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?

we were part of an allergy study as dd had severe milk, soy and egg allergies from birth. And has subsequently developed allergies to stone fruit, dust, cats, tree pollen.

both exh and me are atopic adults - eczema, asthma, allergies

dd is affected, ds (so far) isn't

there is an allergy exposure theory - there are some tests going on where they expose the child to the allergens in a very contained environment as it's been shown that in a lot of cases, this does actually lessen the allergy. But it has to be done in a controlled environment and is only for the most severe allergies. This does give credence to the weaning theory I would suspect.

btw, I was an allergic child at school in the 70s/80s. I didn't have milk like all the other kids, I had to have orange juice. There was one other child in my class with very very severe eczema and asthma. She had terrible asthma attacks at school all the time. Allergy testing wasn't done then - I just knew I couldn't drink milk without getting very very ill so I suspect a lot of it just went undiagnosed.

Ali1cedowntherabbithole I also have a 23 year old and he was weaned at 4 months as was the advice at the time, and introduced to peanut butter very early.

Interesting article in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph about a study on peanut allergy. 640 babies considered at high risk of peanut allergies because of other allergies were divided into two groups. Half were introduced to peanuts and half were not allowed them. By the age of five those who had never had peanuts were 6 times more likely to be allergic.

I think more people take notice of mild allergies and avoid what they think is causing it. For example people say they are allergic to penicillin because it gives them diarrhoea, that is a side effect not an allergy.

I could say I’m allergic to wine because I sometimes wheeze when I’m drinking a glass, it’s not a dangerous wheeze but it’s a reaction to something. No idea what and I haven’t had it investigated. Some people would have or have avoided wine saying they were allergic to it.
Death from allergic reactions is still very rare, people’s perception os it is that it is relatively common due to more reporting of cases particularly in this country.

• The overall case fatality ratio (the proportion of anaphylaxis that is fatal) is estimated at a fraction of 1%, or 1-5.5 fatal episodes from anaphylaxis per million of the population annually (Pawankar R, 2013)

Home freezers were restricted to an ice box inside the fridge.

We always had a chest freezer when I was a child in the 1970s as did everyone we knew. Admittedly it was filled with cuts from beasts from our own farm that was cut up on the kitchen table!

For those that think that there weren't deaths from atopic disease, here's a graph of asthma deaths. Note that the y axis is a log scale so it flattens the ups and downs. The clean air act was 1956, ventolin was introduced in 1967 and corticosteroids in the early 70s. You can see the drop in the mortality rate quite clearly after each of those changes. I think it is very hard for those of us under 50 to know what it was like to have asthma in the 1960s and before.

Since asthma is linked to allergies maybe we are seeing the increase in allergies because fewer people are dying because of their asthma. There's a lot of emphasis on allergies because of the increase in anaphylaxis but the death rate is tiny in comparison to the asthma death rate even now.

As far as the 'foreign food' theory goes the most common foods to have allergies to are: milk, eggs, peanuts, treenuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish. Most of which are native.

People also use the word allergy in a different way to medics. Coleiac disease is not an allergy.
Also agree that people use the word allergy to describe very mild reactions, that would not have been used in the past. DP gets diarrhoea if he eats a dish with lots of peppers. A small amount of peppers is fine. I suspect younger people would say they are allergic to peppers. DP simply says a large amount of peppers does not agree with him.

People keep saying that in the past kids just died of allergies and this was not recognised. That may have been the case hundreds of years ago. But in the 60s when I was a kid I played outside and knew everyone in the immediate neighbourhood. All the kids, and I knew who had babies. The only people who died was a kid who had cancer. And the only people with allergies was my sister who had severe hayfever and another kid with severe hayfever.

So you knew every child in your entire area and can say for a fact that none had any food allergies? I find that hard to believe. How on earth would you know?

I wouldn't know necessarily. But none ever said they did. And certainly no one died of anything. And we used to go in others houses and get snacks.

Also as a teenager babysat some of the younger kids, and their parents never mentioned any allergies.

Haven't RTFT but I would have thought a pretty obvious factor is that people with severe allergies wouyld have been killed off before they were old enough to pass their genes on.
The flip side of being able to control more and more conditions is that now evolution is going backwards the gene pool is getting more and more unhealthy.

Not a popular thing to say, but maybe people with hereditary conditions should think twiceabout whether they are being selfish before having children

Autumn - selfish to the evolution of the human race for further muddying the gene pool or selfish for bringing a child into the world who might suffer an allergy?

My parents discussed with their doctor before TTC as they are both atopic (Dad has a nut allergy, mum is asthmatic). The doctor said 'well do you think your life is worth living? If you do then your children will probably feel the same'.

I have an extremely severe nut allergy but I am very glad I'm here all the same. I appreciate my good health more than some people I know who have never experienced illness and that appreciation of my health contributes to me being happy.

My husband has allergies and so do both our children. I don’t so blame him.

On a serious note, he suffered terribly as a child from almost constant diarrhoea, cramps, eczema and breathing issues - which sound very much allergies but no-one knew.

So back in the early 1980s I was the chubby kid with awful eczema (no-one knew the cause then, but I now know that avoiding cows milk makes it go away). Now I’d be the kid with an intolerance to cows milk and an inhaler that allowed me to run around (and so likely to be less chubby).

Go back a generation, and my mum spent many days off school because she was wheezy. She knew not to drink orange squash (now she knows it was tartrazine that gave her asthma attacks) or to run around when the grass was being cut or to sit near particular trees. She would now be the kid with inhalers and a daily dose of antihistamines to manage pollen allergies.

@fruit I think that's a bit off. Pregnancy CAUSED my allergies (or it was a massive coincidence)

Fruit I'd also think thats mean to suggest people with allergies shouldn't have children.

Having children / reproducing is half the purpose of being on the planet. And people have an incredibly strong instinct & desire to have babies and look after those babies.

Not a popular thing to say, but maybe people with hereditary conditions should think twice about whether they are being selfish before having children

2.5 % of Brits carry the CF gene which is the most common autosomal recessive disease in the UK. 8.3 % of Brits have asthma which has a genetic component. Inherited mutations cause about 5-10 % of all cancers (1 in 3 of us will get cancer at some point in our life). About 8% of people of west african origin carry a sickle cell gene (it helps to protect against malaria hence the higher incidence in that population). 4.5 % of people are red-green colourblind (it's X-linked so mostly men), there are other inherited diseases that affect your eyesight.

Basically we all carry mutated genes for something, but most of us don't know. In this country you can get PGD for ~500 diseases that are known to be caused by a single gene mutation but for more complex diseases with a genetic component (like atopic disease) you can't be tested in advance. And of course while a small number of people will die because of their atopic disease the vast majority have productive lives. I really don't think DH and I shouldn't have had the DC because of his hay fever, do you?

Next step eugenics.

I think it's because we live in cleaner environments now. All cleaning stuff is massively overused.
Lower breastfeeding rates has to play a big part. When you breastfeed the baby tastes and eats everything you eat albeit in a watered down version.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the rise in allergies to peanuts is due to the government advice at the time to avoid peanuts while pregnant. I followed this advice while I was pregnant plus I breastfed my DS and he has a peanut allergy now! The government advice has now changed.
Although I have asthma so my DS is probably prone to allergies.

@FruitofAutumn ridiculous, neither me or dh have allergies yet our child has. My db does so I know it must be in my genes somewhere but I think it’s pretty extreme to say people shouldn’t reproduce because one of their relatives has a health condition as that would probably rule out most of the population!

I think recognition and changes to the environment (diversity of foods, hygiene, high propotion of CS births) have a lot to do with it.

(I am aware that I'm going to lump allergies and intolerances together, but despite the different physiological response, the management of avoidence diets is similar and people frequently have both)

DS1 had allergies and intolerances in infancy which he has grown out of (milk, egg, soya). He was an EMCS birth, and although was BFed, had formula in his first days as he and I were both exhausted. He was also whisked off to NICU for a few hours so missed out on immediate skin to skin. His first obvious allergic reaction was early in weaning... with hindsight the head to toe eczema that he already had correlated with trying to give him formula a few weeks earlier through a particularly vile growth spurt. DS2 mearly had a contact rash from tomatoes. Even now he's a bit older, I have to ration him. His entrance to the world was much easier. Probably coincidental but does fit trends. DS1's system never fully settled on the exclusion diet until use of high strength probiotics as it had so many months of being irritated and flushed through.

I've never had a settled digestive system and have been prone to croup, ear infections and eczema. When DS1 was on his exclusion diet, my system was the best it's ever been. As he weaned back on, it deteriorated back to its old habits and I began to spot patterns. I seem to have a low tolerance to dairy (can cope with fatty or well-processed forms) and to soya flour. 30 years ago, soya flour wasn't rife through mass produced baked goods. Curiously, I've never liked milk or consumed much milk to trigger obvious reactions. As an infant I was apparently put on Wysoy milk although it seems a mystery to my mum why that was advised. I've had a much better time with ear infections in adulthood which coincides with living in a smoke-free environment and have been able to take up running without hyperventilating as I regularly did in my youth.

I know only one person who would not be around without epi pens. In a large secondary school, you'd typically have about 1:150 on the list for serious allergies. Traditionally, I think milder ones wouldn't have been identified, and many triggers such as nuts, shellfish and soya were absent from most diets.

@GooseDownCreek just wanted to say thank you for the Telegraph link - interesting article and I hope pregnant women who are low risk don't begin excluding things from their diets unnecessarily.

Fruit I'd also think thats mean to suggest people with allergies shouldn't have children.

I am not suggesting that, but I do think as the generations roll by and the gene pool becomes more and more unhealthy (for want of a better word) it is eventually a question that humankind will have to face.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the rise in allergies to peanuts is due to the government advice at the time to avoid peanuts while pregnant.

While I don't doubt that you may have read it.
The whole reason the advice was issued in the first place was because of the rise in peanut allergies. The avoid peanut advise must only have been in place for a handful of years. Then they decided it wasn't improving the situation so lifted the ban.

But the allergies definitely came before the ban.

There's an article in today's Time suggesting that we wean too late in the UK: www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/times2/why-do-so-many-british-children-have-allergies-7x9x28s67

sorry it's probably behind the paywall