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Peanut allergies have plummeted in children

(www.nytimes.com)
178 points JumpCrisscross | 2 comments | 20 Oct 25 18:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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evereverever ◴[20 Oct 25 18:36 UTC] No.45647475[source]▶
The kids I see that have peanut allergies lived in bubbles. It seems like it is self-inflicted but I have no scientific evidence.
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mgkimsal ◴[20 Oct 25 19:17 UTC] No.45647992[source]▶
My brother was/is allergic to peanuts, and it was first noticed in ... 1978 I think, when he was 2. Horrible reaction, nearly died. I'm older, don't have it. A brother younger than both of us also has no allergy to peanuts. We were all raised in the same house, same foods, no bubble environment (the 70s were pretty unbubbled for most kids).

He also had a grape allergy, and reaction was quite severe, but he seemed to outgrow that by his 40s.

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1. didibus ◴[20 Oct 25 19:42 UTC] No.45648307[source]▶
Right, allergies are likely a real thing, but I think there's many things nowadays where as soon as we hear of chances of something we go on this hyper vigilant avoidant mode, and that often makes the chances even greater, counterintuitively.

At some points, some things are bad luck, at least until we truly understand the mechanisms and causations.

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2. munchbunny ◴[20 Oct 25 20:49 UTC] No.45649171[source]▶
Fortunately for food allergies, oral immunotherapy seems to be very effective if you can catch the allergy early (before 2 years old). We did for our oldest and the results are miraculous. It's a ton of work though, and I had more than a few near crash-outs from trying to get an 18 month old who doesn't really like the taste of peanut to eat a teaspoon of peanut every single day. That said, I don't regret it.

Even though we keep an epipen around and we make sure they're not eating peanuts, we don't practice strict avoidance anymore, we don't have to worry about the "processed on shared equipment" warnings, and there's no problem if he touches/inhales/eats peanut, meaning we can eat peanuts around him.