71–80 of 103 posts
The hygiene hypothesis is compelling, as many in this thread demonstrate. But there is sort of an opposite less tidy explanation which needs to be studied further: our immune systems are confused by a barrage of foreign antagonists in the modern industrial world and causing it to go haywire.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Checks out in India as well where allergy levels are as low as hygiene levels. I think you have typo with 10000 days.
India doesn’t have low hygiene levels. Thats nothing more than a racist TikTok trend. Indians do have a different conception of public urban space which matches more closely with how the urban public in Europe would treat public space a 100 years ago, but that’s not surprising because proper urban cities in India are about as old as urban cities in Europe were a 100 years ago.
For me this link results in a 503 I've read the gist of this article in my local news org feed. What it basically comes down to is that Finnish scientists noticed that Russian children who grew up in rural areas usually had way less asthma cases than Finnish city children, and thus began to research why this was the case. They hypothesized that early (first 10000 days) exposure to micro-organisms might play a key rol…
Anecdotal backup: as a child I had a horrendous dust allergy that led to multiple hospital visits. To mitigate the problem, my mom became a clean freak, trying to keep our apartment dust-free. The allergy persisted until I grew up and moved out on my own without having a vacuum cleaner. Living in a messier environment led to the allergy basically disappearing.
I have an allergy to a specific cleaning product ingredient for instance, although I never got to know what exactly. It was not something commonly used, I never triggered it by myself and only reacted when helping cleaning a friend's house decades ago.
My kid also seems to have it, but again it only ever happened once at a shop, and no allergy test raised it (other stuff were found though)
"dust" allergy is sometimes complicated.
There is more to it than this. My children have had severe food allergies since birth: we know this b/c they had reactions to breast milk based on what mom would eat. The also have had eczema since birth and one developed life threatening asthma at one year old. His trigger is the normal cold virus which he is constantly exposed to. With that said, however, my kids are filthy all the time and play outside constantly…
I used to eat eggs several times a week, and now I have the type of egg allergy now where I can't even eat baked eggs, so no muffins, brioche bread, cookies, etc.
My mom is a family and children's photographer. She likes to photograph kids in their backyards or in local parks, sitting in the grass. She often encounters small children who are unnerved by the feeling of grass as they have never touched it before. Also, parents will ask if their child could sit on a blanket, because the ground is dirty. I'm really curious how this attitude started. It is so alien to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you claiming that their country had zero infant mortality, or zero infant mortality from allergies ?
Sorry, I meant only my family, not the country. As in no parents experienced the loss of a child (born ~1950s and beyond) due to an allergy or an unknown cause (e.g. maybe they did due to a car collision, but not an undiagnosed allergic reaction). Point being that exposing all of those kids to all foods very early did not result in a single one dying. And neither did their kids. Obviously, I am not advising anyone to…
And my anecdotal input: grew up on a livestock farm, also spending a lot of time in woods and river. No allergy problems at all. Moved to a city and had annoyance-level problems ever since. Decades of observation lead me to suspect particulates (engine soot, tire dust, etc.) as significant antagonists beyond the more commonly cited biological villains. Any chemical with a big-enough stretch of molecule to match what an immune cell is using as its search key.
There is more to it than this. My children have had severe food allergies since birth: we know this b/c they had reactions to breast milk based on what mom would eat. The also have had eczema since birth and one developed life threatening asthma at one year old. His trigger is the normal cold virus which he is constantly exposed to. With that said, however, my kids are filthy all the time and play outside constantly…
The hygiene theory also doesn't make 100% sense to me, I had no food allergies, no pollen allergies or asthma as a kid. Then in my late 20s, I got an egg allergy bad enough to require an epipen, as well as seasonal allergies, both out of nowhere. I used to eat eggs several times a week, and now I have the type of egg allergy now where I can't even eat baked eggs, so no muffins, brioche bread, cookies, etc.
To me, it seems the parasite theory makes sense in tandem with hygiene. Some people by upringing become predisposed to allergies, while others have genetically as a result of humanities constant fight against intestinal worms. As our genetic profile changers as we age, so does how our bodies express said genes which would be designed to fight something we no longer have.
For me this link results in a 503 I've read the gist of this article in my local news org feed. What it basically comes down to is that Finnish scientists noticed that Russian children who grew up in rural areas usually had way less asthma cases than Finnish city children, and thus began to research why this was the case. They hypothesized that early (first 10000 days) exposure to micro-organisms might play a key rol…
> first 10000 days A 10000 day old “child” is in their late twenties.