To think no one was allergic to nuts in the 1970's or kids had that ADHT or whatever it is

[ipodmama]

I don,t remember anyone with these 'problems' , I only remember the odd smelly kid?

One of the reasons nut allergy rose in the UK recently is that we started buying copious amounts of peanut oil from the USA and incorporating it into all sorts of foods/cosmetics/suntan oils, nipple cream (for breastfeeding) and nappy cream....

Why did the UK do this? Because it was offered to the UK cheaply.

Why was the peanut oil so cheap?

Because in the USA they had started to make a link between the over-use of peanut oil in substances and rising numbers of peanut allergy in their children. Manufacturers of all sorts of products sought out alternative oils to use.

The peanut oil sellers needed to sell their now unwanted (in the usa)peanut oil.

I presume the UK was either oblivious to the problems associated with incorporating peanut oils in a variety of products - or they were so greedy - they didn't really care and just bought the oil and used it anyway because it was cheap and led to a better profit margin.

Wonder who the peanut oil sellers are selling their wares to now?

That is very interesting and scary LHAO.

what a stupid thread title. does common sense not factor in your thought processes?

ipodmama - your title was very unPC, but it did make me laugh. And I HAVE been wondering that myself. LHAO - thanks for your answer - that makes sense.

On another note - if you become a celebrity does that mean you HAVE to then be diagnsed with bi-polar?

I haven't read the whole thread, but just to add - children with nut allergies usually died so didn't get as far as school for you to meet them.

YABU

LHAO - I am certain my DS1 got his peanut allergy from the creams we put on his eczema. I didn't eat peanuts while pregnant or BF and he has never eaten one, yet he is allergic.

His only contact with peanuts was the eczema cream that was put on his weeping, bleeding skin. Had I known there was peanut oil in the cream I would never have used it (this was before the warning about peanut oils in cream but it's only common sense to think if you shouldn't eat something you shouldn't put it on broken skin either). But in this country it was called "arachis oil."

well I had miserable hay fever all throughout the seventies

actually I seem to be growing out of it, is that possible?

talking of nut allergies, dh has a mate with a really severe nut allergy-he had to be hospitalised after kissing his girlifriend who'd eaten something with nuts in a few hours before. now that's what i call an allergy!

It is still being called "arachis oil" - I think that is the pharmaceutical description - maybe latin or something.

My daugther got severe nut allergy at 8m old - being given peanut butter. Prior to this her contact with nuts would have been kamillosan nipple cream (oil of arachis) - of course the modern version has a revised recipe omitting the nut oil. Nobody else in the family had allergies/asthma or eczema.
I did eat peanuts in preganancy - at the time it was advised for nutrition and there was no information regarding allergies (it would not have even crossed my mind)!
Tests have also shown a even more severe reaction to almonds...and her only contact with almonds was cradle cap cream!

Now we have to check makeup ingredients/tan oil, anything pre-packaged to eat, moisturisers, nail varnish - and this list goes on - and that is before you even consider cross contamination (bakers shops are OUT!)....MacDonalds has become the safest place for her to eat when we are out!

Hello OP.

I had nut allergy in the 70s and still have it today. It causes 'problems' like anaphylactic shock.

If I ever die from it, at least I'll be 'on trend', eh?

I think allergies and intolerances are o therise because our food has so much shite in it.

When I was at school in the early 1970 there was a girl who was considered but 'naughty' and 'weird'.
She probably had AS or ADHD - no boundaries, no understanding of social norms, inability to control impulses etc.
She used to get encouraged into doing things like taking her pants down for the really funny boys,drinking ink, asking the teacher what cunt meant. she would then be punished and humiliated whilst the grinning twats who encouraged her would sit smirking.
For reasons I don't understand ( as I was as callow and shallow as my 13 year old peers) I felt frustrated with her and protective of her.I tried endlessly to get her to stop and not be silly but she always got drawn in, carried away. I remember her agonised face saying 'I didn't mean it, I can't help it, I am trying to be good , please still be my friend'.

I found out a few years ago that she killed herself in her early 20's. It still makes me want to weep for the life she had and also her poor mother. I always remember her mother - so filled with futile hope that her DD had a friend and it would get better. I know I didn't do anything bad but I didn't do enough. I still feel pretty ashamed too.

Yeah. The good old days

newideas.net/adhd/neurology

Children with ADHD are OFTEN 'naughty'. I don't deny this.

They are naughty because they are, in effect, brain damaged. ADHD is a neurological disfunction which means the brain does not work properly.

Please go away and do some reading of books before you spout about things you don't understand.

Children with ADHD are no more 'just naughty' than diabetic children are 'just fussy', or children with heart problems are 'just lazy'.

I was born in the 70s, DH in the 60s - he had severe hayfever and asthma and can remember having monthly steroid injections when he was a child.

Dsis had eczema from being a toddler.

A friends brother is profoundly autistic - his parents were encouraged to send him away to the local "mental hospital" as they were then known - the HCPs were horrified that they wanted him to live at home.

BIL is dyslexic and went to a school who specifically catered for students with dyslexia.

Perhaps its a combination of not being as aware of these things as a child and also better diagnosis and support nowadays

I see you've posted and run, OP. Did you get the reaction you wanted?

OP, yabvu. My experience of being at school in the 70's and 80's was that kids with undx difficulties like asd, adhd, dyslexia, learning difficulties, etc were humiliated by teachers and peers alike on a daily basis at times ... and the names that these kids were called... you have no idea.

ADHD was around. It was called Hyperactivitiy. I also remember allergies, hayfever, asthma and autism.

I think the rise is also due to better diagnosis and treatment.

Hyperactivity, even!

Oh, and YABU, definately!

My cousin was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. As a child in the 70s he was expelled from primary school. The only option offered was a special boarding school hundreds of miles from home. From the age of eight used to run away all the time and be sent back. He once turned up with another boy who used to flinch if you moved suddenly near him
He ended up with no qualifications and was in and out of prison. It was a bloody tragedy. Good old days, eh?

I don't think that ADHD is a figment of the expert's imaginations but I think that it is used to label "difficult" children all too readily.

For instance, all four of my cousin's children have ADHD. Yes, all four of them. She told me this whilst two of them were using their ancient labrador as a horse and the other two were drawing penises (penii?) on her wall in felt tips.

lol all those things existed. They just didn't all have fancy names and were not all regarded as 'illnesses' but as individual differences and/or different behaviour.

I'm sure that now "he is short and I am tall" is not allowed and you have to both be vertically challenged. I expect there are 'vertically challenged awareness seminars' for anyone who deals with children or who sells tape measures.

and oh yes the names some of them were called which are not allowed any more

"naughty"
"lazy"
"school bully"
None of those exist any more but must all be syndromes diagnosed and allowed (encouraged)

There are real illnesses of course. Devalued now because everyone who can't be arsed to get out of bed has 'mattress leaving difficulty'

You cannot get a diagnosis of ADHD simply by taking a child to the Gp and saying "S/he's really naughty and doesn't sleep well"

That is how the process may START - the diagnostic process will then be ongoing until the child is at least six, probably closer to seven. Children are not diagnosed at all before this age because it's almost impossible to pick out ADHD behavior from immaturity. By seven, they would be expected to have grown out of it.

So, your cousin is either lying, and does not in fact have a diagnosis for her children and has decided herself that some or all of them have ADHD (which is no more possible than deciding your child has epilepsy without some form of medical interference), or her older child/children have a diagnosis of ADHD and she is pathologising the younger children's behavior because their behavior seems similar, or they are all over seven and, as ADHD DOES seem to have a genetic componant, has been very very unlucky.

God, I've always thought that the reason there were so many kids with nut allergies around was that allergies like that are massively on the rise (pollutants, over exposure to nut oils, etc). It really hadn't crossed my mind that many of the children with those allergies would have died as toddlers .

Kids died of a lot of "sudden fevers" and "convulsions" many years ago. I suspect a lot of them were allergies .

My DS1's first serious allergic reaction looked exactly like choking to an unprofessional eye.

As an aside, a friends sister died aged 2 or 3, many years ago(before my friend was born) because she found a jar of iron tablets and ate them. She was rushed to hospital, had her stomach pumped but still died. "How awful," I said to my friend, adding: "I didn't realise iron tablets were all that poisonous."

"Well..." said my friend and went on to tell me that recently her niece had drunk some shampoo, and had been rushed to hospital where the staff had tried very hard to make her sick. The family asked why they didn't just pump her stomach, and were told "You can't pump the stomach of a child under 3 (?) because it will rupture the bowel."

Guess what was the cause of death on the little girl's death certificate all those years before? Not iron poisoning. Ruptured bowel. They had always thought it odd...

I sometimes think we forget just how much medical science has progressed in only the last few years, and some things that were utter mysteries a generation ago are now perfectly clear.

MrsFC i realise it is fashionable to bash bi-polar as a celebrity illness, but did it ever occur to you that

a) people with bipolar disorder are potentially more likely to go into a creative field where "eccentricity" is more tolerated which then makes any severe cycles more visible?

b) some of those people actually are NOT bipolar, but have less accepted diagnoses and

c) ACTUALLY BEING bipolar is shit. it's Horrible, it means that you will be subject to MANY meds (especially if the first ones don't help, or for example, you are unfortunate enough to have "overshooting" whereby your completely destroying depression CANNOT be medicated with antidepressants EXCEPT in an inpatient setting becasue yu will be too high for normality within a fortnight)
It means that you cannot trust your own mind, and you will be the victim of mental health stigmatisation (which DOES exist, however "trendy" you think the illness is - why else are only 17% of bipolar people in full time employment?)
it means that you may spend large swathes of your life in a psychaitric hospital, which is neither fun nor trendy.
it means that you will likely do things you will later DEEPLY regret, you will hurt your friends and family, and WISH you could take it back, you may end up with MASSIVE debts through actions you could not control, or risk your life through actions that again, you could not control, and you will have to try and put your whole life back together, while at the same time coming down from the manic high into crippling depression.
Plus, of course, you have a 1 in 5 chance of dying as a result of the illness.

No wonder people are queuing up to be diagnosed with it, is there?

I am Bipolar, I have maintained my health for years now, after even more very turbulent, difficult years, and I have worked at high level and also study to a high level (I am currently studying to be a counsellor - BACP accredited, along side my degree in languages, and my postgraduate research qualification) I deeply resent the implication that ANYONE chooses this life!

My brother spent a huge chunk of the 60's in hospital with asthma,and I have a wasp stinmg allergy that I've had since childhood,(I'm 46) so it was about.As others have said,the ASD etc issue is that more children now get diagnosed as well as there being a general rise.I can think of two boys I knew as a child who I'm pretty sure would be diagnosed on the autistic spectrum now.One was just described as "very shy" at the time.