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Comment by cyco130 | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of a dark joke I sometimes make: Why are there no Turkish people above forty with nut allergies? Because they all died in early childhood.

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I get the joke, but I was born and raised in Turkey and I have never met a child or adult with nut allergy while I was there. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's incredibly rare.

I’m Turkish as well (and over forty). It’s a joke, I have no data on its prevalence except anecdotal. It does seem much more common nowadays than when I was a kid though.

Eh, no idea about Turkey, but sometimes it’s also a ‘what do people talk about when you’re around’ thing, and what do people actually recognize?

For instance ‘Asthma is incredibly rare in India’. Yet, having lived in India, I constantly ran across people with telltale Asthma symptoms (loud wheezing, lethargy, difficulty exercising, etc.).

I bet if you put those people on a peak flow meter, they’d all be diagnosed. I only knew 1 that got diagnosed though because ‘Asthma is incredible rare in India’, and also who can afford the time and energy to go to the Doctor?

Talking to a couple pulmonologists about Asthma in India (I got it when there!), they basically just laughed and said ‘at least this isn’t Delhi here, that is a gas chamber’.

For allergies, lots of people over time I’ve heard complain about things ‘tasting spicy’ that weren’t spicy, or seen people get facial swelling or hives after eating things. They just chalk it up to ‘oh yeah, that does it for me somehow. I guess I should stop?’. If asking if they have allergies, they just said no, we don’t get allergies here.

My parents' generation (1950 to 1970), born and raised in South Asia, had near zero infant mortality, and have zero food allergies. I have never met an aunt or uncle (out of hundreds) who have had a dietary restriction, and south Asian food uses just about every nut and spice and vegetable on earth.

In addition, the subsequent generation, my cousins, also have zero allergies. It isn’t until the kids born in 2000 and later that we see any allergies.

I found it funny when US doctors prohibit honey for kids until 1 year old due to risk of botulism, but one of the first things my culture does after a baby is born is give it a drop of honey for good luck. I wonder what the risk of botulism really is, because I have never heard of a baby suffering from botulism in my parents’ and my generation.

Are you claiming that their country had zero infant mortality, or zero infant mortality from allergies?

Sorry, I meant only my family, not the country. As in no parents experienced the loss of a child (born ~1950s and beyond) due to an allergy or an unknown cause (e.g. maybe they did due to a car collision, but not an undiagnosed allergic reaction). Point being that exposing all of those kids to all foods very early did not result in a single one dying. And neither did their kids.

Obviously, I am not advising anyone to not follow their doctors’ instructions, but the sheer numbers in my anecdotal study make me wonder.

You wouldn’t be the only one to question that. There is a theory that a popular children’s snack which contains peanuts is responsible for a low rate of peanut allergies in Israeli children.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19000582/

For peanuts specifically, early childhood exposure is pretty well validated to reduce allergy incidence at this point [0]. It's by far the most well validated case of the allergen exposure hypothesis. Interestingly, for the high-risk subset of children, early exposure is likely to increases incidence. Children with conditions like eczema, where the skin barrier is broken and allowing peanut proteins to get through the skin rather than purely orally, is thought to be an allergy development risk factor.

[0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=ear...

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