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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?
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.
Let me explain this with science.
You have two groups.
One that is exposed to peanuts as infants.
One that is not.
Fewer children in the exposed group developed peanut allergies.
In other words SOME peanut allergies can be prevented by early exposure.
Your argument is the same as. "My uncle never smoked a day in his life and died of lung cancer. Smoking does not cause lung cancer".
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
"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...
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.
"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
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 don't know if protiens from peanuts are passed through to the fetus or not. But our pediatrician did say that such protiens do make it into the breast milk. Which makes me wonder if there has been any correlation shown between allergies and breastfeeding, either positive or negative.