Peanut allergy theory backed up by new research

Careful with that if you raise your child in the US. Providing alcohol to a minor is a misdemeanor criminal offense in most states, even if you do it in your own home.

I think you are on the right track. This is nothing scientific but from personal observation, in Mediterranean countries (where there is much less stigma with alcohol, it's consumed in family environments and kids usually try it) there is less alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. In countries where the laws and societal customs restrict alcohol more, people have much more of a tendency to go overboard when they do drink.

For example, in Spain kids typically grow up buying drinks in shops, drinking them outside (the so-called "botellón") and partying until 5 or 6 AM from when they are like 15 or 16 (sometimes even at 13). It's considered to be a problem but most of the time nothing really serious happens, as they grow up knowing how to control themselves after they have drank too much and been taken home by their friends once or twice. When there are news about people jumping off balconies or doing similarly stupid things due to being dangerously drunk, they are almost inevitably British youngsters on holiday who aren't used to drinking in their country due to heavy taxation and restrictions, so their drinking goes completely out of hand when they suddenly get the chance to do what they never could before.

Not saying that kids getting drunk at 13 is OK, but the other extreme is definitely bad too. Encouraging kids to have their first contact with alcohol in a family environment rather than in a wild partying trip to Ibiza is definitely a good idea in my book.

I didn't drink until my early 20s, probably in part because when I was a kid my mum would mix white wine with orange juice as her preferred drink. If I found a glass of orange juice sitting in the kitchen, chances were it'd been 'poisoned' with wine. It wasn't until I tried bourbon and coke a lot later that I realised alcohol can taste good.

My grandmother was a smoker, and the story goes: she sat my mom and aunt down when they were in 8th/9th grade respectively, in the living room, and made them light up and smoke a cigarette each. To the end.

It was a sickening, mildy traumatic experience and as a result neither of them ever smoked again.

I'm unsure whether introducing other vices this way would have similar outcomes, but there's a lot to be said for simply removing the allure of secrecy and taboo.

The kids eating dirt having fewer allegies is known as the Hygiene Hypothesis. Owning a dog also reduces allegies. Growing up with nerd friends, I remember my friends who lived in pristine sterile homes had the worst allergies, which became self-perpetuating as they had to stay in sterile environments to keep from aggravating their allegies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

Thank you for the honey exception. That's an imporant one I learned about with my first kid.

Peanut M&Ms might be the best pill regimen I've ever heard of

That's kind of amazing.

When you're out and about, try putting her M&Ms in a prescription bottle, and see how random strangers react to her popping a few at a time from the bottle.

"Best of all, they're covered by our medical plan!"

There is sub-lingual immunotherapy available for hayfever. I don't know how much it boosts the immunity to allergens. I'm currently on year 3 of a 5 year course.

Hopefully it works -- does not seem to have had a huge effect so far.

Surprisingly for me, bee pollen has pretty much halted my (at times severe) hayfever. Initially I took 1 per few days and had an 'internal hayfever' type reaction then soon enough my nose and eyes stopped reacting.

The local pollen cures are bunkum, imo, just teaching your body to deal with pollen in general does the trick. A large dose off any pollen, as found in bee pollen, seems to work wonders when taken regularly in spring. Ymmv, but I've struggled for a long time until recently.

Have a read up on the use of hookworms as a suppressant for hayfever and other immune system overreactions.

It seems like there's more work to be done there, and lots of potentially exaggerated stories of big pharma trying to shut research down, but the hypothesis has always sounded sensible to me, and what little formal research I've heard of has been extremely positive.

> No thanks, I'll pass, and just keep peanuts out of the house.

Well duh!

If you have a serious allergy, you avoid peanuts like the plague. But if it's minor... say a slight rash being the only symptom... then perhaps it's worth giving the child peanuts, starting with a very tiny amount, and then increasing gradually. Keep an epi-pen around at all times just in case, and if there's a serious attack... drop the attempt altogether and surrender to the fact that your childs quality of life will be less-than-optimal forever more.

And I'm certain absolutely nobody lies on the Internet.

some daycares did install air filtration systems and got a whole lot more asthma cases. We didn't have the cash to do that for ours in the 90's and it turned out all the better.

Note this part:

> In this cohort of infants with likely milk or egg allergy

Even accurate conclusions for such a cohort might be very different -- including even inverted in direction of effect -- from what is true of the broader population.