I went to college with a guy who was allergic to peanut butter.
I always felt bad he will never know the glory of a PB&J sandwich.
If only there was a way to prevent allergies...
Hey guys Julia here for DNews.
Can we really prevent allergies?
A new study from New England Journal of Medicine suggests yes... maybe.
The researchers found that babies who ate peanuts could reduce their risk of developing
an allergy by 80%.
This goes against what i’ve heard is the current wisdom, that babies shouldn’t eat
peanuts until at least a year old.
15 years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics told parents to make sure their kids avoid
peanuts.
But they retracted that advice in 2008, and said there was too little evidence to support
it.
However researchers noticed a lower rate of peanut allergy in Israeli children, who ate
peanuts regularly.
They wondered if early consumption of peanuts had anything to do with it.
In the large study, researchers followed 600 infants between 4 and 11 months old.
Some were told to avoid peanuts completely others were told to eat 6 grams of peanut
protein a week.
They found that in the group that avoided peanuts, 14 of out of every 100 kids would
develop an allergy, but in the group that eat peanuts regularly only 2 out of 100 would.
The researchers however did not include infants that already showed signs of a strong allergy
to peanuts.
So don’t go too overboard with feeding little johnny peanuts to get rid him of his allergies.
Talk to your doctor before you try anything.
But maybe you should make him wash some dishes.
Another recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that kids who grew up in
a house where dishes were hand-washed, not where they were sterilized in a dishwasher,
had fewer allergies.
The kids also reportedly had reduced rates of related illnesses like eczema, asthma,
and hay fever.
Not ready to give up your dishwasher just yet?
Maybe you should look into getting a pet!
Children who had two or more dogs or cats had a reduction, up to 77 percent, of risk
of allergies, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
These kids were also less allergic to other things like dust and ragweed.
So what’s going on?
Well there’s a hypothesis that we’re too clean.
It’s called the hygiene hypothesis.
The idea is that humans moving to a more sterile environment led to the rise of certain diseases,
like asthma.
Basically your body is always trolling for invaders.
Trying to keep out infections and bad bacteria.
But if our environment is too clean, there’s less for the body to attack, so it turns on
benign things, like peanuts.
It seems early exposure to potential allergens actually prevents the allergy from developing.
Early exposure trains your immune system and not having these experiences might lead the
immune system to overreact later in life, hence nasty allergies.
But we shouldn’t exactly throw out our dishwashers and cover ourselves in dirt.
Before the invention of proper hygiene techniques a lot of people died from microbes, infections,
parasites.
Yeah, it was not a good time..
So it’s not a bad thing at all we keep things clean.
But maybe we might just have taken cleanliness too far.
To learn what’s going on when you’re allergic to something, check out Tara’s video:
And we’ve got a link in the description below if you wanna watch that full episode.
So what do you think?
Would lose your dishwasher if it meant fewer allergies?
Let us know in the comments below.
While you’re at it you should hit those like and subscribe buttons and keep checking
out DNews for new episodes every day.