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Study: Peanut Consumption In Infancy Helps Prevent Peanut Allergy
Mr D from 63 writes:
According to a report from the Associated Press, "For years, parents of babies who seem likely to develop a peanut allergy have gone to extremes to keep them away from peanut-based foods. Now a major study suggests that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Here's the published paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. It's interesting how this peanut allergy fear is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The situation involves a complete misconception of risk by many parents, and probably it doesn't stop at peanuts. Is there a bigger underlying problem here?
My mom ate a lot of peanuts when I was a few months old, and I almost died of peanut allergy. I question this result.
55 years later, I'm still deathly allergic to them. It does add some adventure to life.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
when she was only about six months old.
She loved it, I had never heard you weren't supposed to give it to babies, and now that she's 12 she still likes it. I can can get on-board with this theory.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Doctors are telling us to keep our children away from peanuts, eggs, and various other foods until two years of age. Then we're supposed to introduce them one at a time, with a few weeks between to monitor results & possible outbreaks. Even if no one in the family has any such allergies.
I'm sure it's not just me, almost every friend across the US with kids in our approximate age range have talked about the same things. I wonder if the people who write this stuff are paying attention...
Part of it was public awareness. You'd find it common in previous generations that people would tell you "it's all in your head" and other less than helpful answers to problems you had with things as allergies and many other health issues. Now, as this study suggests, that once there was public awareness, people were having their children avoiding high allergy risk foods and in doing so making the problem worse as humans are prone to do.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
So responsibly exposing kids to risks early in life helps them deal with those same risks later on? Who would have thought ...
Helicopter Parents. Protecting them from everything and anything.
Let them play in the mud, eat their own boogers, scrap their knees, eat bugs, roll in the grass and leaves even though the dogs poo there, etc.
When you grow up in a plastic bubble, everything is your enemy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Back in 2007, Anderson Cooper asked a pediatrician if PlumpyNut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut) was affecting people in developing countries suffering from malnutrition with peanut allergies. The Dr. said "We just don't see it. In developing countries food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries." Sounds like this study backs up that claim.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Ditto.
She's 23 and going strong.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Just don't eat eggs...whatever you do.
Wait...
Never mind.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Our pediatrician once told me, every kid should have eaten a pound of dirt by the time they're two. While she didn't mean it literally (at least not that much dirt), she's talked about the 'immune system needing exercise', and that helicopter parenting actually denies kids a certain amount of exposure that's healthy. To be clear she's NOT an anti-vaxxer, on the contrary, but thinks both natural and pharm assisted immunity/resistance is a good idea.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Honey can contain clostridium botulinum spores which are fatally toxic to babies (the spores are harmless to adults). Not giving babies honey is less a case of "it might cause some side effects later in life" and more a case of "it might kill them tomorrow".
Honey is different as it can cause botulism poisoning in infants. It's not an allergen, but rather often harbors an actual amount of bacteria. In adults and children, the bacteria load is not harmful as the body can easily deal with it. In infants, the body reacts differently to botulism and it can occasionally kill them.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/botulism.html
That's why you were given the butt chewing. It's a very different situation to peanuts. Peanuts would be unsafe if they were covered in the same bacteria that honey harbors.
Actually there IS some justification on holding off on honey until 12 months, floppy baby syndrome is a real thing. Not saying you did anything wrong, but that's one that does have some scientific reasoning behind it (not just some 'I read it on Natural News blog' kind of pseudoscience)
http://pediatric-medical.blogs...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
"SUNDAY, Feb. 22, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A wearable patch that safely and gradually exposes the body to small amounts of peanut allergen appears effective in easing the allergy, an early new study shows."
http://health.usnews.com/healt...
...omphaloskepsis often...
This has nothing to do with allergies. You don't feed babies honey to avoid the very rare cases where it actually causes immediate problems. After a year it is perfectly fine.
It's like some of the things that are excluded while being pregnant (cats, game meat,...), just a precaution for the possible rare, but severe consequences of an unwanted contamination.
The bigger underlying problem is human society's failure to acknowledge that humans are biological. They are 100% animal in their essence, and are products of evolution. They compete with other life-forms and live in symbiosis with still-other life-forms, exactly like most still-other life-forms. The fact that they have fought their way to the top of the competitive ladder in no way affects the fact that the food chain is circular, and bacteria consume human and other corpses with equal ease --the notion that humans are special is rampant egotism. When human society lies to itself about that, trying to set humans apart from the rest of the biological world, there are biological consequences. Allergies, for example....
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.....
Guys, the honey-botulism thing is like eggs-salmonella. Not every egg has salmonella, and if you eat the clean ones raw, you'll be fine. Not all honey has C.Botulinum spores (which cause it), but if you give some that is contaminated to a young child, they will be badly affected because their gut bacteria hasn't had time to develop--it's a matter of growth, not resistance through exposure. You played the odds and won. Most kids that eat honey will be fine and most batches aren't contaminated. Some of them will get a bad batch and will be less fortunate.
Make sure the dirt is mixed into some peanut butter for flavor and the added health benefits. This doesn't seem like a joke, after reading it, as it might actually make sense to do this.
Thinking of my nephew. He used to eat a lot of peanuts, then - as a teenager - he ramped that up and pretty much overdosed.
He is in his mid 20's now and allergic to them. Too much of a good thing and all that.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Because 30-40 years ago, every mother wasn't a panicky obsessive who was scared to give her kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because she read in some magazine that it would be abuse if she didn't treat her kid like a delicate snowflake.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"Were nut allergies always so high and just not reported or is this a more recent development?"
In the 70s at summer camp the government sent us more surplus peanut products than we knew what to do with. The place was littered with open #10 cans* of peanuts. I've never eaten so many peanuts in my life.
No-one ever said the word "allergy".
A.
* that's not "hashtag 10", kids. It's "number 10", a size corresponding to about 110 ounces. It's probably an LD50 quantity of peanuts :-)
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Sounds like honey could be a prime candidate for irradiation.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The advice against feeding honey to babies is not because of allergies, but because there is an -- admittedly small -- risk of it being contaminated. A baby's immune system isn't sufficiently mature yet, and this type of infection is potentially fatal.
So, yes, most parents are probably not going to notice anything bad about giving honey to their little ones. But as there is no particular unique benefit to eating honey, even the minor risk is worthwhile avoiding. This is the same reason, why pregnant women are advised against eating fresh cheese and raw fish. The risk is small, as evidenced by Japanese women eating sushi during pregnancy. But there still is a minor risk for an infection that could prove fatal to the unborn. Why take chances, if there are so many other alternative foods. And it is only for a couple of months anyway.
This is all very different from allergens. While allergies are not fully understood, there does appear to be some evidence that early exposure to allergens can reduce the statistical likelihood of developing allergies later in life. This must be traded off with the risk that allergic reactions can happen unexpectedly (i.e. somebody suddenly becomes allergic to something they previously didn't have problems with) and food allergies can easily be so severe that they are life threatening.
I never bought into the theory that avoiding peanuts for infants somehow helped them avoid developing allergies. So, these newer findings don't surprise me much. But I did buy into the precaution of avoiding peanuts for really young children, as a possible allergic reaction would almost certainly put them at increased risk of dying from anaphylactic shock.
The conclusion for us was: no raw fish during pregnancy, no raw honey or peanuts during the first year of life, but no additional restrictions after these times. We still carefully watch the kids, when they eat nuts, though -- just in case. And we generally encourage a diverse diet, always asking the kids to try new things.
No, it is. We set ourselves apart by trying to control everything, and having everything filtered, and processed. That increases allergies. Directly by people trying to set themselves apart from biology.
Learn to love Alaska
I completely agree. I grew up making mud pies, eating dirt, playing in the woods and generally living in the opposite of a clean home. The only allergy I have is cat scratches and dander -- my mother hated cats and refused to have any around.
Meanwhile I now live in Minneapolis and we've got all these tards talking about how there's "chemicals" in their food and they're "gluten intolerant" and they use their own and their bubble boy kids immune responses as evidence that they're right.
Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
Except it doesn't. Try reading medical research sometime. Repeated exposure to an allergen can cause allergies.
Honey is different as it can cause botulism poisoning in infants. It's not an allergen, but rather often harbors an actual amount of bacteria. In adults and children, the bacteria load is not harmful as the body can easily deal with it. In infants, the body reacts differently to botulism and it can occasionally kill them.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/botulism.html
That's why you were given the butt chewing. It's a very different situation to peanuts. Peanuts would be unsafe if they were covered in the same bacteria that honey harbors.
If I had mod points, I'd vote you up. My son is five months old, cutting his first teeth, and getting his first taste of real food. The pediatricians stressed the dangers of bacteria which may be present in some batches of uncooked honey. They also say to hold off on cow's milk until a year old for different reasons.
Nut allergies are mostly mass hysteria.
They were never that common, and are still not that common at all. And it's even rarer that exposing someone with a peanut allergy to a few peanuts will cause them to die. There is _zero_ justification for not allowing peanut-based foods in schools. It's mass hysteria with no basis in reality.
If I ever have a kid, I'm going to give them peanut butter sandwiches every week. FUCK the overprotective assholes.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
You do realize these kids were tested first to see if they had a peanut allergy.
FTA: "All had been given skin-prick tests to make sure they were not already allergic to peanuts. "
So they took precautions to make sure they kids weren't already allergic, something a parent isn't going to know. If you kids are allergic to eggs or had eczema, they might be at risk to having an allergy to peanuts. So the first thing you don't do is shove peanuts down their throats! You'd better have your child tested first. IF, they don't have an allergy, THEN you can give them peanuts, which should help prevent them from developing one.
Irradiation isn't 100% at inactivating C.Botulinum. Neither is heat pasteurization (to the level that your honey is still, well, honey). There's no guaranteed safe way of making honey edible for infants.
Probably because we grew up on PB&J...who does that anymore?
This is the reason all honey containers have a warning printed on them, saying "Don't Feed to Kids Under 1 Year Old." I guess pecosdave didn't read the label.
Except it doesn't. Try reading medical research sometime. Repeated exposure to an allergen can cause allergies.
And then one big dose of that allergen causes it to go away. How fucked up is that? Really, allergies make no fucking sense. This data suggests early exposure doesn't lead to developing an allergy in the absence of some other trigger, but people exposed early and often can still get them. Our bodies really are just fucking with us.
"Yeah, okay... What did you do with the bodies?"
Not our problem - with all those open cans, nobody with a peanut allergy could have survived long enough to reach the property...
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Honey is very close to pure sugar, anyway. It provides energy, but not a lot of building materials for the infant body. There's no good reason to feed it to infants.
Our pediatrician recommended that we can start feeding eggs within a couple of months of starting the kids on solids. The nutrients in eggs are great, and the risk of food allergies is not particularly extreme.
Having said that, he recommended we gradually start with small amounts and then slowly increase the serving size, just so that we don't unnecessarily put the kid at risk of having a really severe reaction, if they turn out to be allergic. Also, he suggested to initially only feed soft-boiled egg yolks as they are less likely to trigger allergies than egg whites.
This all naturally worked out quite easily with our schedule of introducing solids, as we did "baby led weaning". Once they showed interest in solids, we just offered them some of our food, picking easier and softer foods initially (e.g. toast, tofu, smoothies, puddings, finely cut veggies and meat/fish...). This also meant, our kids knew how to drink from a straw at about 10 months old -- such an amazingly useful skill when taking them to restaurants!
We never bothered with ready- or home-made baby foods, as right from the beginning we could always find some of our adult foods that our kids happily started chewing on.
Part of it was public awareness. You'd find it common in previous generations that people would tell you "it's all in your head" and other less than helpful answers to problems you had with things as allergies and many other health issues. Now, as this study suggests, that once there was public awareness, people were having their children avoiding high allergy risk foods and in doing so making the problem worse as humans are prone to do.
Or better yet you would just drop dead from an as-yet-unnamed disease (anaphylaxis) and the death certificate would list "Phrenitis" as the cod. What allergies?
Doctors are telling us to keep our children away from peanuts, eggs, and various other foods until two years of age. Then we're supposed to introduce them one at a time, with a few weeks between to monitor results & possible outbreaks. Even if no one in the family has any such allergies.
I'm sure it's not just me, almost every friend across the US with kids in our approximate age range have talked about the same things. I wonder if the people who write this stuff are paying attention...
I have a five month old son, so I've been paying attention to this kind of thing. I've noticed that doctors' recommendations change every few years. My mom's generation was told to introduce rice cereal at six weeks, but now the recommendation is to start at about 6 months. We were also told to introduce at most one new food every three days so that if an allergy is discovered it would be easier to identify the cause.
Here is an exert from a 2008 statement from the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) :
Although solid foods should not be introduced before 4 to 6 months of age, there is no current convincing evidence that delaying their introduction beyond this period has a significant protective effect on the development of atopic disease regardless of whether infants are fed cow milk protein formula or human milk. This includes delaying the introduction of foods that are considered to be highly allergic, such as fish, eggs, and foods containing peanut protein.(View Report)
Most sources say to hold off until 8 months before introducing eggs and 12 months before introducing peanut butter. Of course this guideline will vary if family member is known to have allergies for a given food.
You do realize these kids were tested first to see if they had a peanut allergy.
FTA: "All had been given skin-prick tests to make sure they were not already allergic to peanuts. "
So they took precautions to make sure they kids weren't already allergic, something a parent isn't going to know. If you kids are allergic to eggs or had eczema, they might be at risk to having an allergy to peanuts. So the first thing you don't do is shove peanuts down their throats! You'd better have your child tested first. IF, they don't have an allergy, THEN you can give them peanuts, which should help prevent them from developing one.
Which is interesting because the allergists I've talked to don't seem to think the pin prick test for peanuts is conclusive. Apparently since this headline isn't "Children drop dead after being told to eat peanuts 'For Science'" that it is a decent way to test for it.
Honey is different as it can cause botulism poisoning in infants. It's not an allergen, but rather often harbors an actual amount of bacteria. In adults and children, the bacteria load is not harmful as the body can easily deal with it. In infants, the body reacts differently to botulism and it can occasionally kill them.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/botulism.html
That's why you were given the butt chewing. It's a very different situation to peanuts. Peanuts would be unsafe if they were covered in the same bacteria that honey harbors.
If I had mod points, I'd vote you up. My son is five months old, cutting his first teeth, and getting his first taste of real food. The pediatricians stressed the dangers of bacteria which may be present in some batches of uncooked honey. They also say to hold off on cow's milk until a year old for different reasons.
Boob juice. Srsly. Until they are a year (later, even better) they should be drinking as much of it as they can get. Don't cheap out and feed them $3/gal boiled cow runoff. Not for a long time.
The bigger question is . . .
How long is it going to be until there is a mandatory "nut allergy vaccine" in the form of a required patch / injection of peanut dust in order to allow nut-allergic children to go to school?
If nut-allergies are shown to be preventable in the same way as measles, etc., why should a school have to be completely on edge about a child going into shock because some other child brought a sandwich to lunch? The economic benefits alone of doing away with the nonsense of nut separation in snacks, parties, cafeteria choices, medical equipment on-hand, etc. would pay for making this part of the immunization package for kindergarten entry.
Isn't it a form of child abuse to allow your child to live with a curable allergy that could kill them in a moment's notice?
Is part of the whole "X was bad then good then bad" attributable to not understanding percentages? Say food X increases your diabetes risk by 20%. If your risk was 5% to begin with, your new risk is only 6%, with the increase essentially in the noise or the rest of your life. Then it gets picked up by the news with the headline "food X causes diabetes", which ignores the rates entirely and makes it into public common knowledge. Add to that, research usually pumps mice full of far greater quantities of food X than humans are capable of ingesting.
If we saw the research ourselves would the majority of "the scientists don't know what they're doing" myths be put to rest?
There's a popular snack in Israel called Bamba, which consists of puffed corn coated with peanut butter.
Pretty much everyone eats it, and it's pretty common for parents to feed it to children as soon as they can handle solid food.
So I was wondering how that affects the allergy rate for Israelis.
And apparently a study shows that when comparing Israelis to UK Jews of a similar background, the Israelis had a tenth of the peanut allergy rate compared to the UK group.
I have. The opposite seems true as well. Complete abstention is documented in medical research to do the same thing.
Moderation is the best course. But it doesn't grab headlines and research dollars.
Learn to love Alaska
Eh.. I get what you are saying, but is eating honey really some sort of life necessity? Will a child really be not well adjusted in life because they didn't eat honey? I don't think its helicopter parenting to take some basic steps to avoid some risks, like waiting a touch to have honey or anchoring your large furniture to the walls.
This is sort of a turning point with the intenet age where we do have a lot of information at our finger tips, more so than ever before, so the number or perceived risks is overwhelming to parents, you can't really blame people for wanting to make sure their kids get old enough to have the chance to fuck things up on their own.
Honey has botulism in it. Sometimes.
Take off every 'sig' !!
Ever hear of risk/benefit ratios? Some people are very risk-averse, even when there is a real benefit to doing something. That would be people that NEVER drive in a car, etc.
At the other end of the spectrum are people who take unnecessary risks, even when there is no benefit. We even have a name for those people - Darwin Award Candidates.
In the middle we have normal people, who are willing to accept risk if the risk is outweighed by the benefits. This is where 'most people' are - the ones who will let kids play, but still want them to be safe while doing so. Yes, you can cross the street. No, you can not jump off the roof.
Giving honey to an infant carries a small but real risk of severe injury, and zero benefits. Doing so puts you in the Darwin Award category, and is nothing to be proud of. You are certainly not in the 'the rest of us' category.
Why hold off on cow's milk? Granted that human breast milk is better for human children, but lots of us were raised on cow's milk (frex, I was adopted as an infant) and there did not seem to be a plague stalking us other than polio, for which they were just coming out with the Sabin and Salk vaccines. UNPASTEURIZED milk, I could understand, but it is illegal to buy that in the USA, except commercially to pasteurize and resell.
Unwashed (stupid) masses strike again!
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Horsepucky. Most allergic reactions are non-fatal, some are almost unnoticeable. Ever get a mosquito bite? That itching is your body's allergic reaction to the bug's saliva.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I want to make a new food product for babies that contains traces of peanuts, dog and cat dander, and bee venom.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
If avoiding game meat is so necessary, how did our species make it through the old stone age? Maybe avoiding rare meat in general and especially downer does or old roadkill, but I cannot see how cooking well done doesn't kill the germs in anything.
Yes, the medical community jumped on yet another bandwagon with predictably bad results. In the UK, studies have shown that doctors warning mothers to treat peanuts like radioactive waste have tripled the rate of serious peanut allergies.
What I wonder is if the people giving the crappy advice are paying attention.
It seems we knew a lot more about allergies and how to manage them in the '60s than we do today.
We waited a while to introduce our oldest to peanut butter, my wife was pretty scared about it because she had a friend growing up with a peanut allergy. It just kinda got to the point where we didn't have peanut butter in the house anyway, it just wasn't a staple, not out of any real thought to specifically avoid it.
There is no history of food allergies in either family, though my side does have some heavy animal allergies. We finally gave him a spoonful of peanut butter and he broke out in hives and then threw up about 10 minutes later. We freaked out of course and had him in for some allergy testing, he had a pretty big blow up with the skin prick test and his blood levels came back very high.
This is where everything gets to be an approximation. We still don't know his allergy. A skin prick test just proves that the allergens on his skin react to it. The blood test proves he has the potential for a big reaction to peanut proteins in him. Apparently there are 8 proteins in peanuts, and some cause stronger reactions than others. It is possible your blood test comes back 'high' yet your body doesn't react to the proteins that will cause an anaphylaxis reaction.
Further, it depends how your body breaks down the protein in your digestive system, it could be possible to come back with high levels on the test yet your body breaks everything down into small enough quantities that the allergen never triggers even though you have the potential for an explosive reaction.
The only authoritative way to determine the allergy is an oral challenge, but due to our son's high levels and his previous reaction, would be really dangerous for him until he is a bit older. The only thing to do is keep testing and hoping the levels drop enough to try a challenge.
Right now hes in 'avoid cross contamination' mode and it really is a bit life changing. We have to take an epi pen around with us and be 'those people' that ruin it for everybody. My son has to ask if new food is safe, because we put peanuts in every god damn product. We had a sunblock we put on him that caused him to break out in a rash and we looked up the ingredients and one of them was derrived from peanuts. It is insane.
And nobody gets it, even here some of the comments are really insensitive because they love their peanut butter. For us that substance is a deadly poison that targets our son and it is everywhere, every, fucking, where. I've been on there other side where I've gotten on a plane and couldn't eat the snack I brought with me and complained, but I guess once I get on the other side of it, I realize how scary it can be.
We were playing at a rec center after a group class and he was making new friends playing at a pool table when I noticed a dad come over with a half eaten sandwich to give to his kid... whats on the sandwich... peanut butter! SHIT they've all been at the same table touching the stuff, that kid is little he'll be all over with that food, we have to GET OUT OF HERE NOW.
That is the bullshit you have to deal with with this thing, the world is suddenly full of boobytraps that'll put your kid in the hospital or kill him if you aren't fast enough to stick him with the epi pen. It SUCKS, way more than having to wait to eat my snack until after I got off the plane.
"Nut allergies are mostly mass hysteria"
Possibly, but be careful here: for people with the allergies, this is very real.
After reading an account of doctors fighting to save the life of a child who was given a *teaspoon* of milk - in a controlled hospital setting - I have a new appreciation for the fear these parents have.
A.
(not to mention that the tone of your post leads one to believe that you would be the first to demand restrictions if it turned out that your child was the one with a deadly allergy and "fuck people who want to bring peanuts to school")
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
I'm allergic to horsepucky, you insensitive clod!
I would suspect that on average the parents who are afraid to feed honey to their kids have a much longer list of "don'ts" than the honey feeders. It is that cumulative restriction of exposure that may impact a kid's development, life, health, or whatever, its not just the individual 'no honey' restriction. Of course, there is the other end of the spectrum where anything goes.
I can say my kids love honey. Its one more pleasure in their lives.
Medical science has no clue how allergies are acquired. They know it is a failure happening in the immune system. However it is unclear why. Some assume that it happens when an allergen looks similar to a previously llearned molecule from a virus or bacteria. Others assume exposure . The article assume lack of exposure. All three are hypotheses but we do not have a conclusive model for the issue. Nor do we know how to unlearn things.
parents of babies who seem likely to develop a peanut allergy
How does one identify a baby who "seems" likely to develop a peanut allergy?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Botulism is an illness, not a thing, so that's a bit like saying cigarettes have lung cancer in them.
Metaphorically correct, but the kind of thing a dedicated pedant would feel compelled to respond to.
Ah...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I don't want to be a dick but, I literally learned this from my sixth grade teacher. I'm not boosting up my own ego or anything, but I've known that for years, and laughed when I see parents practically bathing their children with hand sanitizer and making sure everyone who comes within 50 feet are as well. Just my 4 hay-pennies.
Winter: I'd laugh at the innuendo, but I'm too sick. *cough*
So when do allergies develop? I'm all for building immunity but if the kid DOES have a reaction at infancy it could be pretty deadly...
Indeed.
My ex-wife is a paediatrician. She ought to know better. But she has a skewed perception of risk, because she deals with the tragic cases all day long.
Same here. Fucking Cats.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Why hold off on cow's milk? Granted that human breast milk is better for human children, but lots of us were raised on cow's milk (frex, I was adopted as an infant) and there did not seem to be a plague stalking us other than polio, for which they were just coming out with the Sabin and Salk vaccines. UNPASTEURIZED milk, I could understand, but it is illegal to buy that in the USA, except commercially to pasteurize and resell.
Why? Because people are idiots.
There really is no other reason.
This is NOT the same thing. In fact, it's closer to the exact opposite. Infants are born with still-developing immune systems, and honey contains botulism spores which are capable of germinating in subjects with weak or still-developing immune systems. This is a proven risk that presents itself *every time* an infant eats honey, and there's a ton of downside if the risk is realized. On the other side of the coin, there's absolutely no upside to feeding an infant honey while their immune system is still developing the ability attack these spores.
False. Infants like honey. There's you upside.
Really, allergies make no fucking sense.
Yeah, how *do* they work?
I know of a family who has a child that is allergic to all nut, milk, wheat, dairy, eggs, some fruits, and probably a few more I can't remember. And these are deadly allergies, not just break out in a rash allergies. I have no idea what he eats, but I feel so sorry for him (and his family who has had to make sure none of those products, or products that might contain traces of those products, ever enter the home).
This advice is probably good, assuming folks aren't stupid.
Please people... this doesn't mean finding someone that has the measles, flu, pneumonia, Ebola, polio, whatever, and getting that person to cough on your kids or swap saliva or blood or anything liquid that comes from that person. That is very dangerous and can cause serious health consequences.
No duh, right? If only...
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
My parents found out I was allergic to peanuts when I was a little over one year old, I had some peanuts and I almost croaked (anaphylaxis). I'm still allergic to them today; eating anything with peanuts means an epi-pen, a few Benadryl and a trip to the emergency room for high-octane versions of the same.
I lived over in the Philippines for a few years and came into some contact with peanuts there. The interesting thing is that my reactions were nowhere near as severe as they are at home in the US, almost to the point where I believed I could have shaken them off without a trip to the emergency room (still went though). It may have been my imagination, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was something with the nuts themselves.
Anecdotally, I heard from people there that Australians and Americans were the people they countered most with peanut allergies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... "Honey was also spiked with Cl. botulinum at up to 5000 spores per 50 g honey, which is the upper limit of natural contamination. The sterilizing dose in this case was 18 kGy."
Irradiation would be good for many things (I did see the reply saying it isn't 100% in this case).
People are too afraid of "radiation" though.. (Yet use a microwave oven every day.. which I think is unjustly not at pretty much the top of modern conveniences.)
If you can remember going to school with polio victims we must be in the same age bracket, there's no plague but I did meet a 5yo in the 80's who had mild retardation due to an allergy to cows milk, never met a child that was allergic to nuts. A child gets all the antibodies it's going to get in the first few feeds from mum, after that it's just food. These days too many nurses subscribe to the dogma that if you stop breastfeeding at 3-6 months you're a bad mother, because..???
Rather than berating young mums about choosing not to have their nipples chewed off, it would be more helpful if nurses simply gave common-sense advice about the transition, ie: dilute it with expressed milk, experiment with different formula, do it gradually, and watch out for adverse reactions. I felt sorry for that 5yo boy in the same way one feels sorry for a polio victim but making his mother feel responsible for a freak medical condition is not helping. Sooner or later the kid would have taken a big swig of fresh cows milk anyway.
Never heard the one about honey and botulism mentioned in the comments above, surising but I'm assuming that is also very rare. "Surprising" because honey is a natural antibacterial preservative and who doesn't dip their baby's dummy in honey when a new tooth is on the way? - Yeah, I know, dummies are evil too. Rare as it may be, I don't see anything wrong with informing people to go easy on honey and advising jam instead (my kids had "Bongella" when teething, I don't think you can buy it anymore, it was basically alcoholic jelly, worked wonders).
To me the allergy plague is motivated by the same irrational fear the anti-vaxers have - what if that one in a billion is my child? Problem is, that's the only question they ask. Also there's big money in selling household anti-bacterial gels/sprays, not that long ago obsessing about hand washing and germs was considered a serious mental disorder, hard to pinpoint the change but for the last couple of decades(?) we have been bombarded with adverts telling us that obsessing about hand washing and germs is a "healthy" and desirable middle-class behaviour, and of course every second ad has cartoon characters and a cute kid with a sparkling toilet shoved in their face.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Food allergies are completely different to animal bite allergies. There is virtually no comparison.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
> After reading an account of doctors fighting to save the life of a child who was given a *teaspoon* of milk - in a controlled hospital setting - I have a new appreciation for the fear these parents have.
There is a world of difference between giving someone with milk allergy milk and getting some peanut dust or butter on someone's skin. Namely, the latter could cause you to die, but the former won't do anything except in incredibly rare circumstances.
Not all allergies are the same. Not all methods of exposure are the same. The refusal of the allergy nuts (see what I did there?) to acknowledge this fact is why they should be ignored.
And I'm sorry that you're unable to realize that protesting the rules isn't always anti-social. Sometimes it's pro-social and anti-idiocy.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
In my research, allergies are compounded by the trend in the late 70s and 80s to prefer formula to breast milk. All allergy studies need to take this into account, since it has been shown that breast milk (especially colostrum) is instrumental in fighting allergies. Why do so many people have allergies today compared to 20-30 years ago?
1. They weren't breast fed.
2. We now have GMO products that may not be the same as non-GMO but since there is no labeling, it's difficult to study this.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Yeah, I really wonder about the GMO issues that may be causing a lot of these allergies and are being covered up in the name of money. Monsanto already did it with NutraSweet, what's to stop them anywhere else?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
No, it is. We set ourselves apart by trying to control everything, and having everything filtered, and processed. That increases allergies. Directly by people trying to set themselves apart from biology.
I wonder if one factor in increasing allergies is that in the past before modern medicine many people with a serious allergy would die young and their allergy would never have been identified as such.
Indeed. The ages old demented reflex to keep a distance from everything "bad". That is not how reality works. That is however what fear dictates. Same stupidity as keeping children protected from all risks. As soon as they find themselves in a dangerous situation for real, they have no clue how to act or do not even recognize it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
30-40 years ago, people with peanut allergies (and peanuts are not nuts BTW), discovered this at some time and then were careful. Today every little or rare risk is blown up all out of proportion and people panic. That panic is hugely counter-productive as can be seen in this nice example.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Helicopter parenting is child abuse, plain and simple. It makes the child unfit to exist in its own.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is nonsense. Most allergic reactions are annoying, but do not even constitute a medical emergency. Fatal allergic reactions are very rare and even they are usually not lethal. They do look spectacular though, that is why they get dramatized in movies and on TV.
But I can tell you are deeply in a long-term panic reaction and are hence likely not capable to respond to rational arguments.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is an insurance thing. They could very likely have just exposed them with very little actual risk. But people get irrational and panicky these days when children are involved, so they had to be careful.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The logic appears to be that our immune systems are simply built to be under far more stress than they currently are. We are not evolved to exist in hygienic environments we have today.
As a result, our immune system a huge behemoth evolved to fight a massive and continuous war of attrition, yet the hostiles arrive in far smaller numbers than what it is designed for, often hopelessly outnumbered and weakened. A a result, it begins to seek enemies to fight, reacting to smallest abnormalities
.
Which is what allergy is. Hence, allergies make perfect sense. They are a clear sign of immune systems far too powerful for hygienic environments we live in, an excellent showcase of cultural evolution far outstripping biological evolution in speed.
The other thing is, how are the affected kids able to figure out to stay away from peanuts? Protection does remove a chance to learn how to deal with danger.
IMO, this panicky, irrational "protection" of children is just child abuse, plain and simple.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Fear is a very, very bad advisor. It makes you massively overestimate rare risks, while you get blinded for real risks because they are familiar. That account you read was published exactly because it was an exceptionally rare event.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
scrap their knees
I'm with you overall, but I'm gonna say, let the the kids keep their knees.
As basically all honey is cooked these days, the risk is very low.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are not acting rationally. Your whole posting drips panic. Even for your child, peanuts are hardly a "deadly poison". Sure, the symptoms are spectacular, but the actual risk of death is far lower than you believe. The epi-pen you carry is something you do not do to fight off death frequently, but because it is a low-effort, low-cost precaution that primarily helps against the rather unpleasant effects. It also helps lowering the risk of you killing your family when you drive to the ER, and that risk is actually a real one. But you should have stayed at that party.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Medical "science" is finally approaching what ought to have been obvious; that the "epidemic" of asthma and allergies are most likely our own doing. Our homes are TOO CLEAN for children!
Babies have fairly primitive immune systems; like every other part of a baby, it needs to be trained. When babies crawl in the dirt and get exposed to "nature", their immune systems come to recognize what's normal. At some age - about a year or so - their immune systems begin to react to "new" things in the environment, and begin to fight them. So dust or pollen become a problem, especially if mommy has been keeping the house spotless and immaculately clean. Never rolled around on the floor with a dog? Never ever eaten peanut butter? By age 4, you're going to be deathly allergic to them.
Mothers; take your babies out into the yard! Let them crawl in the grass, like us old folks did when WE were babies. They need the vitamin D to prevent rickets, and they need exposure to earth so that they don't develop allergies to the Earth.
Science fiction writer L. Neal Smith has suggested that our descendants born on orbital habitats may never be able to come to Earth; they'll be allergic to it. It may be a matter of shipping a few tons of dirt and dust up to spread in the air filters, just to ensure that our grandchildren can come visit!
There was a study done comparing Israeli Jews to European and North American Jews, with the premise being that parents in North America and Europe have been directed to withhold peanuts from babies/toddlers, while this practice is not in place in Israel. You have a genetically similar pool of Jews that migrated to the 3 different regions in the last 100 years. Jewish children in Israel have an allergic rate 10% that of Jewish children in Europe and NA. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Repeated exposure to 'allergen' AFTER THE IMMUNE SYSTEM IS DEVELOPED, can cause allergies.
Repeated exposure to various antigens before the immune system is developed, tells the immune system to regard the antigen as friendly since it does not hurt you.
That is why you want babies exposed to dogs, cats, cows, beef, chicken, eggs, peanuts, etc.
Once they reach toddlers i.e. 2 and above, then the immune system is working, then latent exposure to various things can actually cause allergies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We had cats on the farm, and we played with them all the time. Outside.
Cats were not allowed inside the house, unless it was a female giving birth. And not even all the time for them, usually during winter or bad weather.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
No, you don't get it. He must read /. to build up a tolerance for horsepucky.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Fatal allergic reactions are very rare and even they are usually not lethal.
While I agree with you main point, please explain the logic of this sentence.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I read a story about this test yesterday, and it mentioned something this one only hints at.
All had been given skin-prick tests to make sure they were not already allergic to peanuts. They were put into two groups — 530 who did not show signs of peanut allergy and 98 others with mild-to-moderate reactions, suggesting an allergy might be developing.
They did do this test on kids with peanut allergies. 98 of the ~600 had "mild-to-moderate reactions". They were allergic to peanuts at the start of the test.
What this article doesn't say, that the other did, is that the children that showed a strong reaction to the peanut protein were excluded from the test. So the 10 or so kids whose allergy would possibly be deadly in larger doses of peanuts were not tested. No sense killing one to prove a point about the rest.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I grew up on peanut butter, with or without the jelly.
I would open a new 5 pound pail of peanut butter, get a spoon, and eat until my throat closed off from the layer of peanut butter coating it. It was actually painful from the muscles trying to push it down to my stomach. Then I would eat another few spoonfuls for good measure.
Either on sandwiches (always with jelly/jam by the way) or by the spoonful, I went through a pail a week.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I was actually allergic to it when a baby/toddler. Or at least I had problems with it. So I got goat's milk instead. But I soon grew out of that.
The study excluded infants already known to be allergic.
So exposing your own kids in controlled circumstances could prevent them form developing allergies... or could kill them immediately.
We hold off on cow's milk until 1 year not so much because of allergic reactions but because it's associated with iron deficiency anemia. (And increased renal solute load.) From Agostoni C, et al, J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr. 2008;46(1):99: Cow's milk is a poor source of iron and should not be used as the main drink before 12 months, although small volumes may be added to complementary foods. Infant formula in most countries is supplemented with iron. Breast milk isn't exactly rich in iron, but harder for most babies to fall in love with and drink in unlimited amounts to the exclusions of everything else (a common happenstance) due to manufacturing limitations (which, granted, vary depending on the mom).
In the case of food irradiation, it's not the radiation most people are afraid of. That's propaganda spread by the party the people really are afraid of: the food (especially meat) industry, who wants to use irradiation as a patch on their unsanitary practices.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I have no clue why game meat is excluded but I have 2 points:
1. In cows the BSE prion can survive everything short of 3 hours at 1000C (must be done in an oxygen free environment). Prions can be seen as primitive virusses. This is not a risk in game.
2. Back in the stone age miscarriage and infant death were far higher. We have really solved much there, partly because we now know what not to do while pregnant.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
"it's not the radiation most people are afraid of"
Ahh... No. Sure you are right about some people but their are a lot of people that are terrified of the term radiation...
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Except it doesn't. Try reading medical research sometime. Repeated exposure to an allergen can cause allergies.
Yeah, especially if you live in a wealthy Western country and aren't getting enough attention from your teachers..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Were nut allergies always so high and just not reported or is this a more recent development?
I ask because 30-40 years ago this didn't seem as widespread?
30-40 years ago most people in the West still had a relatively healthy and varied diet, and ate a certain amount of freshly cooked food.
When I was young we only went out to eat once in a blue moon. There are kids now who have grown up eating McDonalds and other processed gunk every day.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Our pediatrician once told me, every kid should have eaten a pound of dirt by the time they're two. While she didn't mean it literally (at least not that much dirt), she's talked about the 'immune system needing exercise', and that helicopter parenting actually denies kids a certain amount of exposure that's healthy. To be clear she's NOT an anti-vaxxer, on the contrary, but thinks both natural and pharm assisted immunity/resistance is a good idea.
Probably she was thinking about the Hygiene Hipothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
"When they see us coming
the birdies all try and hide -
but they still go for peanuts
when coated in cyanide."
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Infant mortality rate was higher, some survived, but many more didn't. Infant mortality is still high in countries with poor access to modern healthcare services, and was also in the most developed countries until not too many decades ago.
I didn't get a new car when my daughter was born. I feel gypped.
Helicopter Parents. Protecting them from everything and anything.
Let them play in the mud, eat their own boogers, scrap their knees, eat bugs, roll in the grass and leaves even though the dogs poo there, etc.
When you grow up in a plastic bubble, everything is your enemy.
You wrote almost exactly what I was going to say, but I was also going to add that the attitude goes way beyond what kids do or don't eat. The problem is that even if you want to be a sane parent (vice a helicopter parent) the law is being written/interpreted such that you have no choice. Here in Maryland, a parent is being charged with neglect for letting their child walk home from the park. The weirdest part is that the law being used to charge them is one which prohibits locking a child in a building alone. Being outdoors is being equated to being locked inside. There are a bunch of similar stories reported at http://www.freerangekids.com/
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
fatal = grave, serous, may also mean lethal, but not necessarily
lethal = you are dead
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nice! ;)
Not every method of buying honey includes a lot of labels.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Or sometimes, we just listen to our paeds because we don't know better. My paed suggested staying away from peanuts because the "wisdom" at the time was that it might provoke an allergy. I'm not a doctor and I'd prefer to listen to a professional, as I'd prefer my clients to not think that they are master coders who have a clue.
Really? Care to elaborate on that? As far as I'm aware severe food and severe insect bite allergies are both type 1 IgE-mediated reactions. There may be differences, but saying there is "virtually no comparison" is ridiculous.
Kids who were raised with cats don't have allergies. Some of them develop a sensitivity when they go off to college and aren't around cats every day like they used to be. I think your medical research needs work!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Doctors bad-mouth cow's milk because a bunch of vegan pussies with their hippie propaganda have convinced a gullible bunch of half-a-fag pediatricians that dairy is THE EVIL. All it's going to get you is a bunch of lactose-intolerant pussy kids to match their pussy parents. And the sad thing is that they're not even going to have lunch money to buy their gay soy milk because my kid is going to be beating them up and taking it from them.
Actually, your argument may be valid for human consumption of bovine milk, but there are valid reasons for infants to avoid it. Cow milk has larger protein structures which are harder for human infants to digest than human milk. Cow milk has the wrong kind of fats for human infants. Not to mention that human infants need MORE fat than what cow milk provides. When infants are introduced to cow milk (about 12 months old), it should be whole milk. Children shouldn't drink 1% or skim milk until they are 2 years old.
As for soy milk, too much soy messes with male hormones.
I am replying only because you were tragically upvoted.
"Fear is a very, very bad advisor. It makes you massively overestimate rare risks, while you get blinded for real risks because they are familiar."
Hello, complete comprehension failture: I was referring to parents of children who *have* a potentially deadly allergy. When your child can die as a result of a cafeteria milk splash, fear is a perfectly reasonable reaction.
"That account you read was published exactly because it was an exceptionally rare event."
Wow. Despite not knowing the subject, the author, or the publication in which the account was published, you somehow know the nature of the condition and the reason for documenting the event. Just wow.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
What do all vaccines and immune-booster/etc have in common? To cross the blood brain barrier, they MUST have a protein carrier attached.
What proteins do they use because they are cheap? Nuts and Eggs and other preservatives (Thimerosal) to make them last 10 years+
A little polysorbate/mercury/Aluminum to stabilize the virus when it meets brain tissues, these additions can help make the tissue more porous. This stuff is pretty bad, that's why adults & children can die from Encephalitis (brain inflammation.)
I don’t care to read much of what’s on the website but take a look at all the stuff added into these vaccines here:
http://vaxtruth.org/2011/08/vaccine-ingredients/
Yeast/Lactose/Dextrose/salts/sugars/vitamins all little additions to something your body then has an immune response to (the virus.)
So why wouldn’t you develop allegories to these things? Your body ‘remembers’ a traumatic event associated with it that it had to fight off.
You using soap is "a patch on your unsanitary practices", by that argument.
I had a friend who was deathly allergic to pepper. He had to keep an epipen with him at all times. His sister died from pepper. Even a waiter grinding pepper onto someone's plate nearby would cause a serious reaction. Every time we'd go out he would have to make sure that there was no pepper in whatever he ordered though invariably there were times there was. Pepper generally is not listed in ingredients as pepper but as "spice".
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Yeah, you can just buy the cheap Chinese knock-off honey, that if you're lucky, is just flavored corn syrup.
We were playing at a rec center after a group class and he was making new friends playing at a pool table when I noticed a dad come over with a half eaten sandwich to give to his kid... whats on the sandwich... peanut butter! SHIT they've all been at the same table touching the stuff, that kid is little he'll be all over with that food, we have to GET OUT OF HERE NOW.
Or you could, you know, go over to the guy and politely say "Hey my son is severely allergic, could you have your kid wash his hands after eating that please?"