Childhood Allergies

[237SJ]

I recently had some friends visit and their son was allergic to the cat (and nuts and a few other things). His mother said that he developed them within a few days of his childhood vaccinations and she`s convinced that is what caused them. That got me thinking that the only time I encounter allergies amongst customers at work, they are always Westerners (usually Brits, Americans and Aussies). I`ve never had anyone from from India, China, Africa etc come up to me and tell me their kid is allergic to nuts. Are these allergies a Western problem? And what is different now - I don`t remember kids at school having nut allergies when I was little.

[woofgang]

apparently they do have allergies but seem to be less likely to have a nut allergy
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20624649some

I remember discussion about this at work. One theory is that in countries where a food has been a part of the diet for many hundreds of years, those who were seriously allergic died so the allergy tendency wasn't passed on. In countries where the food only became widely eaten once allergies were known about and there were alternative foods, allergy sufferers survived and had children.

[beso]

There is also a suggestion that paranoia about allergies has caused western societies to avoid introducing potentially allergenic foods to children leading to a rise in cases of food allergies.

In countries like Israel where small amounts of peanuts are routinely introduced to the diet of the very young such problems are rare. The theory is that the developing immune system learns to tolerate the substance.

The ultraclean modern home is also a problem because the immune system is understimulated. The developing immune system expects to be confronted and when it doesn't get that stimulus it will look for something to react to.

An excellent example of this is where the absence of parasites in the gut leads some people's immune systems to attack the lining. One treatment is to introduce worms.

This should not be confused with the allergies to lactose and gluten. These are digestive problems where the suffer does not have the enzymes to deal with these substances. The ability to digest lactose as an adult and handle gluten are very recent adaptations in humans, arising in Europe sometime in the past eight to ten thousand years.

Consequently the genotypes that do not carry this ability are still quite common. Very little milk is consumed in East Asia largely because lactose intolerance is common there.

Food intolerance is certainly not caused by immunisation.