Now, see, this is exactly the sort of thing that prompted my question. OK, a kid had an allergic reaction from sitting on a rug. What’s the evidence that this had anything whatsoever to do with peanuts? It seems to me that a much more likely culprit is the fibers that the rug is made out of. But the fact that everyone knows that peanut allergies are so common means that that’s the conclusion that everyone jumps to, even though it’s completely unfalsifiable. The fact that the rug was well-washed after the peanut exposure isn’t taken as evidence that it wasn’t the peanuts after all; it’s taken as evidence that the allergy is so severe that even the traces left after washing were enough to set it off.
It may not have had anything to do with the peanuts in the rug. Irrelevant. Plus, *something *set that kid off. As I stated earlier, in my experience at a school in my neighborhood last spring, 6 out of 325 students had life-threatening allergies to peanuts. If I have 50 kids visiting me for Halloween, 1 of them statistically will have a life-threatening allergy to peanuts. At the school I worked at, 2 of the kids had parents who were recent Vietnamese immigrants who didn’t do a great job of managing their child’s exposure (we found a granola bar with nuts in one kid’s school pack.) We had to use an EpiPen twice in the few months I was there. We do know that these allergies are far more prevalent than in the past, and I’m not going to second-guess who is truly severely allergic and who isn’t.
Anecdote warning!!! My daughter’s eyes swelled closed and she started wheezing in her kindergarten class when the class made peanut butter as a project. She was known to have a peanut allergy so was sitting in the back of the classroom during the peanut butter making experience. Off she went to the emergency room for a shot of epinephrin. (Also available by epi-pen in the nurse’s office, but not used in that instance). All turned out well.
BTW the rest of us in the family routinely ate peanut butter and peanuts in her presence with no bad effects. I still loves me some PBJ sandwiches.
We sent the kidlet out tricks or treating every year and every year had candy she could eat available at home to “trade” for the bad stuff. It was no big deal. She knew from a very very young age not to eat anything not pre-approved by Mom, Dad or big brother.
The only people I wanted to slap where those who didn’t believe her when she refused to eat their offered treats because they didn’t believe she “really” had allergies.:smack: Fortunately they were few and far between.
(Bolding mine)
You are correct. Now I am a lot less grossed out by the thought of what I am breathing in when someone farts. (I had read that smells are particulate in a book as a teen.) The correct statement is “many smells are also particulate”. The rest of what I wrote still stands. I wrote “There is no reason not to expect any of the allergenic components not to be included in the airborne odor particles.” The allergens could be present. A person has no way of knowing whether he is only smelling volatile, non-allergenic portions of the molecules, or volatile allergenic portions, or whether any particles are present. Having worked in kitchens, I can attest that I not only inhale smells, but inhale particles which get trapped in nostrils and lungs. Chronos asks whether anyone has ever had an allergic reaction to peanuts from a mere smell, because there’s no way to know what that “mere smell” consists of.
She was breast-fed for six months, did not drink soy formula which she was allergic to along with cow milk and eggs, and is now 28 years old. She is still allergic to chicken, eggs, milk, soy, shellfish, peanuts and other legumes. Her last allergist wanted to write a paper documenting her case, she refused.
Allergies are basically type I hypersensitivity reactions to IgE.
Basically the immune system is designed to respond to certain antigens (like the ones commonly found on bacteria) and ignore other antigens (like say the ones found on food, dust, and such things that we come into contact with on a daily basis). However, in the Type I hypersensitivity we have WBC’s known as Mast Cells that have been primed with IgE (an antibody to a specific antigen). When that antibody comes into contact with it’s specific antigen it triggers the Mast cell to basically release it’s contents (all sorts of fun things that basically trigger the first signs of inflammation- vasodilators, temperature, and even things that can damage the surrounding tissue and lyse them. The point being in a NORMAL scenario if a Mast cell and it’s IgE encounters a bacteria or pathogen nearby- basically the bugs antigen is recognized, and the Mast cell acts like a tiny landmine- releasing its cytokines, inflammatory mediators and nasty things right into the surrounding tissue- and basically trying to impair/wipe out the pathogen, as well as recruit more WBCs and quickly destroy the foreign invaders before anything can go down.
So it’s like tiny landmines if you want to be simplistic about it, IgE antibodies are the triggers, and the Mast cells (and basophil cells do this as well) are basically laying there in wait for foreign particles to come in, and trigger them.
That’s all good and well, as inflammation is a good thing- it’s a signal to help trigger the immune system into working to remove the invaders. It’s when the inflammation gets out of control that we have troubles. Or when it fires at the wrong time.
That’s the case with the Allergies- basically the IgE antibodies that are produced and still being made are sometimes sensitive to things that normally shouldn’t be triggers, or are common everyday things that are normally encountered- like pollen. Pollen antigens meet up with the IgE, and Trigger the Mast Cells. The Mast cells release their stuff, and the body kicks into overdrive trying to repel the “invasion”. What ends up happening is basically an autoimmune reaction, the body is reacting and triggering and releasing all these chemicals and such and basically just damaging its out surrounding tissues.
So allergies are a type of Autoimmune disorder- basically the fault of defective/oversensitive Antibodies (IgE) that are produced by that person.
That’s why anyone can have these issues- the amount of antibody variations produced by the body is astounding, and plenty of times we create cells that are anti-Self. But the body normally has mechanisms that prevent these rogue cells from developing or proliferating any further, and shuts them down in a normal immune system. It’s when these fail safes fail, or something gets through that people develop certain autoimmune problems.
Not irrelevant, since the question is about peanut allergies. And this knee-jerk assumption that an allergy is always peanuts could cause serious problems: If a kid swells up from eating a peanut-butter sandwich, and you switch to bologna sandwiches and the kid still swells up, then you really ought to consider the possibility that the kid is allergic to wheat, not peanuts, instead of jumping to the conclusion that a peanut must have looked cross-eyed at the bologna at some point in the processing plant. Likewise, the kid who got sick from sitting on the rug might have an allergy to cotton or something, that will need to be diagnosed eventually if he’s going to have a healthy, happy life, but the peanut hysteria might get in the way of that.
Yes, but the kid had already been confirmed to have a severe peanut allergy. That’s why I said it was irrelevant whether the rug set the child off or some other allergen did. He still has a severe peanut allergy.
This story is too far removed to be very useful. But based on what was written, either 1) The mess was not as completely cleaned up as they realized, 2) There was another source of peanuts that was overlooked, or 3) Another previously undiagnosed allergy cropped up. Either way, he’s still highly allergic to peanuts.
I know parents who insist that their children are “sensitive” to milk and don’t let them drink it, but the kids drink it plenty to no ill effect when their parents aren’t around. I know parents who insist that dairy causes phlegm production in their kids because they read it somewhere. Peanut allergies are not in this category. My brother developed a nut allergy in his late teens (30 years ago, not recently) and to this day, my mother insists that he must have brought it on himself (“He didn’t have it when I raised him!”)
You knew I was going to jump into this thread sooner or later, didn’t you?
But I will refrain from the too easy one liners and get serious. Apparently the peanut allergy epidemic, if you will, is real. It was almost unheard of in prior generations as stated in the OP. I can certainly attest to that, being a child of the 50s. So just what is the cause of the increase in peanut allergies? Is it generational? Evolutionary? Environmental? There must be a cause for this sudden shift in human physiology.
Which does not preclude the overreaction of the body being forced by some little fragment of frisky DNA getting turned on or off or somehow making one have said reaction. And in the future they may well discover exactly how to turn on and off the allergic reaction by manipulating the DNA in some manner.
“Promoting this nonsense”? Do you really think my comment will change anything, anywhere? I presented it as a completely non-scientific theory, unsupported by any medical evidence. If you took it as “homeopathic pseudoscience” that I was trying to promote over a public forum, the only human intellect that is weakened is yours, dumbass.
So what purpose does the story serve? If you just wanted to make the point that some kids have life-threatening allergies to peanuts, then saying “I know a kid who has a life-threatening allergy to peanuts”. Not that I think anyone is disputing that point in the first place. But if there’s no evidence connecting the rug to peanuts, why raise the point at all? “I know a kid with a life-threatening allergy to peanuts, and he once had a reaction caused by an unknown source” doesn’t make the point any stronger.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be confusing. It wasn’t my story. I agree with you; I saw no point in telling it, either. I was just trying to answer your earlier question of whether someone might be able have a reaction to the smell of peanuts, and you had questioned whether the story illustrated the peanut allergy it claimed to be about. It, too, is irrelevant. Allergies are nothing to sneeze at.
**corkboard, ** personal insults are not permitted in GQ, or any other forum outside the Pit. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
I will further note that this forum is intended for factual answers, especially those that can be supported by cites. Posting “completely non-scientific theories, unsupported by any medical evidence,” and based on nothing more than your personal speculation, is also not appropriate for GQ. You shouldn’t be surprised when other posters attack it.
An ex-boyfriend used to have a peanut allergy. He once went all wheezy just because a girlfriend kissed him after eating a peanut-butter cookie.
ETA: I recall reading recently that the higher incidence of peanut allergies in, e.g., the U.S. may be related to the way we process our peanuts. Something about the way we roast them increasing the amount of the chemical that causes the allergic reaction, or makes it less likely to be digested, or something like that. Anybody else hear about this?
Not about peanuts specifically but allergies generally:
There is speculation that a genetic component is involved, because if at least one parent has a mild allergy to something, the children often have severe and more allergies.
Allergies can develop later in life after a lot of exposure: Bakers who handle flour dust for 20 years suddenly get allergic to it and have to quit their job; Nurses and other health care workers suddenly become allergic to latex gloves. So exposure is not the solution, lack of exposure is not the solution.
When the Wall fell, scientists noted that the East German population, with similar eating habits, and the same gene pool, had far less allergies than the West German. This was surprising, because in the 80s, the leading theory was that the rise of allergies was caused partly by the amount of pollution in the air stressing the lungs and airways which then over-reacted to pollen. However, the level of air pollution due to non-filtered factories was higher in the East. What was different was the food - the DDR didn’t want to pay foreign money to import chemical additives, and there was competition between different companies: if margarine or bread was available, people would queue up and buy it. So unlike West Germany, the food had no colourings, no aromas, no enhancers. Since a lot of the additives were already under suspicion to cause cancer (the Azo-colourings for example) or cause AHDD (the phosphates), this sounded plausible.
