A Striking Rise in Serious Allergy Cases | Hacker News Reader

A Striking Rise in Serious Allergy Cases

wsj.com

59 points_culy29 comments

I think I've mentioned this story here before...

I grew up with horrible seasonal allergies (pollen and the like), to the point where I even got allergy shots and was heavily medicated. Visiting my cousins on the farm in South Dakota was awful if I didn't have a heavy dose of Claritin or Benadryl, which would basically put me to sleep. Fast forward several years to after college when I was in the Army...I found myself in Ranger School were most medications weren't allowed. So basically I just gutted it out when I started Darby (phase I of III). For the first 72 hours, I experienced the worst allergy attack of my life to the point that I didn't know if I could continue. For reasons that to this day I cannot explain I woke up on day 4 (or 5, I guess) and had no symptoms. None.

To this day I require no medication and have no allergy symptoms to speak of.

Edit: if there are any Allergists reading, I grew up in the Midwest and was the child of two parents who both grew up on what were basically farms. I was born in an urban center and would only experience a non-urban environment for fleeting weeks in the summer at Boy Scout camp and the like.

Just a personal touch: my two daughters had food allergies (e.g. milk, soy). The second one had food allergies to almost everything in a way that you think you are cursed or crazy because there is a lack of research literature in this front. These were the kind of allergies related to immaturity and after the first year they were mostly solved. The "interesting" thing is that for the unsolved ones you can see behavior changes related to food.

If you are a parent it is important to write a personal ledger to keep the daily food interactions and think scientifically because medicine doesn't have solutions right now.

I developed allergies and asthma seemingly out of the blue at around 8 years old, and my allergies grew in scope over time. At first I was just allergic to cats, but eventually that became all animals with fur or feathers, tree pollen and dairy.

It's just speculation but in my case I think the factors at play were: Genetics - nobody in my family has allergies but eczema and psoriasis are in the family and that can lead to higher chances of developing allergies Smoking - my mother smoked while pregnant and for years after I was born. Grandparents were chain smokers too so I was exposed to tons of second hand smoke Antibiotics - I don't know why or exactly at what age but there was a time when I was constantly getting ear infections (doctors often remark on the scars when they look in my ears), so I was on antibiotics all the time. If there is a natural balance of fungi and bacteria in our bodies, that was surely thrown off.

Today my asthma is mostly cured, I keep an inhaler just in case but use it less than once a year, but my allergies haven't improved at all.

FYI, this is the same scheme about me except there was only me and my sister getting eczema and nobody was smoking in the family. About antiobiotics I had a treatment every fortnight that went from when I was 2,5 years old to when I was 6

I've had serious allergies for over 20 years and it had gotten worse over time especially when near an ocean (had to stop diving since it was near impossible to equalize with all the excess mucus).

But I recently became vegan and in about 2 weeks time, the allergies went away. I also have a friend who has asthma and when she went vegan, it all but disappeared. There's a lot of documentation about this but doctors don't give this advice probably because nutrition and prevention aren't a big part of their training.

But for anyone suffering, give it a try for a couple of weeks. The quality of life gained is awesome.

Could this be more claims instead of a higher incidence? The uptick coincides with the ACA, possibly with a little lag.

Yes, possibly.

For the chances of a higher incidence I would say the way we raise our children these days is very different from when our parents raised us.

A lot of the food is processed, many environments were children play are close to sterile, etc.

This difference would probably be big enough to be noticed on a 10 year window.

Just a data point, but we have 7 kids and no allergies among them. We eat little processed foods and after school/weekends/summer the kids spend almost all their time outside. The downside is it takes longer to cook meals than just buy something pre-made and the kids need a bath every night because they come home filthy. The upside is no allergies?

> many environments were children play are close to sterile

[citation needed]

Given that these are claims of anaphylaxis, you would certainly be heading to the doctor no matter what. There would have to be a lot of newly insured people that were previously going to the emergency room and paying out of pocket if it were due to the ACA.

According to the organization mentioned in the article, food allergies have been on the rise in the US for more than two decades.

Here are some facts and statistics they've published online which I find both shocking and illuminating:

https://www.foodallergy.org/facts-and-stats

Once people started worrying about allergies, they started avoiding various foods, which caused more allergies...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/23/388450621/fee...

Were there any new chemicals allowed/introduced in the food industry in the last 5 years?

That's a really good question.

"During recent decades more than 100,000 new chemicals have been used in common consumer products"*

Also there's the idea that hybrid wheat has caused gluten intolerance

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214967/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573730/

Its not going to be chemical as it would be worldwide. Its more likely how we raise our kids. One interesting hypothesis is that we are too clean, we machine wash everything, we slather our hands with hand sanitizer before we touch babies, our children have stopped playing outside in the dirt and now sit on the couch with an ipad.

Further reading: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/02/23/38755328...

I was able to eat bread my whole life up to last year. Now whenever I eat it I get so tired I have to sleep. I played outside all the time as a kid... Something else is going on. Also, rural area report more claims than cities. You'd think cities would be "cleaner".

Maybe it's just part of getting old? I've never been lactose intolerant, but around the middle of my 40s I found that if I went to bed after eating a big bowl of ice cream I would wake up with heartburn in the middle of the night. I've learned to pop a few antacids after eating my ice cream before bed.

God I hope not, I'm only 28 and if this is a sign of things to come I'm not sure how I'll cope...

>I was able to eat bread my whole life up to last year. Now whenever I eat it I get so tired I have to sleep.

i got similar situation after moving to US and for several years eating cheap white supermarket bread (i.e. bleached white flour as the main ingredient, and the bread is produced with quick rising achieved by too much yeast and sugar, in short it is very different from the way bread was done for millennia and what our gut is used to). Took some time to find better, more correctly done, bread. As result of this (and some other similar - ie. less of the food filled with sugar/corn-syrup - dietary changes) glucose level jumps with lesser amplitude (ie. much less of that roller coaster ride of sugar rush followed by the slump).

Beside wrecking havoc with glucose system (and potentially paving way for diabetes), the large consumption of bleached flour, sugar/corn-syrup and yeast have been, if not implicated, strongly correlated with things like Crohn disease, autoimmune issues, etc... (note: i'm not a crusader against sugar - i'm actually a big eater of carbohydrates, including sweet pastries, cakes, etc. - it just took time to find the places which do it more "european" style. To illustrate the difference for example consider cake frosting - European style contains a lot of high-fat butter in addition to sugar, egg, high-fat cream, etc. where is American frosting is very high on sugar and deals away [partially or completely] with butter and cream, thus losing much of the taste/aroma and becoming very unhealthy in my view)

I found out in a pretty horrible way this year that I was a 'silent celiac' - symptomless gluten intolerance. I broke my leg whilst simply doing a hand-stand (spiral fracture of femur)! All the doctors were confused at how it happened and in the end it was only because I pushed for a blood test that I found out I had Celiac disease and this had meant my body was not absorbing nutrients and so had been taking calcium and vitamin D from the bone stores, making them really weak. My family has generally been very healthy (grandparents living past 100) and I am convinced this is down to chemicals in bread or changes in the wheat itself via G.M. An recent study from University of Sheffield suggests that for every diagnosed celiac, 8 others go undiagnosed. I'd advise anyone out there to get a blood test, as this would have saved me a few broken arms and this horrible experience of a broken leg and now having a semi-titanium leg after surgery..!

I doubt it. My wife and I were completely allergy free until 4 years ago. She developed a bunch of allergies then. I'm picking up some over the last 12 months. (And... I don't think too clean applies in my case. I'm a firm believer in the 5 second rule :)

A friend of mine developed serious allergies over the last few years as well.

Sure, it could just be age. But there's a two decade age difference between my friend and me. I've so far blamed it on LA's air quality, but it's interesting to see it seems to be part of a wider trend.

(I have no idea what causes it, but I suppose that article means I should widen the search for potential causes.)

If anything big brands have reduced the list of ingredients they put in food over that period.

(doing things like replacing preservatives with vitamin C and artificial colors with plant based alternatives, eliminating preservatives and upgrading packaging, etc.)

It also varies a lot. One store brand of kettle chips I had recently had ~20 ingredients in it. A second had 3 (potatoes, oil, salt).

The major spike in the graph occurs in 2012, so its something approved between 2010-2012. "The analysis also showed a greater increase in claims in rural areas than in cities. " It could be some pesticide/herbicide approved in the above time range. Some pesticide residue could be a sensitizing trigger turning immune system into overdrive.

Link without paywall, anyone?

Alternative source:

http://www.cetusnews.com/life/A-Striking-Rise-in-Serious-All...

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