anything. I didn't have sneezes or the like, but it was problematic. I tried to wash my eyes with salty water every day, and I got eye drops.. this went on for several years while I kept visiting Japan (I always stayed for long periods). Last year I finally concluded that it was actually the Sakura trees.. (The Cherry Blossoms) which caused it. And this year the symptoms are close to non-existing, so I'm concluding that I'm getting used to that as well (and I have visited Sugi forests many times over the years too, and no problems there). Hopefully.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#174

Post by Tor3 »

tpm wrote: post #52
Markoff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume it has more to do with less exposition to hay/pollen in urban areas, for instance in years in Beijing I've had hardly allergies since it is not exactly green, though I went to parks, but here in Prague right now with everything blooming it's nuts. Actually now that I think about it never head really problems with allergies even in Southeast Asia, though I was in very green areas, maybe humidity helps a…

I think the humidity has to play a role in that. Very dry air is not good for the nose even without allergies. This year the spring is very dry and also quite cold in Central Europe which makes things worse.

In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid. Today, for example, it's over 70% relative (when the sky was still clear and mostly blue, now it's raining so it's much worse). And, as said in that article, there's a lot of allergy in Japan. My wife (native) has a little bit of it, and I myself also reacted for a while, but given time it seems to have left me (as I mentioned elsewhere I grew up on a farm with exposure to everything and I never had an allergy before).

There's one guy I know who lives more or less in the middle of a forest with both Sugi and Hinoki, and he's suffering a lot. But he still likes it much better there than in the huge city where he grew up. I noticed that among the locals in that place (just a bunch of houses, not even a village) I didn't see anyone else with that kind of allergy.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#175

Post by tpm »

Tor3 wrote: post #174
tpm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the humidity has to play a role in that. Very dry air is not good for the nose even without allergies. This year the spring is very dry and also quite cold in Central Europe which makes things worse.

In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid. Today, for example, it's over 70% relative (when the sky was still clear and mostly blue, now it's raining so it's much worse). And, as said in that article, there's a lot of allergy in Japan. My wife (native) has a little bit of it, and I myself also reacted for a while, but given time it seems to have left me (as I mentioned elsewhere I grew up on a farm with exposu…

> In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid.

Yeah I realised that's a little bit of an issue in my theory. Of course if it's very humid I would also expect that most buildings have aircon that's keeping the humidity down and can contribute to the allergies.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#176

Post by Tor3 »

tpm wrote: post #175
Tor3 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid. Today, for example, it's over 70% relative (when the sky was still clear and mostly blue, now it's raining so it's much worse). And, as said in that article, there's a lot of allergy in Japan. My wife (native) has a little bit of it, and I myself also reacted for a while, but given time it seems to have left me (as I mentioned elsewhere I grew up on a farm with exposu…

> In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid. Yeah I realised that's a little bit of an issue in my theory. Of course if it's very humid I would also expect that most buildings have aircon that's keeping the humidity down and can contribute to the allergies.

Buildings, as in large buildings, maybe. Homes don't use that much aircon. We actually never do, except if we have guests, and in any case it's never used the way I experienced so often in the US - that it's actually cold (and very uncomfortable). When used in Japanese homes it's used sparingly. There's also typically a "dehumidify"-only setting, but that's mostly a losing battle, what with the house being surrounded by humid air (and until very recently even new homes were far from airtight), so mostly you just live with it.
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