In another article from the Guardian, health editor Sarah Boseley sheds light on research that is showing strong links between fast food consumption & asthma & allergies, especially in young children & teenagers.
Tag: Allergy
Microbes & Immune Systems [Book Review]
In these days of instant everything, we need evidence to support any claims (forget centuries-old, traditional ways of life), while propaganda (of all sorts) is quickly accepted as fact (Doubt it? Do you use toothpaste? How much do you know about what’s in it?). Author Moises Velasquez-Manoff, a sufferer of asthma, hay fever, food allergies & alopecia (hair loss, in case you wondered!), & fascinated with the prevalence of allergies in recent times despite improved sanitation, hygiene, vaccines & antibiotics, crossed over into Tijuana, Mexico, to infect himself with hookworms in an attempt to cure himself. He came out of it with a book, “An Epidemic of Absence”, a cure for his sinuses, no extra hair growth, & demonstrating among other things that:
- “microbes are neither good nor bad, but can be either or both depending on the context in which we encounter them. And the real cause of the allergy and autoimmune epidemic is that we have severely screwed up that context, both inside our guts and outside in the rest of the environment . [linked via Ars Technica]
- Allergic and autoimmune conditions are far more frequent in rich countries than poor ones, even among genetically identical populations [linked via NYTimes]
Modern “Medicine”?
Australia: The Child Allergy Capital of the World..[via yahoo news]
Expounding a research by Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, this article identifies a 2-year old who is suffering from food allergy, but is alive.
Somewhere in this article, a mother gratefully thanking “modern medicine” says, “If we’d been in a third world country, and we hadn’t known about the testing, or the awareness of allergies wasn’t so high, he probably would have died before the age of one.
The medicine man (or researcher – I’m not sure what he is), says “We know that it is something to do with modern lifestyle because in developing countries food allergy rarely exists, and in countries that are undergoing modern developments, like in China, we’re now seeing rates that are rising.”
“Maybe it’s the dark side of those fantastic public health initiatives that we really need to think about, that we’re not stimulating our immune system enough. That includes getting out and playing outside, it includes things like exposure to farm animals and pets,” Professor Allen said.
I am more inclined to believe the medicine man.
What if modern messing around the food chain was the reason for the food allergy in the first place? What can be said with certainty is that those “third-world” countries have far less Genetically Modified & packaged food on their store shelves?
Just thinking aloud.