“That’s Mister Peanut, to you!”
In the November issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology a British team or researchers is reporting that babies who are not exposed to peanuts early are MORE likely to develop peanut allergies later in life.
As a parent one can’t help but notice the immense apparent uptick in allergies. Any time I go on any outing featuring friends of the Little Fireflies one parent or another is giving me a list of things Little Jordan or Little Kaitlyn cannot be exposed to. I can hardly take a few kids to the zoo without sufficiently proving to a parent that I can use an Epipen and know CPR. And don’t get me started with booster seats! I’ve always believed in seat belts, and always used one, long before it was the law and even when friends in High School mocked me, but c’mon! It won’t be long until parents are encasing any child under the age of 30 in a plexiglass sphere!
Just try to bring Birthday treats to your kid’s class. The list of what is not allowed makes the U.S. tax code look like the printed lyrics to a Ramone’s song. I have long suspected that the reason kids seem so fragile today is they have been too coddled as infants. I have no memory of my life prior to the age of 30, but I’m fairly confident I spent long hours of each and everyday outside eating grass, dirt or snow coated with pesticides, slugs and labrador urine, and aside from a few facial tics and the inability to remember lists more than 3 items long I am completely unharmed from the experience.
I’ll bet medical science will soon learn that our immune systems need stimulation from day one to develop normally. Have you visited parents of a new born recently? I have literally been asked to wear a surgical mask in more than one instance! And those are kids that are healthy! If your baby is premature, or has an immune deficiency, sure, I see the point, but I’m fairly sure my mom let anyone hold me who had the inclination, and they weren’t asked to scrub the first three layers of their epidermis off with hand sanitizer beforehand.
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I’m glad my parents never coddled me. They would explain to me the consequences of my choices and then let me discover the reality on my own.
My kids will be required to play outside and I am not going to let them back in the house until I see blood…theirs or someones else’s
Somehow, I think the increase in childhood allergies is somehow related to our economic struggles, of late.
When you try to isolate yourself from pain of any sort,(financial, germs, cuts and scrapes) you wind up isolating yourself, right out of existence. Pain is a powerful teacher, that you can’t hide from. The more you try to hide from it the more painful it will be when it, finally, finds you.
Have a feeling we’re in for a huge dose of pain – financial, and otherwise.
We were talking about this at work one day — how did we all grow up on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and ice cream and candy and whole meals, not crap from the microwave (even tho my mom worked some, so us kids helped or made dinner).
Now, every kid is allergic to peanuts or is lactose intolerant or has ADD or ADHD. I know, I know, these are real things. But if my parents told me to sit down, STOP talking and pay attention I had to do it. Geez.
Rufus,
Most of the parents I work with that have little kids — yes, they were reciting the list of what has been approved for the snacks you bring to the whole class and the ones your own child brings for their snack in the afternoon. Can’t just hand them a candy bar, no, no, no.
When my grandfather was a kid, he’d just put a gob of peanut butter in his pocket – to last him as a snack during the day. Of course he’d have to pick the hair from squirrel’s tails, he’d also put in his pocket, from the peanut butter, before he ate it.
I’ll bet he also didn’t suffer from squirrel allergies!
Nope – and he never had a cavity.
The hubs and I are against coddling our 2.5 year old son (and only child – so far).
My in-laws on the other hand… my FIL wanted to get my son a harness so that when he was learning to walk, he could follow behind him with the harness and keep him from falling!! We told him that was a monumentally bad idea and why. And, oh, that’s just the tip of the iceberg with those too. His mother put the “mother” in “smother”!
Our kids have to build an immune system – they need to be exposed to our world and the chemicals in it (within reason).
I had a great aunt who told us, as children, that you had to eat a pound of dirt before you died. And here I am, healthy as the proverbial horse
When I get my class snacks, I make sure that I buy all the foods that they’re allergic to. That means there’s more for me.
Good strategy Matt!
As a child we were all put into a pen and had to fight our way out. The losers were never seen again. Anyone who suffered from colds or other maladies were taken out an shot. Later we were tattooed with a bar code featuring our rank and serial number.
Oh, wait that was Kurt Russel in the movie Soldier…never mind.
Rufus,
There is already evidence that you need exposure to allergens for proper immune development. For those in the field of pediatric immunology, it is a dichotomy. A publication in the September issue of the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology journal titled, “Food allergy: Is strict avoidance the only answer?” starts out by stating:
“It is an immunological paradigm that avoidance of food allergen may reduce the risk or prevent immunological reactions and conversely that a greater exposure increases the magnitude of the immune response.”
It has been shown that tolerance of food allergens can be induced by exposures to high doses and extremely low doses, while doses in the middle cause allergic reactions (in animals). Also that medical treatment for allergies too early on actually makes the problem worse, sometimes… maybe. About the only thing that is agreed on is heredity is still the #1 factor in allergies.
Skip, rather like alcohol.
My husband has the best immune system for any human being I’ve ever seen. When he was little, every time his mother heard of some kid coming down with mumps or measles or something she’d send him over there to catch it. And like every other kid at the time, he also stuck everything he could find in his mouth, ate dirt, grew up with animals, drank lake water at the summer cabin, was exposed to second-hand smoke, etc. It’s called LIFE.
Stickwick,
Your husband is Finnish, right? Mrs. Firefly is German and she also has an incredible immune system and it looks like the Little Fireflies all inherited it. I caught everything within a hundred miles as a kid. She has hardly had any illness. Must be something in the Nordic DNA?