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Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

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Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#81

Post by mft_ »

throwawayabcdef wrote: post #38

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…

> There is more to it than this.

Humans are really complex, and something that is proven to work for many on a population scale may not work in every individual case.

And the flip-side is that anecdotes to the contrary do not mean that a population-scale observation is invalidated.

(I know this isn't the point you're making, but others in this thread are.)

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#82

Post by makeitdouble »

justaj wrote: post #2

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…

This reasoning seems to work for some cases and not others, so there might be a ton of other factors, potentially more impacting depending on your situation and genes. The article points at food and other immune elements (e.g. smoking, so I assume pollution also) for instance.

For instance Japan has a known pollen problem. There there's no correlated action to keep small kids out of pollen (that would mean masks, not playing outside at school etc. which are measures extremely hard to take), nor to prevent anyone from getting pollen if they're not known allergics. They go to school and have to be outside for significant time.

Yet the allergy rate increased twofold in a decade, as the pollen presence also increased.

https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15622459

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#83

Post by aklemm »

misja111 wrote: post #71
aklemm wrote: post #58

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.

Did you read the article? I think we can stop calling it a hypothesis, asthma emergency visits went down by as much as 60% within 10 years after the programme started.

Yes, and I believe the hygiene hypothesis is one of the mechanisms at play, for sure. Didn’t mean to imply otherwise. But this other idea I think could ALSO be a factor and it’s not as neat and tidy for people to understand, so it’s important to not oversimplify.

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#84

Post by lazide »

somedude895 wrote: post #46
stavros wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, I would play in my (outdoor) sandbox and then lick the dirt off my hands, because it tasted good. I still got asthma, though. My hypothesis for why children in rural areas get less asthma is because there's less air pollution, not because they eat dirt.

Licking dirt off your hands isn't the same as being exposed to pollen.

In an outdoor sandbox? Sure it is. Where do you think all that pollen goes when it falls out of the air?

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#85

Post by lazide »

selcuka wrote: post #64
cyco130 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a dark joke I sometimes make: Why are there no Turkish people above forty with nut allergies? Because they all died in early childhood.

I get the joke, but I was born and raised in Turkey and I have never met a child or adult with nut allergy while I was there. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's incredibly rare.

Eh, no idea about Turkey, but sometimes it’s also a ‘what do people talk about when you’re around’ thing, and what do people actually recognize?

For instance ‘Asthma is incredibly rare in India’. Yet, having lived in India, I constantly ran across people with telltale Asthma symptoms (loud wheezing, lethargy, difficulty exercising, etc.).

I bet if you put those people on a peak flow meter, they’d all be diagnosed. I only knew 1 that got diagnosed though because ‘Asthma is incredible rare in India’, and also who can afford the time and energy to go to the Doctor?

Talking to a couple pulmonologists about Asthma in India (I got it when there!), they basically just laughed and said ‘at least this isn’t Delhi here, that is a gas chamber’.

For allergies, lots of people over time I’ve heard complain about things ‘tasting spicy’ that weren’t spicy, or seen people get facial swelling or hives after eating things. They just chalk it up to ‘oh yeah, that does it for me somehow. I guess I should stop?’. If asking if they have allergies, they just said no, we don’t get allergies here.

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#86

Post by rdedev »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #53
justaj wrote: post #2

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…

This is known as the "Hygiene Hypothesis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis The basic rationale for it is that the human genome did not evolve in a sterile environment, it evolved in an extremely hostile environment, and so developed pretty harsh defense mechanisms, which if not trained (via early exposure) on the appropriate targets will instead learn to target harmless compounds as well as the body…

I see it as more of a side effect of an immune system that is designed to adjust itself for whatever pathogens are present in its environment.

Depending on where you are born, you can be exposed to a completely different set of microorganisms or compounds present in the environment. Your body first needs to know which of those are benign and not. A simple heuristic is to tolerate most of these that you have been exposed to till a certain age.

But hey this is just my armchair biology. Don't know if there is anything supporting it

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#87

Post by MostlyStable »

lostlogin wrote: post #76
lotsofpulp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You wouldn’t be the only one to question that. There is a theory that a popular children’s snack which contains peanuts is responsible for a low rate of peanut allergies in Israeli children. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19000582/

For peanuts specifically, early childhood exposure is pretty well validated to reduce allergy incidence at this point [0]. It's by far the most well validated case of the allergen exposure hypothesis. Interestingly, for the high-risk subset of children, early exposure is likely to increases incidence. Children with conditions like eczema, where the skin barrier is broken and allowing peanut proteins to get through the skin rather than purely orally, is thought to be an allergy development risk factor.

[0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=ear...

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#88

Post by rdedev »

addicted wrote: post #48
potamic wrote: post #5

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.

Look I've lived in India my whole life and this is how it is there. People take a lot of effort to keep their homes clean but public property? Nope. Not my responsibility not my problem, that's how the thinking goes there.

And besides what is the point of talking about how Europe did it 100 years ago? We know better now and still we are not taking an effort to instill some basic civic sense here.

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#89

Post by rdedev »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #74
throwawayabcdef wrote: post #38

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.

The hygiene hypothesis is mostly for childhood allergies and even then it wouldn't explain everything. Here is a counter anecdote: my sister has some skin allergies but I don't. I was allowed to play outside and used to just run around in my backyard and my neighbours. Those places can be pretty muddy. My sister was not allowed to and she has allergies.

Re: Finland's National Allergy Program Successfully Reduces Allergic Diseases

#90

Post by cyco130 »

selcuka wrote: post #64
cyco130 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a dark joke I sometimes make: Why are there no Turkish people above forty with nut allergies? Because they all died in early childhood.

I get the joke, but I was born and raised in Turkey and I have never met a child or adult with nut allergy while I was there. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's incredibly rare.

I’m Turkish as well (and over forty). It’s a joke, I have no data on its prevalence except anecdotal. It does seem much more common nowadays than when I was a kid though.
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