Why are so many children allergic to everything now days?

[Mummysharkdoodoodoo]

Watching grand designs and the couple have two children who are allergic to most things. Even the doctor was surprised that they were so ill on such high tablets.

Why are children allergic to more and more things now days?

What causes it?

It’s not that we’re too clean, the hygiene hypothesis had been pretty much debunked.
Please do not expose your children to cow poop, as suggested above.
The jury is still out on why the prevalence of allergies has increased. The changes in our microbiome are most likely due to increasing Caesarean sections, low rates of breastfeeding, reduced time spent outdoors, changes in diet. This is according to current research. Unfortunately this is widely misinterpreted as ‘our homes are too clean’.
There is some evidence to suggest that having a dog can reduce the risk of developing allergies. This doesn’t mean that your children shouldn’t wash their hands after playing with the dog, though.
All the above factors relate to the population as a whole, not to individuals.

@Thymeout has alluded to one of the most recent studies. This is the LEAP study that has shown that waiting 6 months to wean is one factor in the increase in number of allergies. The result of LEAP are that a wide variety of foods including potential allergens such as eggs, milk and peanuts should be given before 6 months of age. Weaning recommendations are almost certainly going to change in the very near future because of this.
There is also the clean theory that by preventing casual exposure to a variety of pathogens through less pet ownership, less playing in mud and wide spread is of antibacterials means that immune systems are not getting regular low levels of work to do. So instead of being unemployed the immune system becomes self-employed and finds work to do.
Finally pollens many children of the 60s and 70s have hey fever to rape pollen. Rape only really started to be grown in the UK in the 80s due to EU subsidies on it. Now Hemp and medical grade opium poppies are grown in the UK this only really started in the noughties. So the pollens are changing.
Finally up until the 90s herbicides we're in widespread use in the UK farms and were blanket sprayed on all crops this has stopped now so many more wild flowers grow. This combined with councils reducing the number of verge cuts per year due to funds means many, many more wildflower varieties proliferate. Not forgetting that councils no longer stick to the poisonous plants legislation so ragwort grows everywhere too. All of this has dramatically change the UK pollen profile.
As for all the stuff being sprayed around, actually it is considerably less in the countryside as herbicide and insecticide use is right down nowadays compared to the 60s, 70s and 80s.
But the increase in allergies is not just in the human population, but also dogs, cats and horses too. There are even horses with grass allergies now. After fleas the single most common cat and dog allergy is now house dust mites.

I honestly didn't know a single person with an allergy during my childhood ( born 60's) I think babies were weaned really quite early ? eight weeks in some cases. When I had my DC in the 80's every second child in our village was diagnosed with asthma and dairy intolerance. Children were weaned around 12 weeks. My DD had a cough through one summer and the GP diagnosed asthma, it wasn't and I wouldn't treat as such, the cough went away, never returning. Many other parents started giving their children asthma medication. However I didn't know of any children with nut allergies. Now I have GC, babies are weaned at 6 months and there are horrendous life threatening allergies. Apart from the age of weaning I've got no idea what's happening

grandmother I am not saying nobody had allergies, I am saying it was rarer. My sister had hayfever, as does my mother, but it was rarer. I think the point about rape seed is true as I never had hayfever until well into adulthood.

My son was part of the LEAP study.

I watched a horizon programme ages ago and they thought it was down to genetics, our obsession with cleaning everything with antibacterial products, sealed double glazed homes, not playing in soil and mud enough to get good bacteria in our guts and also strong antibiotics under the age of 2. I really remember them driving the point that we need to ingest bacteria from the earth, including herbivore animal poo (like deer) to build up our immune system.

And I am older. I know because my sisters hayfever allergy was really bad, that few people had it. I only knew one other child growing up that also needed to take anti histamines. At that time they were not as good as now and would cause excessive sleepiness, so other kids knew my sister had hayfever as she would have a nap during the day during the summer holidays, as they made her so tired.
Yes people still had asthma. Asthma is now diagnosed at a much lower level than it used to be.
I had never heard of peanut allergy until I was an adult and working with kids, and at the beginning, even that was rare.#
Amongst friends my age, one has a cat allergy, a few have hayfever, and one has a rare allergy to pectin. But there is nothing else.

I’m older. Grand daughter is anaphylactic to nuts.
This has crossed my mind many times. When I was growing up no one had allergies.
When we were pregnant we ate anything. Now, can’t eat this, or that. I understand the reason why. Or maybe it’s all the additives in food today.

Allergies not being recognised a couple of generations ago. I don't think kids are choking on nuts, I suspect it was an allergic reaction.
Intensive farming probably doesn't help either.

*were choking on nuts.

Agree with many PP's about multiple causes. Another new, and growing, hypothesis mentioned by one or two PP's is the gut bacteria issue. Many babies are now routinely given antibiotics following Strep. B concerns, in fact there was a campaign to give all mothers and babies antibiotics at birth. C Sections are also seen as not transferring the vaginal bacterial flora which kick starts the babies immune system at birth. If you then don't BF, perhaps that also contributes to low bacterial load. It is a complex picture both at birth, and the following early years when modern babies are not as exposed to as many bacteria and allergens as they once were.

It's adults too.

We always had cats at home when I was growing up. but in my 40s I became severely allergic to cats.

I itch a lot and doctors have been unable to pinpoint the reason. I have to take antihistamine every 3 or 4 days, and probably will for the rest of my life.

My dad has mild eczema but Id never suffered from it. Lo and behold I'm 55 and now have started getting eczema. Both DCs had mild eczema when little. Now in their 20s it's flaring up badly and regularly.

Chronic hay fever that blighted all my young years. It disappeared totally after I had my first child and has never returned.

I worry at times about crop spraying, chemtrails, food preservatives etc but who knows.... Their mostly seems to be no rhyme or reason behind allergies

No anaphylatic shock from nuts looks very different. I have read that most babies were exposed to oil made from peanuts before 6 months as it was put on creams and oils used for babies. It is when it was removed that peanut allergy became common.

My aunt was born in 1938. She always had a pot belly but stick thin arms and legs and was described as a miserable grizzly child. GPs put it down to the bombs and gave her jam sandwiches to stop her crying.

She was diagnosed as coeliac in the late 70s

My theories are:
Central heating especially in rise in eczema
Caesarians
Overly cleanliness
All above were relatively rare during 60s and 70s

My allergic ds was breastfed until about 3yrs old. I think it is genetic, his allergy (peanut) is a manifestation of inherited atopy as he has also suffered with asthma, outbreaks of severe eczema, dairy intolerance. He's 7 now and its primarily the peanut allergy that remains a concern, all other atopy symptoms are minor. We have variations of atopy in the family, most just annoying and inconveniencing. Its only ds with a severe allergy, my nephew has debilitating asthma, I believe these are on the same atopic spectrum.

Breastfeeding creams to put on nipples used to contain peanut oil, so babies were exposed to peanuts. When breastfeeding creams were no longer pushed and no longer had peanut oil in them, peanut allergy soared. Exposure seems to make a difference.

Nah, I had tons of peanuts when pregnant with ds, ate loads of it around him as a baby, he was diagnosed at weaning age as he grabbed dds crust of toast with peanut butter on! I often think now I would have been better to abstain until he was older and his immunity stronger.

I grew up in a rural cottage on a farm. Dirt, dung, outside loo, the works. We ate wholesome farm cottage food, mostly from scratch and very few processed meals.

I'm allergic to sunlight. Beat that.

I was born in the late 50s. I don't recall any child at school having allergies and there was only one who died and that was of polio.
However I have developed asthma and hay fever as an adult. No way of knowing whether environmental factors contributed to that.

As a child in the 70s my friend was allergic to my cats. She didn't have any pets and her house was always spotless unlike our filthy pit her diet was also pretty limited, she used to have the same dinner nearly every day.
I think it is a combination of things that cause it but late weaning and overly clean households/lack of dirt being the prime culprits.

I bf dd. Eat everything and anything, including nuts in pregnancy. Horrendous vb. dd is allergic to tree nuts, eggs and sesame. No allergies in the family.

Interestingly upon our allergists advice she was exposed to peanut butter daily from 16 weeks (smeared in her mouth and on her hands and lip). No peanut allergy just other bloody nuts.

It's infuriating. Who knows what caused it. I've had several parents of older children with allergies recommend getting a pet and letting dd get as mucky as possible in the garden as often as I can as the bacteria really helped their dcs.

Farming methods, processed food, not enough good bacteria kicking around from cleaning products, not enough interaction with animals and plant bacteria? Better diagnosis? Who knows. Wish I had the answer!

I was talking about this with my colleagues a while ago, I work in pharmacy and the amount of allergies and special diets people have these days. When I was growing up in the 90s there was very few kids with a milk allergy or anything other than hayfever.

I think that the ability to gain and spread information has changed perception. I don’t think you can say that someone wasn’t closed to enough pollen or that everything is too sterile. In a larger context, we can observe trends. On an individual level, my story is similar to many here. I have terrible allergies; my siblings have none. We were all delivered the same way, fed the same way, played the same way. I must have something different in my genetic structure that predisposes me to allergies.

Also people made other excuses for allergies or diagnosed them as other things. It took forever for my parents to believe that I was having reactions to food because it was stuff I had eaten since I was little, and they had never heard of these types of allergies before. They thought I was just complaining about the food!

Also, my child was very clearly born with all of her allergies. No environmental factors, early weaning etc. I ate everything in the world whilst pregnant.

And just become people don’t remember someone having allergies , doesn’t mean they didn’t have them. You can remember what ever child in your class had for lunch every day? We aren’t just talking about anaphylaxis. Why would anyone have told you and you remembered.