Something that’s always puzzled me: Despite the “common knowledge” that most Asians are lactose-intolerant, Americans seem to make a much bigger deal out of it than the Japanese. My Japanese parents didn’t even know there was such a thing. The Japanese wikipedia entry for it is only 3 sentences long; the English entry has 8 sections and 51 references. And dairy products are pretty ubiquitous in present day Japan.
Also peanut allergies seem to be more common in the US, or at least receive much more attention.
What century was that? It sounds like the Victorian era version of “female hysteria” as per wiki: “… stresses associated with modern life caused civilized women to be both more susceptible to nervous disorders and to develop faulty reproductive tracts.”
But anyway, back to the OP…
I did notice while in Europe that is was more difficult to find things such as lactaid (my sister is really lactose intolerant). I couldn’t find it in pharmacies in France and they would suggests a nutrional supplement store. I’m aware that lactose intolerance is more common amoung Asians, Latin Americans, and Native Americans, but my sister is none of the above. I was genuinely sruprised that it was so hard to find products for lactose intolerance and my sister had a tough time in Parisian restaurants during our family trip.
One thing I’ve realized is that in North America lactose and “modified milk ingredients” are used like crazy in the way food is processed. A lot of real cheeses are made with microbial fermentation which makes them low in lactose, but a lot of foods in North America have milk powder added as a thickening agent, even to fermented products (which should be low lactose) to give it a nice velvetty texture.
For example: traditionally made sour cream. In real sour cream, the fermentation process tends to break down the lactose. But if you look at a tub of sour cream at the grocery store, the ingredients will list: cream, cornstarch, and citric acid (to create a phony tartness like real sour cream). There is no bacterial culture in there at all to break down the lactose. It isn’t really sour cream, it’s just “cream” modified to taste like “sour cream”.
Same with true cottage cheese. It should be fermented milk heated until it gets clumpy curds, but what you buy in the grocery store here has cream, milk or milk solids added to make it “creamier”.
So my guess is that part of the difference in instances of lactose intolerance is that in nations that don’t highly process their foods, they may actually be encountering lactose less frequently. They’re eating real microbial fermented cheese the way it was made here 40 years ago (certianly he cheese I was eating in Paris had been aged and was the real deal). Honest to goodness sour cream and not cream whipped up with sour stuff added to it. The stuff made the old fashioned way just has less lactose than the stuff churned out rapidly for the grocery store shelves.
Here, a bag of ketchup flavoured potato chips has lactose listed as an ingredient. :rolleyes:
From what I can see ADD/ADHD/ODD seems to be over diagnosed in the US. I would imagine the actual real suffers to be roughly the same as humans are basically the same. Kids here aren’t put on drugs as quickly as in the US from what I’ve been told by a relative who worked in the the child related medical field in the US for 10 years and is now back in Ireland. Her opinion was that a lot of kids where mis-diagnosed. On this side of the pond she says that the opposite is true and kids are not diagnosed when they should be.
There does seem to be a rise in allergies over here but nothing to the levels I hear about from the States. Nearly every American I’ve ever meet was complaining about some allergy.
In addition to the role of advertising, I think the US adversarial legal system plays a role in some of this. ADD/ADHD in kids is one example. Going through the diagnosis process entitles the kids to certain legal rights within the public schools. Other countries may not have similar legal incentives to formalize the diagnosis. They may have more flexible ways of meeting kids’ needs without diagnosis, or they may not offer the flexibility at all.
The insurance industry also plays a role in the US in formalizing diagnoses. While a doctor under another system might be able to prescribe a medicine without tying it to a specific diagnosis, the US insurance reimbursement system codifies the diagnosis. Any prescription or treatment needs to be tied to a covered condition. For example, some insurance policies are written so they don’t cover treatment of side effects from medication (really, I was appalled, but it was patently true). So there needs to be a diagnosis of some condition to justify the prescription (for example, GERD is a disorder, vs. heartburn as a side effect of some other medication). Or prescribing birth control pills, which for a long time was only covered by insurance for treatment of another condition, not for birth control.
Also, while the US may not have the best medical system, I believe we have the largest medical economy. We have problems with equity and affordability, but we do spend a ton on diagnosis and treatment.
I was surprised this year to see notices on the school doors banning folk from bringing in latex baloons. Now I’m not going to question the fear of killer balloons - or peanuts. But just strikes me as, um, odd. As I understand it, most sources accept as credible the recent increase in these severe allergies, tho they are unsure as to the cause.
Sounds like the OP is commenting more on the branding and marketing of conditions, not necessarily the condition itself.
Some have become generally accepted and there is value in recognizing that our learning has progressed in understanding human biology/psychology, etc. What if dyslexia and Asperger’s Syndrome were not identified and understood as they are now?
Others seem to lead to controversy - either because medical authories disagree whether there is a unique condition being described or because the condition feels more like an attempt at branding by a corporation.
Sometimes, it feels like a condition is being defined in order to let the person (or their parents in the case of a child) off the hook. As if a prescribed drug can take the place of sound parenting - and yet the lines are very, very blurry.
Here’s one for you: Sensory Integration Issues. My then-preschool daughter was having social issues - i.e., biting and striking other children. As part of addressing this issue, we were told regularly that she has Sensory Integration issues - she had never been in a setting where the room space was as big as the classroom she was in, with so many kids making noise - and it lead to “processing issues” for her, which manifested in her problems, apparently because she was reeling from all the sensory input coming her way…
Was this a real issue? No clue - I can see where a change of scenary can be jolting to a child, but would it lead to bad playtime behavior? Regardless, rather than consider anything more dramatic, we clamped-down, enforced a zero-tolerance policy on biting, etc. and she got past it pretty quickly - a few months; not bad for a 3-year-old.
But behavior change takes time - a few months is reasonble, but we have been conditioned as a society to expect immediate results. If parents get impatient for results, and have a ready-made diagnosis, I can see them jumping to meds for other issues far too soon…
Hey, there’s one I know a little about as that was the label used to explain some difficulties my son was experiencing. He wasn’t biting or hitting anyone, tho - and I didn’t understand that to be a big part of SID, tho I guess I can imagine it happening - especially if there were other personality factors. But what my wife and I came to understand of SID went a long way towards explaining our son’s difficulties, and the prescribed therapies went a long way towards helping him overcome/deal with them.
Everything we read suggested that SID was either quite uncommon - or at least uncommonly recognized/treated as such - I don’t know which. And I can well imagine that the symptoms we found explained by SID might lend themselves to differential diagnoses. I’m undobtedly exposing my ignorance of both conditions, but for example my WAG is there might be considerable similarity between someone with severe SID and another with mild autism.
He’s doing fine as a HS senior now, so I haven’t really looked into SID for several years. As such, my perception may reflect out-of-date info.
Primary adult lactose intolerance in the Kivu Lake area: Rwanda and the bush
2 out of 27 Tutsi (7.8%) were lactose intolerant.
21 out of 36 Hutu (58%) were lactose intolerant.
17 out of 22 Twa (77%) were lactose intolerant.
27 out of 28 Shi (96%) were lactose intolerant.
For 11 mixed-bred Hutu-Tutsi the frequency of lactose intolerance was 55%. Cite.
So yeah, other folks are lactose intolerant too, but in North America, we whine about it more.
But how lactose intolerant is lactose intolerant? Drinking milk without Lactaid makes my tummy hurt for a bit and creates pretty awful farts. If I were going hungry except for the milk I can’t say it would really affect my life.
I never heard of restless leg syndrome until I started this thread. Yeah I suppose it’s the prevalence of these terms in heavy rotation telly ads in America that make the illnesses seem more common there.
It depends on your intolerance. I just get the farts a little. My mother and sister will get cramps that knock them on there asses (my sister can not stand ups straight and will remain curled over in a ball). My sister’s body will try to flush it out, resulting in severe diarrhea that can leave her dehydrated.
When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia there was a bit of concern about the fact so much of the aid packages contained powdered milk which could contribute to the risk of diarrhoeal disease contributing to more fatalities in children.
If I was going hungry, a severe case of the runs would not be helpful.
The person I mentioned above only first heard of it from her mother, a nurse, who had in turn only encountered it from a doctor who pretty much said ‘nobody cares about it because there’s no treatment’.
I’m gluten intolerant in a similar way. But if food were an issue, I sure wouldn’t care that I get burpy and gassy over a piece of bread. Americans in general have the LUXURY to have “intolerances.” And we have the luxury of being less than completely happy and calling it dysthymia.
But some intolerances and allergies ARE life threatening - we can just make a big deal out of ones that are merely uncomfortable.