What IS it with all these allergies?

[BlooDeBloop]

Just back in the UK after a decade of life in the EU and find the UK is full of people with allergies. Kids school has banned nuts. The numbers of adults I've met with gluten/coeliac disease, lactose intolerance, nut allergy etc is incredible. There was that terribly sad case of the teenage dying in London from eating a milk product. I reckon maybe as much as 10% of adults I've been meeting have some kind of complaint. What the hell is going on in the UK?

Even the experts aren't sure really. Apparently one contributing factor is that we're 'too clean' using too many cleaning chemicals in our homes etc.

Thing is, that definitely doesn't apply to me (allergies from birth pretty much despite my mum not keeping a pristine house) and my DD (dairy and egg allergy) living in a house that gets cleaned fortnightly at best and using Method cleaning products!

There must be some genetic element I think (my dad has a nut allergy which was extremely rare when he was a kid) and my siblings and I all have food allergies or hayfever.

I don't know. My ds has coeliac disease, it took us ages to find out that what was going on with him because he didn't have classic symptoms and because nobody in either of our families had ever had coeliac disease. I can say, with a high degree of confidence, the the hygiene hypothesis doesn't ring true in this house.

I developed a severe life threatening allergy to nuts and seeds age 10 in the early 90s. My twins were born with a dairy allergy and one has developed a serious egg allergy at almost 3. I have no idea, I wish I did.

I read some very interesting stuff from one professor who believes that sterilisation in the first year means that babies immune systems aren’t “primed” correctly and thus leads to all sorts of problems, from allergies to childhood blood cancer. He said that these problems strongly correlate with a country’s wealth and living standards and are not as common in poorer countries. They are researching which bacteria would be best to give young children in a yogurt type drink in order to protect against these things. Fascinating stuff.

I took DT2 for NHS allergy testing recently, done by a highly specialist allergy nurse. Whenever she did one of the prick tests it bled and she said “oh he has eczema as well?”. I said he hasn’t had eczema since we cut out dairy, and she said that only the kids who are atopic (get eczema, allergies, hayfever etc) bleed when they’re pricked, their skin is just different. It’s very strange.

My twins were both in nicu, as was I - everything sterilised within an inch of its life for the first few months. Also we were all premature, and mine were born by emcs, if that has any relevance, who knows.

I wouldn't have thought lifestyles in the UK were so different to most other EU countries that it would make so much difference. That's really interesting. I wonder if it's partly to do with how we feed babies or something.

I read an interesting article about csection babies having a different gut flora that could possibly be linked with asthma and allergies. Cannot for the life of me remember where though, will have a hunt.

I developed a bad allergy to oysters about 4 years ago. Must have had a bad one. I always think oh it was a one off! And eat them. And then really regret it for 24 hours. Very annoying.

There was also a spike in children with nut allergies whose mothers followed government advice to avoid nuts while pregnant. I avoided nuts when I was pregnant as per the advice at the time and my son has a peanut allergy. Wish I had used my common sense more and eaten lots of nuts while pregnant!

I have lactose intolerance that if I didn't cut it out and notice a huge difference I would have probably just put it down to really bad IBS or something gastro.

All 3 dc have milk allergy, one anaphylactic.
I'm assuming it's genetic but not sure

There are two different strands of dairy allergy and the type DD has (the rarer type) is seen apparently exclusively in kids who were formula fed as babies.

My milk supply was slow to establish and DD was readmitted and prescribed formula top ups. She was still BF but for 3 weeks had to have small top ups of formula but after that point was exclusively BF. I regret this so much as it looks like this wobbly start to BF has saddled her with a dairy allergy for life.

My guess is more people with allergies and autoimmune conditions that would normally kill them / their kids (eg dairy allergies / thyroid antibodies / Lupus) are surviving. There’s also the matter that thyroid conditions are undertreated in the UK as opposed to other countries, and that has also been linked to allergies developing in the kids that result.

My mum is pretty certain that her allergies were triggered by taking the pill. I know it's had a devastating effect on me (not allergies though).

Also the UK is very on the ball when it comes to knowledge about allergies and food safety - kids still die due to ignorance in European countries because they can’t get an epipen or the adults caring for them don’t know how to use them. Also some inflammatory gut disorders can be caused by untreated minor allergies but these aren’t counted (eg colitis / IBS / Chrons ) in stats. Allergy UK has some stats on the matter - apparently 10-40% of the world’s population has a diagnosed / undiagnosed allergy and 50% of the EU population is predicted to have one or the other by 2025.

I was born on the 70s to a non-sterile house and was fine up to my late 20s when I worked in Australia for a while. What there, I had an allergic reaction to air pollution, especially diesel particulates. Now, this is not in any way as serious as those with auto-immune diseases, or anaphylaxis, but 20 years later, and I now react badly to tree pollen, red wine (sob), and some tropical flowers. I'm currently on holiday and am taking 2 fexofenidine a day just to keep my nasal passages slightly open and my eyes from streaming. My sister has also started (in the last 10 years) having allergic reactions to trees, which is odd as she has lived in a forested area for over 40 years without issue.... It does seem to be getting worse, and I can't see any pattern / reason for it

My youngest was induced early, has inutero steroids, strong antibiotics in SCBU. She was breastfed for 1yr and had a dummy, we have cats and are not clean freaks - she has CMPA and now celiac.
I ate normally during pregnancy including peanuts etc.

My DD developed multiple food allergies following childhood vaccination. She was still breastfed and reacting to allergens that passed into breast milk.

I know this is not a popular position on MN but it is confirmed by both our GP and allergist as the explanation for her immune system disorder.

My midwife advised me to eat nuts when I was pregnant but told me NOT to tell anyone as she was putting her job on the line by doing so. She said she'd been in practise for over 25 years and in her opinion nut allergies had only become common since pregnant women had stopped eating them.

Actually she told me to eat most things but avoid the soft cheeses because of the lysteria risk.

I don't remember many allergies when I was at school in the 1980s. There was one boy who had cealiac disease and used to bring his own food to every party. When I was at university in the mid 1990s I met a man who had a very serious nut allergy - not knowing about it someone opened a pack of peanuts in the kitchen and an ambulance had to be called. I remember them though because they were almost unique in my experience .... that is until my DCs went to school

Both DCs recently diagnosed with Coeliac disease. No one else in the family has. I haven't been tested. Certainly didn't have a germ free upbringing bordering on manky

However I was diagnosed with "spastic colon" in my early 20s and many of my relatives have suffered from stomach complaints. In fact, very few of my relatives live past mid 70s and almost exclusively die from a form of cancer.

I think the increase might be largely because of more accurate diagnosis.

That Allergy UK stat is incredible - to the point of being suspect. It reminds me of the survey of Americans done in the 80s and found over half had undiagnosed mental health issues. There is something deep in me that rejects the idea that humans are just naturally ill as a species. I will always reject that as a natural state of affairs. So it is incredibly worrying - what the F is going on? The UK is particularly populated so more people live in cities than in France for example. Air pollution? Convenience food? Things like health care and bottle feeding and cleanliness and food advice to pregnant French women are at least the same as in the UK.

My guess is more people with allergies and autoimmune conditions that would normally kill them / their kids (eg dairy allergies / thyroid antibodies / Lupus) are surviving.
Thyroid disease has to be very severe before it kills you. And we have known the symptoms and how to treat it for a 100 years. If there is an increase in this condition it has nothing to do with this.

We are exposed to more allergens and we have better diagnosis.

I went to primary school in the 1970s, everyone had a school lunch and there was no choice. It was meat, potato and 2 veg followed by a pudding.

Peanuts were something you only saw at Xmas as were nuts, and you had to work bloody hard to get into them.

Now there are choices at primary, usually including sandwiches.

Supermarkets have food from all over the world and even if you go to a local green grocer the onions are likely to be from Spain and tomatoes from Holland.

Crab came in a tin unless you went to the seaside and things like mussels were something you only had if you went on holiday to France or lived on the coast.

Fruit was apples,oranges and occasionally pears.

I'm probably lactose intolerant, as a child I would say that milk made me feel sick, nowadays I think I would be taken to the Dr. I can tolerate small amounts of cheese and milk as an ingredient in other things, but if I have too much I know about it.

IMHO climate change has a role too, plants are growing in the UK that would not survive 100 years ago.

It's something that interests me, I would love to be involved in academic research (but got turned down for the job). My kids don't really have allergies, nor do we but they were term babies, breastfed, no antibiotics as babies and I'm not very good at cleaning and don't use chemicals (they also were not bathed daily). I didn't eat nuts in pregnancy because at the time they said don't. I think there's a genetic component, a viral component and luck to be honest. As to why they are less in other countries, perhaps they are undiagnosed, perhaps (especially in poorer countries) their parents never lived long enough to reproduce so the genetic tendency wasn't passed on

There are far more people in countries such as Spain, who are lactose intolerant.

DS has a cows milk protein allergy and I have no idea why. But I do Know I hate the look I get when I tell people. Its a look of "you're one of THEM". I feel like I have to justify it somehow.
I have no idea where its come from but he's sick everytime he comes into contact with it. I think it is related in some way to dairy making me sick when I was pregnant but I'm not sure which caused which, if in fact either did cause the other. He is also allergic to banana and nuts, neither of which I ate when pregnant.. So who knows.
Some of the intollerences are fashionable though, and while some people do have allergy to gluten/coeliac disease, others just eat a GF diet which is different to an allergy, but they like to pass it off as the same.

I asked the same question to a group of nurses/health visitors and they were adamant that genetically modified foods are to blame. However healthy our diet appears to be, it seems unlikely that any of use can avoid these foods for ever. There are also the usual reasons for the increase in allergies such as: kids not in the open air enough, not enough illnesses to build up the immune system, junk food diets etc etc

It would be interesting to see how many of those who say they have an allergy are actually only suffering an intolerance. Its not defined as the same thing apparently but I can't remember where I heard this! It went something like: An allergy is defined as causing a threat to the sufferer's health/life whereas an intolerance causes an inconvenience to the standard of life. Something like that.