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

(www.cbsnews.com)
349 points zdw | 2 comments | 21 Oct 25 03:53 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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rtpg ◴[21 Oct 25 05:36 UTC] No.45652797[source]▶
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" makes for a fun little statement. It's not actual natural law though, right? I feel like it's fairly well documented that good hygiene is a win for humanity as a whole, so I have some skepticism for generally saying "well let the kids eat dirt". We did that for centuries already!

The thing I'm a bit curious about is how the research on peanut allergies leading to the sort of uhhh... cynic's common sense take ("expose em early and they'll be fine") is something that we only got to in 2015. Various allergies are a decently big thing in many parts of the world, and it feels almost anticlimactic that the dumb guy take here just applied, and we didn't get to that.

Maybe someone has some more details about any basis for the original guidelines

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bob1029 ◴[21 Oct 25 06:58 UTC] No.45653178[source]▶
> "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" makes for a fun little statement. It's not actual natural law though, right?

I'm pretty sure it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunological_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation

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SideburnsOfDoom ◴[21 Oct 25 07:03 UTC] No.45653215[source]▶
No, it is not in any way a universal principle. The counterexample is Lead. A little lead in the diet does not make you stronger.
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1. waterhouse ◴[21 Oct 25 07:59 UTC] No.45653513[source]▶
More generally regarding poisons, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism . TLDR: YMMV.

"Mithridatism is not effective against all types of poison. Immunity is generally only possible with biologically complex types which the immune system can respond to. Depending on the toxin, the practice can lead to the lethal accumulation of a poison in the body. Results depend on how each poison is processed by the body."

"A minor exception is cyanide, which can be metabolized by the liver. The enzyme rhodanese converts the cyanide into the much less toxic thiocyanate.[12] This process allows humans to ingest small amounts of cyanide in food like apple seeds and survive small amounts of cyanide gas from fires and cigarettes. However, one cannot effectively condition the liver against cyanide, unlike alcohol. Relatively larger amounts of cyanide are still highly lethal because, while the body can produce more rhodanese, the process also requires large amounts of sulfur-containing substrates."

Our immune, metabolic, and other systems are built to be adaptable, and some things are easy to adapt to, but other things are difficult or impossible for them to adapt to.

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2. SideburnsOfDoom ◴[21 Oct 25 11:23 UTC] No.45654541[source]▶
While that deals with deliberate poisoning, when it comes to environmental contaminants such as lead and other heavy metals, or PM10s from vehicle exhausts, the other by-products of coal power stations and wood fires etc. I suspect that long-term exposure to these is not something where "you can build a tolerance" is a useful framing at all. Even if you technically do, it's irrelevant to the harm caused over time to whole populations.