[HN Gopher] Peanut allergies have plummeted in children
___________________________________________________________________
Peanut allergies have plummeted in children
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-10-20 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Business idea: Allergen Aerator
|
| Generate a miasma of benign pestilence in your child's crib,
| mimicking the protective inoculations provided by early exposure
| to peanuts and other potential allergens, "farm" air, and the
| like. It could be packaged with Flonase for sneezing parents and
| an 'essential oils' scent dispenser to cover the barnyard smell.
|
| Use AI to tailor the precise blend of aerosolized rodent feces
| and tree nut dust to optimize your child's immune system, and et
| voila: funding!
| johnea wrote:
| Or, of course, people could just go outside, with and/or
| without their babies 8-/
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I choose "and" /s
| all2 wrote:
| I spent my formative years outside, playing in the dirt. I
| don't get sick often (or I didn't until covid kicked in).
| hangonhn wrote:
| For food allergies, they already make powders that contains
| various different allergens that you can expose your kid to
| starting at a certain age.
|
| And like sibling comment said, you can just also just take them
| outside and let them be kind of outdoorsy.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Miasma is a very bad idea because
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45647737
| alex_c wrote:
| Disappointed this link has nothing to do with Dwarf Fortress.
| woah wrote:
| Just get an overly affectionate dog that gets into the garbage
| from time to time
| mauzy wrote:
| Bizarre that this is the top comment as this would drastically
| increase the frequency of peanut allergies and, more than
| likely, end in multiple deaths. Research strongly suggests that
| the key is that the child eats peanuts before being exposed via
| other vectors (skin/lung) to avoid allergic reactions.
| Arisolizing the relevant proteins around infants is essentially
| fast tracking allergic reactions.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| It is not bizarre, this place is like reddit or the news.
| Things seem plausible, until once in a while the discussion
| is something in your area of expertise, then you realise how
| full of shit everyone is.
|
| At least here we have some exceptions, with some deeply
| knowledgeable people. But to offset that we have software
| "engineer" hubris.
| tines wrote:
| You realize it was a joke, right
| bodiekane wrote:
| I smirked at the parent comment, and it didn't even slightly
| occur to me that someone might interpret its intent as
| serious and literal until I saw your comment.
| michaelt wrote:
| In my experience HNers are extremely credulous.
|
| As far as I can tell, there's _no_ level of satire so
| heavy-handed and unsubtle that it won 't get a reply taking
| it seriously. If anything, the more obviously ridiculous
| your suggestion, the more urgently HNers want to disagree.
| oblio wrote:
| I've been on the internet a long time. There are enough
| weirdos out there to make you understand humor doesn't
| scale, and it definitely doesn't scale across cultures.
|
| Things are different when you actually know people but we
| killed that when we killed forums.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > Research strongly suggests that the key is that the child
| eats peanuts before being exposed via other vectors
| (skin/lung) to avoid allergic reactions.
|
| New business idea: Allergen Feeder
| alliao wrote:
| just buy some asian snacks... i've never seen an asian kid
| allergic to peanuts, when we first heard peanut allergy thought
| it was a skit
| croes wrote:
| Survivorship bias?
| evanjrowley wrote:
| AKA evolution
| viraptor wrote:
| They trade it for 5% infants with egg allergy
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pai.14211
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Or Israeli: Israel presents a unique experiment because you
| have people from different genetic populations from different
| parts of the world collecting in Israel(eg Sephardic jews
| from Spain, Ashkenazi from central Europe, Mizrahi from Asia,
| etc).
|
| Something interesting is that peanut allergies in Israel are
| far lower than for Jews living in Spain, central europe,
| etc...
|
| One of the most popular snacks in Israel? Bambas - peanut
| butter puffs.
| sfgunn wrote:
| Competing with a $2 bag of Planter's? Not so crazy if you
| corner the market. Now that's SaaSing baby!
| politelemon wrote:
| This is needs consumer staying power in order to secure the
| funding. I recommend selling the blends in DRM locked plastic
| pods and have the device only be operable from a mobile app.
| The mobile app's purpose would be to gamify the aerosol
| dispensation by grading it on timeliness, targeted direction
| and force of the spray, as well as streaks that get posted to
| social media for a sense of foamo.
| evereverever wrote:
| The kids I see that have peanut allergies lived in bubbles. It
| seems like it is self-inflicted but I have no scientific
| evidence.
| foxyv wrote:
| There are a ton of studies that indicate that early exposure to
| peanuts reduces incidence of peanut allergies. I'm not sure
| about other allergens.
|
| https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/search-results?page=...
| peterfirefly wrote:
| And yet peanut allergy is rare in Europe. Pretty strange.
| rimunroe wrote:
| I thought peanut allergies were roughly as common in Europe
| as the US, and a quick web search seems to back this up:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6021584/
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I think peanuts are eaten less commonly in Europe? Maybe it
| just doesn't come up as much?
| viraptor wrote:
| Europe is as much a location as the US. Eating habits in
| Finland are very different than in Spain. So any
| generalisation here will have people disagreeing. That
| said, I are lots of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.
| It was normal.
| munchbunny wrote:
| I haven't searched through the literature, but these days
| pediatrician advice is to try to do early and regular
| exposure to all of the common food allergens as soon as they
| are ready to start solid foods (~6 month mark), if not even a
| little earlier in their milk/formula.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't think there are any physics reasons why it'd be
| impossible
|
| There is extensive evidence that the incidence of severe peanut
| allergies is significantly increased by the practice of
| avoiding early exposure in the absence of particular risk
| indicators, which is why that practice is now advised
| against.(IIRC, some of the first targeted studies were
| motivated by observed differences in incidence between the US
| where early avoidance had become common and Israel where
| peanut-based puff snacks were a common thing to give to babies
| not long after starting solid food.)
| kccqzy wrote:
| That reminds me of my parents who most often use peanut oil
| for cooking. I was eating food cooked in peanut oil every
| day. I was astounded when I heard in elementary school that
| people could be allergic to peanuts.
| jbd28 wrote:
| There is no allergenic proteins left in peanut oil or it
| would burn and be rancid at room temperature. Your anecdata
| is not relevant here.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There are proteins left in raw pressed peanut oil (used
| for lower heat cooking and as a finishing oil, somewhat
| similar to EVOO), but not in highly-refined peanut oil
| (typically used for high-heat cooking/deep frying.)
|
| Both will eventually go rancid at room temperature ,
| though highly refined oil has a longer shelf life (both
| sealed and, even moreso, after the seal is broken.)
| mgkimsal wrote:
| 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.
| didibus wrote:
| 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.
| munchbunny wrote:
| 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.
| valiant55 wrote:
| My first is allergic to peanuts and I don't think she lived in
| a bubble but she was born in late 2020 so probably a relative
| bubble compared to normal times. She was 8mo when she first had
| a lick of peanut butter, no other allergies and we quickly
| followed up with tree nut butter to head off anything else.
| munchbunny wrote:
| My oldest is allergic and spent plenty of time in the sand and
| dirt. They were exposed to nuts pretty regularly, and fed small
| amounts from basically as soon as they were taking solid foods.
|
| The hygiene hypothesis is widely accepted, including by
| allergists, and there's definitely data supporting it, but we
| don't understand the mechanism, so it's hard to say that it's
| about any one specific thing vs. many contributing causes that
| correlate with hygiene and other aspects of the environment
| around the kid.
|
| The advice about early exposure clearly works though, and
| there's data to support that early exposure even after
| confirming the allergy can increase the chances of outgrowing
| the allergy.
| robertjpayne wrote:
| Should clarify that the "hygiene hypothesis" has data
| supporting it for bacteria and allergens but _not_ viruses.
| M95D wrote:
| Now we do understand why allergies appear, or at least we
| have theories that are being tested with studies such as this
| one. It's all about chance, very literally.
|
| As lymphocytes are formed, they randomly rearrange their
| T-cell receptor / immunoglobulin genes, creating a random
| antigen specificity for each cell. [1]
|
| Then, they get selectively killed if they react to self-
| antigens. [2]
|
| Those that survive, if they ever meet their specific antigen,
| will selectively multiply [3] and do random mutations again
| [4]. [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonal_deletion [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonal_selection [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation
|
| The current theory is that allergies appear if: (1) some
| random lymphocyte rearrangement created affinity for that
| allergen and (2) the allergen was not "known to be safe" by
| the selection mechanisms of the body and that lymphocyte was
| allowed to survive.
| dividefuel wrote:
| My kid showed an allergic reaction the third time he had
| peanuts, at 6-7 months old. We hadn't lived in much of a bubble
| up to that point.
|
| You say they live in bubbles, but is that before or after
| discovering the allergy? After the allergy is discovered, some
| amount of bubble-ing is necessary due to how difficult it is to
| be certain than something is peanut-free.
| Bender wrote:
| Have there been any studies on crop-swapping changes such as
| legumes <--> cotton? Only asking as there were some theories
| about excess herbicides and pesticides from cotton leeching into
| the ground and getting absorbed in high amounts by legumes from
| seasonal crop-swaps.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Eating peanuts reduces allergies, but getting peanuts on your
| skin increases allergies.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009167491...
|
| Or maybe in your lungs.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8429226/#R7
| teejmya wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20251020152903/https://www.nytim...
| legitster wrote:
| One of my conspiracy theories that I loosely hold is that the
| majority of the fears that we have been sold on allergies was a
| direct result of marketing efforts by the inventors of the
| Epipen.
|
| Anaphylactic shock is extremely rare. And even in cases of
| anaphylactic shock, it's only fatal in an even rarer number of
| cases (which makes sense, anaphylactic shocks is a biological
| reaction of your body to _save_ itself, not kill itself).
|
| We really don't know how many lives emergency epinephrine has
| saved, but it may have only been necessary in less than 1 out of
| 50 cases. However, it benefitted the manufacturer to
| overemphasize the prevalence of dangerous food allergies and the
| risks of shock and encourage doctors to prescribe them in
| increasingly more "just in case" cases".
|
| It's in this world that parents and doctors alike became insanely
| cautious and paranoid about introducing allergens. Conveniently,
| we saw the rise of simpler, more highly processed baby and
| childrens' foods at the same time.
| tredre3 wrote:
| I could get onboard with your theory that Epipens are overused
| (or at least over prescribed). But I really don't agree that
| when someone can't breath we should "wait and see because it's
| the body trying to save itself", though.
|
| Children of Gen X and Millenials have been ruined by their
| helicopter/bubble parents, they have allergies and that's that.
| Future generations can and must learn from their mistake, but
| we can't force allergic people to simply grow out of it. We're
| not talking itchy throats here.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Per TFA, it's mainly children of Boomers and Gen X and the
| trend is now reversing with Millenial children.
|
| Add allergies to the list of things Millenials killed I
| guess.
| legitster wrote:
| > But I really don't agree that when someone can't breath we
| should "wait and see because it's the body trying to save
| itself", though.
|
| I'm absolutely NOT arguing that and I thought my post made it
| very clear that epinephrine does save lives.
|
| But the overrepresented sense of fear actively made our kids
| less safe.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My inclination is to say it is all hypochondria, that it's a
| slander against peanut farmers, etc. I know a lot of women, for
| instance, who don't like insects and are terrified that they
| might get stung by a bee or a hornet because they don't know if
| they are allergic to stings because they've never been stung.
|
| On the other hand, I've seen kids have a bad reaction to
| peanuts and the tiniest dose can be dramatically dangerous.
|
| I think of how allergies to wheat were fashionable before COVID
| but seem to have been forgotten about in all the confusion. Now
| there is such as thing as a wheat allergy and I know people who
| eat the tiniest amount of gluten and their GI tract purges
| everything in both directions. I know about 10x as many people
| who have vague symptoms such as "bloating" or nonspecific
| fatigue who get told by an alternative health practitioner to
| go gluten free... and instead of eating traditional
| preparations of other cereals and pseudo-cereals (e.g. a bowl
| of rice) they seem to think life begins with sandwiches and
| ends with baked goods and eat nothing but sawdust "bread".
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I agree with your point about eating traditional preparations
| of grains being less problematic and many people seemingly
| not thinking about that at all for some reason even when they
| run into problems.
|
| But, I think it may go a step further than that. If we zoom
| out on the timeline to the span of human evolution, eating
| grass seeds as a significant part of the diet is very, very,
| very strange. It wouldn't surprise me if some human
| subpopulations, especially those who adopted agriculture
| later on, aren't suited to eating grass seeds at all. And I'm
| just thinking about within European subpopulations. There
| were people roaming around the steppe when others were long
| settled. And beyond even that, the population increase
| enabled by wheat et al could plausibly produce a large enough
| competitive advantage for the group that some individuals
| having tummy problems probably would not register much on the
| selection pressure meter back in those days.
|
| I've come around to the idea that wheat sensitivity is
| probably real. I used to be quite skeptical also. I think if
| you told someone 30,000 years ago that the earth would be
| full of people eating mainly grass seeds, they would find the
| idea completely ridiculous.
| nradov wrote:
| Most gluten sensitivities aren't allergies. There is no
| histamine reaction.
|
| In a lot of cases patients who _think_ they have a gluten
| intolerance are actually having a bad reaction to one of the
| many other chemicals that typically come along with gluten.
| They can test this by consuming pure food-grade gluten with
| nothing else (not medical advice, check with your doctor).
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I'm not a doctor but it feels like there are a lot of holes
| here.
|
| > Anaphylactic shock is extremely rare
|
| ~5% of people in the US have experienced anaphylaxis, but I
| don't know your definition of rare.
|
| > it's only fatal in an even rarer number of cases
|
| Could this be due to epipens being commonly carried by people
| likely to experience anaphylaxis?
|
| > anaphylactic shocks is a biological reaction of your body to
| save itself, not kill itself
|
| Because it is an immune response? Is the implication here that
| anaphylactic shock is actually a good thing?
|
| And focusing on the conspiracy part itself
|
| > the majority of the fears that we have been sold on allergies
| was a direct result of marketing efforts by the inventors of
| the Epipen.
|
| Implying the increase in EpiPen prescriptions caused people to
| be more cautious about food allergies feels exactly backwards.
| legitster wrote:
| > Could this be due to epipens being commonly carried by
| people likely to experience anaphylaxis?
|
| The tricky thing with the data set available to us is that
| anaphylactic deaths are so rare that it's hard to establish
| meaningful findings:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4382330/
|
| We do know though that hospitalization rates are about the
| same for people who take epinephrine vs those that don't. The
| speed at which they get to the ER seems to have a bigger
| impact on the recovery from the reaction than the Epipens do:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10811.
| ..
|
| > Implying the increase in EpiPen prescriptions caused people
| to be more cautious about food allergies feels exactly
| backwards.
|
| How so? Bringing awareness to risk in general makes people
| more cautious. Advertising crime rates in your town to sell
| you a security system will overall make people feel less
| secure.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| > We do know though that hospitalization rates are about
| the same for people who take epinephrine vs those that
| don't
|
| An EpiPen is not a cure, and you are told that if you use
| an EpiPen you should also go to the hospital. An EpiPen
| essentially keeps you alive long enough to receive care.
|
| > The speed at which they get to the ER seems to have a
| bigger impact on the recovery from the reaction than the
| EpiPens do
|
| If you have anaphylaxis without an EpiPen, the first thing
| the ambulance/ER will do is almost certainly inject
| epinephrine.
|
| I really encourage you to ask a doctor. It is not enough to
| read papers and draw conclusions without understanding the
| broader context. I am not a doctor, but have talked to a
| doctor about carrying an EpiPen.
|
| > The tricky thing with the data set available to us is
| that anaphylactic deaths are so rare that it's hard to
| establish meaningful findings
|
| Again, could this be because there is such abundant access
| to life saving medication, that you are arguing against?
| legitster wrote:
| > Again, could this be because there is such abundant
| access to life saving medication, that you are arguing
| against?
|
| I'm not _at all_ arguing that Epipens don 't save lives
| or that doctors shouldn't prescribe them or that you
| shouldn't carry one.
|
| Let me reframe my argument: Crime is a real risk no
| matter where you live in this country. But we should not
| be surprised that people that sell you security are
| incentivized to scare you about the risk of crime or its
| randomness.
|
| I would not say people shouldn't take whatever
| precautions they need against crime, but don't think it's
| controversial to say the risk is overstated.
|
| It's easy enough to say that never stepping outside of
| your house because crime exists is a silly conclusion to
| make. But people for some reason thought it was
| completely normal to deprive children of exposure to
| large swaths of the food pyramid despite no underlying
| history or diagnosis because a risk was overstated to
| them.
|
| Still, I am admitting that my targeting of Epipens in
| particular something of a crackpot argument. But also we
| live in a world still reeling from the effects of the
| Sackler family and the marketing they used on the medical
| industry - would it be _that_ far fetched if we learned
| in 20-30 years that the life saving ability of emergency
| epinephrine was overstated for profit?
| margalabargala wrote:
| > ~5% of people in the US have experienced anaphylaxis, but I
| don't know your definition of rare.
|
| What's your source here, and how many of those people
| actually experienced a non-allergic one-off angioedema that
| was misdiagnosed as anaphylaxis "just in case"? Or worse,
| wasn't even diagnosed, their parent saw them experience
| angioedema after eating something for the first time and
| assumed an allergy without any diagnosis ever?
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| "Anaphylaxis in America: the prevalence and characteristics
| of anaphylaxis in the United States"
|
| > The most common triggers reported were medications (34%),
| foods (31%), and insect stings (20%)
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24144575/
|
| not a doctor but a "one off face swelling" after eating
| something for the first time seems like it would be much
| more rare than an actual allergic reaction.
| margalabargala wrote:
| That's what I thought too, until I had a one off face
| swelling and throat closing event after eating a new food
| and went to an allergist, only to learn I was not
| allergic and have had successful re-eatings of that food.
|
| What I learned from the allergist is, histamine
| angioedema is _essentially_ the same thing as
| anaphylaxis, and is treated the same, but is different in
| cause in that repeat exposure to the food item will not
| cause a repeat episode.
|
| I'm not a doctor either, but according to my allergist
| (who is), most people who think they are allergic to some
| random thing that most people have never heard of people
| being allergic to, are not in fact allergic to that
| thing.
|
| Reading the full text of the article you linked it looks
| like their criteria cover both angioedema and anaphylaxis
| and add the two together.
|
| Here's some additional info:
|
| https://knyamed.com/blogs/difference-between/angioedema-
| vs-a...
|
| https://emcrit.org/ibcc/angioedema/#diagnosis_of_angioede
| ma
| lawlessone wrote:
| > it may have only been necessary in less than 1 out of 50
| cases.
|
| Ok but who want's to be the one that needs it and can't get it?
|
| https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/family-of-teen-who-died-...
|
| >anaphylactic shocks is a biological reaction of your body to
| save itself, not kill itself
|
| The idea that everything the body does is harmless natural
| magic that should be allowed to run it's course is killing
| people.
| legitster wrote:
| If they were having an active anaphylactic reaction, they
| should have gone to the ER, not trying to buy an Epipen. Even
| when an Epipen is administered as directed, it is only to buy
| time to get to the hospital.
|
| > The idea that everything the body does is harmless natural
| magic that should be allowed to run it's course is killing
| people.
|
| Not sure where you got this from my point that the risk is
| overemphasized.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >Not sure where you got this from
|
| Your original post.
|
| >which makes sense, anaphylactic shocks is a biological
| reaction of your body to save itself, not kill itself).
|
| i think you misunderstood something here, anaphylactic
| shock is by definition a medical emergency.
| legitster wrote:
| Anaphylaxis is only fatal in ~0.3% of cases _that
| required hospitalization_.
|
| https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(13)02738-3/
| ful...
|
| "Although anaphylactic reactions are potentially life
| threatening, the probability of dying is very low for
| those cases that require ED or hospital attention, and is
| likely much lower when all anaphylactic reactions are
| considered."
|
| I think you misunderstood me. The risk of your immune
| system going haywire and killing you is a real risk and
| worthy of medical attention. But I think we are really
| overstating the prevalence of how many people have an
| immune system ready to self-destruct them.
| lawlessone wrote:
| yes i think i did misunderstand a little.
|
| Anecdotally a relative recently found out they have a
| gluten intolerance and while a lot of people would think
| it's a fad kids latch onto (implied by someone elsewhere
| in this topic), it actually took a while for it to be
| identified.
|
| The assumption was they just had anxiety which was
| causing physical symptoms until they had a blood test
| that identified the antibody.
|
| Seeing a lot of "illness X is fake" on here and elsewhere
| lately so i wrongly perceived it here.
| Aloha wrote:
| I attribute to my robust immune system to the amount of dirt I
| ate as a child, I was a digger in the school yard, and I liked
| playing in mud - while being a thumb sucker well into elementary
| school.
| gnerd00 wrote:
| the word is "soil" :-D
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| Most peanut allergies are noticed during infancy. Advising
| infants eat more dirt is probably not a good solution to
| reducing peanut allergies on the whole.
| gregschlom wrote:
| I know you're being facetious but I wanted to say, a friend of
| mine's kid recently got diagnosed with elevated lead levels in
| his blood, likely caused by eating contaminated dirt from their
| backyard. So... test before you try it, I guess?
| tokai wrote:
| Peanut allergies is one of those things I have only seen in
| American pop culture and media. Like anxious kids breathing in a
| brown paper bag.
|
| I know people have peanut allergies all over the world. But the
| significance of the allergy is definitely different in the US
| than most other places imo.
| XorNot wrote:
| My son's daycare in Australia doesn't allow peanuts or eggs due
| to allergy management concerns so I don't think this is an
| American thing? I had a friend in high school who had a peanut
| allergy and had an epipen.
|
| "breathing into a brown paper bag"? An anaphylatic reaction is
| literally a life-threatening event requiring prompt medical
| intervention. It's not "anxiety".
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| Poster is talking about two different phenomenon.
| XorNot wrote:
| In which case it's even more weird because again: an
| anaphylactic shock is a life-threatening event that will
| kill you without prompt medical intervention. The epipen is
| _literally_ just to keep you alive long enough to get to
| the hospital.
|
| And funnily enough, the breathing in a paper bag is
| _absolutely_ a recommended treatment for anxiety attacks by
| doctors. My father is one, and had my wife do it when she
| had a panic attack during a particularly rough airplane
| landing recently.
|
| So again: it's a standard and normal thing, which is in the
| regular medical parlance.
|
| The reason to do it is your trigger to breathe is based on
| CO2 acidity, not oxygen - you can't detect O2 (hence why
| inert gas asphyxiation is a huge hazard) but can detect
| CO2. But if you start shallow breathing very rapidly you
| end up in feedback loop. Rebreathing the air ups the CO2
| content, which encourages the body to take deeper breathes,
| which in turn helps with the anxiety and ensures you do get
| enough oxygen (since you can wind up passing out, and low
| O2 wipes out the reasoning center of thought very quickly).
| unwind wrote:
| The brown paper bag [1] was not connected to the peanut
| allergy, it was mentioned as an example of another thing that
| only (to OP) seems to happen/be a thing in the US.
|
| [1]: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/breathing-into-
| a-pap...
| viraptor wrote:
| Australia has a higher rate of peanut allergy than the US.
| (3% vs 2%)
| evan_ wrote:
| I've never seen anyone outside of TV breathing into a paper bag
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Common sense thinking wins again. The entire genesis of an
| allergy is your body treats a benign particle as a pathogen due
| to not recognizing it. The #1 way to precipitate this is to keep
| the body from ever encountering this particle until well beyond
| its initial phases of immune development.
|
| Are there other modern conditions born from the same "zero-
| tolerance prevention leads to unintended consequences due to
| failing to provide the body a robust means to develop"?
| strbean wrote:
| Maybe drug policy and the opioid crisis?
| taeric wrote:
| I don't know that I agree this is the reasoning, here? Seems
| far more likely, to me, that there are other environmental
| factors at play.
|
| I'm almost certainly indexing too heavily on the ideas in birch
| pollen cross reactivity. But I see basically no reason not to
| think that same process generalizes quite well into a lot of
| the things we used to gladly pollute into our environments.
|
| And yes, I know we can still get better at pollution
| management; but I think people should probably acknowledge just
| how much progress we have made. Especially in the US. Our air
| quality is amazingly clean today compared to just 60 years ago.
| Strikingly so.
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