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60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds

(www.cbsnews.com)
349 points zdw | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 03:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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forgotoldacc ◴[21 Oct 25 05:20 UTC] No.45652698[source]▶
There was a period of a few decades (I guess still ongoing, really) where parents sheltered their kids from everything. Playing in the dirt, peanuts, other allergens. It seems like all it's done is make people more vulnerable as adults. People assume babies are super fragile and delicate, and in many ways they are, but they also bounce back quickly.

Maybe part of it is a consequence of the risks of honey, which can actually spawn camp infants with botulism. But it seems that fear spread to everything.

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1. cyberax ◴[21 Oct 25 06:06 UTC] No.45652932[source]▶
> There was a period of a few decades (I guess still ongoing, really) where parents sheltered their kids from everything.

The hygiene hypothesis is not impossible, but evidence for and against it is questionable. But anyway, for peanuts it's not the hygiene.

It's a much more complex mechanism that retrains your immune system from using the non-specific rapid-response allergic reaction to the T-cell-mediated response.

The same method can be used to desensitize yourself to poison oak or ivy. You need to add small amounts of them into your food, and eventually you stop having any reaction to urushiol contact with the skin.