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?

@jennymanara - thyroid antibodies cause miscarriages, stillbirths and cretinism. In the past a woman like me with high antibodies would not have been offered the steroid treatment necessary to sustain a pregnancy and if by some luck a child was produced it wouldn’t necessarily have been identified at birth whether they had a thyroid issue. I remember the thyroid deficient siblings of friends still having profound disabilities as the heel prick test wasn’t consistantly offered.

It's because no one let's their kids get dirty and germy.

They need to be around dirt and germs to build their immunity.

I went on a first aid course and the person running it said awareness has improved massively in recent years, so people in the past whose death was put down to asthma attacks may actually have had severe allergic reactions but this wasnt known at the time. Don't know how true that is though.

Asthma
Very dry skin (short of eczema though). Can't shower or bath every day or the itch is unbearable. I get lubed up like a channel swimmer.
Very bad hay fever
Shellfish allergy

This is going to sound dodgy but I 100% don't mean it to - for me, it's like autism/asd - in the 70's etc it was still there but undiagnosed as bad behaviour. Now it feels like every other person has some diagnosis on the spectrum but it's just because we're better informed, not because we're bringing up indulgent snowflakes.

though some kids do behave terribly of course

And DD's bleeding eczema started 2 days after she was weaned - on vegetables.

No idea. But dd has many allergies unfortunately. I wasn't a clean freak back then but did start to become that way at one point due to all her allergy problems. She just never stopped being itchy so had to change so much (she had bad eczema and even wet wraps at one point). Ended up positive to dustmite, pollen, pets and with life threatening allergy to peanuts. Many fruits and veg causing oral allergy syndrome too. Asthma and drug allergies.
Definately some genetic allergy links to dp's family.

I wonder if cleaning is a significant factor, if the trigger is actually the lack of dirt or if it's all of the VOCs released into our increasingly insulated homes that is to blame?

If cleaning were a factor my DH would not have allergies as indeed neither would most Indians have intolerances to milk etc.

I suspect it's something to do with food production methods and added ingredients.

I now have a "gluten intolerance" that developed in my mid 30s. Interestingly, it developed a few years after I returned from working abroad and started eating British sliced bread again. Once I cut out the grains, my problems stopped.

I resumed eating grains again, but only in a format that I bake myself. What's interesting is that eating your own baked bread and cakes makes you realise just how strange mass produced products taste. It makes me wonder just exactly what we are eating in some things.

My cousin has a severe peanut allergy and my aunt has always believed it came from a peanut oil based cream she was prescribed to treat his skin as a baby.

My feeling is that we are using and eating products that we simply aren't supposed to consume in that particular manner or volume, and it is creating havoc with our immune systems.

I wish I knew. Both mine have had allergies since birth so it's not that I didn't expose them to dirt.

I've spent years obsessively reading over this and so far I've found contributing factors can be

Late weaning
Not exposing to allergens
To clean
C-sections.

But again none of those help with the amount of children born with their allergies.

My son is lactose intolerant and always has been. Throughout my pregnancy I couldn't drink milk as it made me so nauseous, it's odd but I winder if there is a connection as he wasn't exposed to milk. The poor lad has parents with asthma and allergies and I wonder how this has impacted on him too.

I ate peanuts whilst pregnant, had a cat and didn’t do a lot of cleaning, had normal births, did baby led weaning and breastfed past a year but my second child has an anaphylactic allergy to nuts and we had to rehome the cat after three years of my child suffering with terrible eczema caused by his allergies which are various. It’s stressful and upsetting. I did read that it may be connected with vitamin D deficiency which is widespread in the U.K.

@PackingSoapAndWater - UK supermarket type bread has soya in it, so if you are fine with home made then it’s likely a soy intolerance.

I’m sure I read somewhere that it’s likely to be linked with gut health. We have a poor diet in the UK compared to a lot of our continental neighbours. Less fresh fruit and veg and everything scrubbed to within an inch of its life. Possible link to low breastfeeding rates too (although I breastfed my son who had a dairy allergy until he was 12 months old).

Also, much higher rates of diagnosis. What would have just been dismissed as collic a few decades ago is now recognised as a dairy allergy.

We also LOVE a good diagnosis don’t we? And we LOVE to talk about our ailments and dietary requirements.

Yeah, the thing mothers like the most is scanning all foods for all allergens and being that pita who has to riffle through their kids party bag to see if there's anything that makes them sick, moreso bring their own food to ever event. Nothing screams special like food outcast.

@Teddybear45

Now that is interesting. My symptoms manifested as hormonal/gynecological problem, and I've read that soy can disrupt oestrogen levels.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

I too think it's a diagnosis thing. DH and two of my kids are lactose intolerant. I've never really drunk milk simply because I don't like it. My mum has exactly the same symptoms as my DH and kids after dairy (like me she doesn't like milk and only has dairy occasionally). She totally dismisses the idea that she is lactose intolerant though.

Many people put up with awful digestive trouble and dismiss it as normal. The younger generations are less likely to do so.

I have read somewhere that they believe proteins from weaning got into bloodstream from cuts/wounds in babies/children with eczema and caused issues when body alerted to unknown protein in blood system which shouldn't have been there. On eating again, it gets recognised as something bad and an allergic reaction takes place. My dd had a fab diet when weaning, homemade baby foods with all veggies ECT and always had wounds from eczema. Simular thoughts/beliefs when they used peanut oils ingredients in eczema creams years ago. They believe it entered their bloodstream, hence causing an alert in the body leading to allergic reactions when peanuts were eaten in future. It's all a bit unknown but have read various thoughts.....

I used to wonder if there were links in allergies to being too clean in and restrictive of diet. Neither my husband nor I have any allergies.
My baby has been exclusively breastfed from the start and although he was born by emcs, he was crowning for 5 bloody hours.
When I started weaning him, I introduced him to all sorts including peanut butter and prawns (not at the same time).
I'm definitely not obsessive about cleanliness and encourage him to explore in and out of the house.

He has just been diagnosed with a pretty severe milk allergy that caused his lips to swell and blister and sends him to hospital in an ambulance. He also had a mild reaction to peanut during testing so that is being monitored too.

I never imagined for a second that we'd have a baby with an allergy. Hopefully he grows out of it. I can't imagine a life without cheese!

Coming back to the UK and I can confirm that sliced white supermarket bread gives the whole family wind and constipation (just corroborating PP . Also, whilst away I used to joke I had to learn to cook for the first time cos of the lack of prepared food. The shock for me now is how busy the fresh meal aisles are - I never stop in them, just walk by and wonder what everyone is buying that they can't make.

*It's because no one let's their kids get dirty and germy.

They need to be around dirt and germs to build their immunity.*

Great. Problem solved

I ate peanut butter on toast loads for breakfast when I was pregnant with my first son. He still turned out to be allergic to peanuts.

I have nearly 20 allergies. 4 severe. I grew up a home that was not very clean, I played outside, I bathed once a week, smoke filled our house and car. Family however did not believe in polluting environment with cleaning products save an occasional spot of bleach.

I won't die from my allergies but they can stop me from working. Spending the day outside at spring time, Playing with neighbours dog, eating hazelnuts can make me house bound the next day.

I wonder if pollution (smoke, car fumes, anti bac sprays etc) are the cause.

For instance, we went camping with my sister's family and DH said that going to the loo after BiL was utterly horrendous every single day and he must have something seriously wrong with him. Bil eats a crap diet and is very blasé about having a gippy gut most of the time.

We eat very little processed stuff because between me being allergic to nuts, pulses, soya, Palm oil and the various legume gums used to stick together processed foods it's near impossible to find bread and cakes I can eat. Same goes for ready meals, bought quiches, sausages (increasingly bulked out with chickpeas or pea protein).