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Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

I've heard more than once that its related to living conditions being so much more clean / sterile than they used to be. If you don't come across different substances regularly, your body has a hard time determining whether they are good or bad and is more likely to react when it finds them.

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Allergy fear causes parents to not introduce peanuts at a young age and the lack of exposure causes peanut allergy. In Israel there is a peanut snack that children eat beginning very young. They have not seen the same uptick in peanut allergies.

Haha yeah it’s called Bamba, it’s a very delicious snack and my parents said they would let me eat a bunch of it when I was younger for this very reason. You can get it in the states.

I've seen it in Trader Joes. Its nice but I got bored of it quite quickly.

We introduced peanuts at a very early age. No impact. Our daughter had no allergies. Our son has an extreme peanut allergy. Based on this experience, I don’t believe early introduction helps.

How did anecdotal evidence of two individuals change your stance on advice based on proper, large scale research and international teams of subject matter experts? There is no claim being made that allergies can be prevented for sure, merely that early introduction to allergens significantly reduces the risk.

The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends introducing children to peanut at an early age: https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages...

It's slowly becoming the accepted norm worldwide. In the Netherlands the (very recent) advice is to start with eggs and peanuts (in the form of pure peanut butter) from four months on.

That can't be the only explanation, my first allergic reaction was at half-hour old (yes, at 30 minutes old), still have a scar from that on my face... ('What fight gave you that one?' 'Oh, the usual, formula milk as a newborn...') Though I suspect I'm still 'lucky' to only get rashes and 'hay-fever' reactions...

Funny story, 32 years later I'm still allergic to lots of stuff (food, plastics, heat), a couple of years ago I was so sick of it I forced my GP to have me tested. (It was forced because he was of the opinion that we knew I had allergies, so testing for a known outcome wouldn't tell us anything.)

He called me back asking why I was still alive... According to the results they found traces of a raging nut and peanut allergy (and other stuff some of which they didn't bother specifying further). So why am I still alive? I can't stand the smell nor taste of them, and they 'only' give me rashes and during accidental ingestion swollen lips/tongue...

>>I can't stand the smell nor taste of them

From what I know it is common to not stand the smell and taste of what you are allergic to. When a child really refuse to eat something it can be an idea to get it tested for allergy, since it unconscious can be because of how their body react to it.

There are a number of theories, this amongst them. There is also a connection to atopic dermatitis, which causes a skin barrier issue that allows proteins to pass.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-ide...

There is also a more specific hypothesis, that allergies are caused by the parts of the immune system that would normally be fighting off parasites.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

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