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.
At some points, some things are bad luck, at least until we truly understand the mechanisms and causations.
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.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009167491...
Or maybe in your lungs.
Anaphylactic shock is extremely rare. And even in cases of anaphylactic shock, it's only fatal in an even rarer number of cases (which makes sense, anaphylactic shocks is a biological reaction of your body to save itself, not kill itself).
We really don't know how many lives emergency epinephrine has saved, but it may have only been necessary in less than 1 out of 50 cases. However, it benefitted the manufacturer to overemphasize the prevalence of dangerous food allergies and the risks of shock and encourage doctors to prescribe them in increasingly more "just in case" cases".
It's in this world that parents and doctors alike became insanely cautious and paranoid about introducing allergens. Conveniently, we saw the rise of simpler, more highly processed baby and childrens' foods at the same time.
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.
Add allergies to the list of things Millenials killed I guess.
I'm absolutely NOT arguing that and I thought my post made it very clear that epinephrine does save lives.
But the overrepresented sense of fear actively made our kids less safe.
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".
But, I think it may go a step further than that. If we zoom out on the timeline to the span of human evolution, eating grass seeds as a significant part of the diet is very, very, very strange. It wouldn’t surprise me if some human subpopulations, especially those who adopted agriculture later on, aren’t suited to eating grass seeds at all. And I’m just thinking about within European subpopulations. There were people roaming around the steppe when others were long settled. And beyond even that, the population increase enabled by wheat et al could plausibly produce a large enough competitive advantage for the group that some individuals having tummy problems probably would not register much on the selection pressure meter back in those days.
I’ve come around to the idea that wheat sensitivity is probably real. I used to be quite skeptical also. I think if you told someone 30,000 years ago that the earth would be full of people eating mainly grass seeds, they would find the idea completely ridiculous.
> 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.
The tricky thing with the data set available to us is that anaphylactic deaths are so rare that it's hard to establish meaningful findings: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4382330/
We do know though that hospitalization rates are about the same for people who take epinephrine vs those that don't. The speed at which they get to the ER seems to have a bigger impact on the recovery from the reaction than the Epipens do: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10811...
> Implying the increase in EpiPen prescriptions caused people to be more cautious about food allergies feels exactly backwards.
How so? Bringing awareness to risk in general makes people more cautious. Advertising crime rates in your town to sell you a security system will overall make people feel less secure.
What's your source here, and how many of those people actually experienced a non-allergic one-off angioedema that was misdiagnosed as anaphylaxis "just in case"? Or worse, wasn't even diagnosed, their parent saw them experience angioedema after eating something for the first time and assumed an allergy without any diagnosis ever?
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-...
The idea that everything the body does is harmless natural magic that should be allowed to run it's course is killing people.
> The idea that everything the body does is harmless natural magic that should be allowed to run it's course is killing people.
Not sure where you got this from my point that the risk is overemphasized.
I know people have peanut allergies all over the world. But the significance of the allergy is definitely different in the US than most other places imo.
"breathing into a brown paper bag"? An anaphylatic reaction is literally a life-threatening event requiring prompt medical intervention. It's not "anxiety".
And funnily enough, the breathing in a paper bag is _absolutely_ a recommended treatment for anxiety attacks by doctors. My father is one, and had my wife do it when she had a panic attack during a particularly rough airplane landing recently.
So again: it's a standard and normal thing, which is in the regular medical parlance.
The reason to do it is your trigger to breathe is based on CO2 acidity, not oxygen - you can't detect O2 (hence why inert gas asphyxiation is a huge hazard) but can detect CO2. But if you start shallow breathing very rapidly you end up in feedback loop. Rebreathing the air ups the CO2 content, which encourages the body to take deeper breathes, which in turn helps with the anxiety and ensures you do get enough oxygen (since you can wind up passing out, and low O2 wipes out the reasoning center of thought very quickly).
[1]: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/breathing-into-a-pap...
aerostable_slug•2h ago
Generate a miasma of benign pestilence in your child's crib, mimicking the protective inoculations provided by early exposure to peanuts and other potential allergens, "farm" air, and the like. It could be packaged with Flonase for sneezing parents and an 'essential oils' scent dispenser to cover the barnyard smell.
Use AI to tailor the precise blend of aerosolized rodent feces and tree nut dust to optimize your child's immune system, and et voila: funding!
johnea•1h ago
ibejoeb•1h ago
all2•1h ago
hangonhn•1h ago
And like sibling comment said, you can just also just take them outside and let them be kind of outdoorsy.
ErikCorry•1h ago
alex_c•42m ago
woah•1h ago
mauzy•36m ago
4gotunameagain•30m ago
At least here we have some exceptions, with some deeply knowledgeable people. But to offset that we have software "engineer" hubris.
tines•25m ago
bodiekane•22m ago
alliao•27m ago
croes•24m ago
viraptor•6m ago