Could I have a cite that allergy rates are going up faster in wealthy, urban, single children? Scientifically speaking this makes no sense at all.
Scientifically speaking, it makes a lot of sense if you consider things like the Hygiene Hypothesis and the Old Friends Hypothesis.
Like MandaJO said, my site is the notes I got from my professor (a real, live immunologist, whose notes I am not going to post here, since they are not mine).
You can look up Hygiene Hypothesis on Wikipedia, and it mentions that allergy rates are higher in kids from smaller families, and in developed countries.
If you go to Pubmed and search for an article called “The genetic and environmental basis of atopic diseases.” by Grammatikos AP, that article mentions that allergies are more prevalent in kids from smaller families, developed countries, and are less prevalent on the farm. (I would link to the article, but all my links seem to be going through my school’s Pubmed account.) This article is the 11th cite on the Wiki page for the Hygiene Hypothesis.)
Your hypothesis (that people have been born with genetic allergies forever) is all well and good, but this thread is about increasing allergy rates, not the cause of allergies in general. You can reject them all you like, but the Hygiene Hypothesis and Old Friends Hypothesis are both active, legit, and well-respected ideas in the field of immunology. They’re not perfect, of course, but they try to explain the trend of rising allergy rates.
love
yams!!
sinjin, can you post what your daughter did and did (does) not eat that cleared up her condition? I am interested.
She was originally 100% breast-fed for six months. She would scream and push away while eating. Drs started me on an elimination diet thinking that what I was eating was affecting her, by the time I took her off breast milk I was basically eating brown rice, my hair was falling out and I was totally exhausted. I think I lost close to 50 pounds in that 6 months. So we tried soy milk, no help. Finally we were told to give her Nutramagin and it was like a miracle. All of her symptoms disappeared in two weeks. (I see now that they are selling this stuff for colic as well, but she never had colic).
When she was 9 months old the Dr suggested we introduce one food a week. We tried bananas, oatmeal, peaches and everything else you give a baby and everything gave her hives. When she was about 1 year old he suggested we try hot dogs. I was:eek::eek::eek: Hahahaha, I was a nature mom; natural child birth, breast feeding, made all our food, including bread and yogurt, from scratch. My son who was 3 at the time had never had a hot dog, fruity sugary cereal, etc. Shoot I even made our pizza with whole wheat crust.:smack:
Sooooo the hot dogs worked. As did ham. And BACON! Beef, uncured pork, chicken, turkey = hives, bleh. As did wheat, cheese, eggs and bananas. It was a WTF moment for us.
She is now approaching 30 and still has most of the allergies she had as a kid. I posted here somewhere about the “new” allergists she went to when she was in grad school. They basically laughed at her when she told them what she was allergic to. Then apologized after testing and asked if she would participate in a study so they could publish a paper about her condition. They said they had never seen anyone else with even 1/2 the number of allergies she has.
She has carried an epi pen with her since she was allowed to go off on her own. She learned to use an inhaler at 18 months.
[Note to yams; sorry I’m such a bitch about this. We have heard so many theories and bullshit from allergists and other md’s over the years that I want to punch people some days. I was once chased out of a Dr’s office, the kid in my arms, into the pharmacy where I ran behind the counter and hid behind the pharmacist because the Dr wanted to give my kid an injection that she had previously had a really, really bad reaction to. We were literally running thru the medical center with the Dr running after us yelling at a nurse to call child services and at me that he was going to have my kid taken away.:(. The pharmacist pulled out his records and set the Dr. straight.
I have a tendency to get a little carried away on this topic.:smack: Hope your class is fun.]
Oh and she still can’t eat eggs, dairy, chicken, peanuts, beans, peas and some other stuff I can’t remember.
tl:dr