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Personal anecdote, so disregard if you see fit, but I'll throw it out there anyway...
I was born in the '60s, was breasted, and grew up playing outside in the creek behind my house. I had plenty of skinned knees, bee stings, and broken bones. My father grew an enormous organic garden -- in local parlance, a truck patch -- and most of our dinners included something or other from it. Cottonwood seeds and all sorts of other hay fever-inducing pollen rained down on our house during the spring. We had several pets, and I spent many a summer hanging out at a relative's farm, running through the fields and playing in the barn with the animals. Antibacterial soap was found in only in hospitals; at home, I used good old bar soap, and knowing what I was like as a child, probably not that often.
About 18 months ago, at age 45, I was diagnosed with an extremely rare autoimmune disease. Over the course of only two weeks, I went from having perfect vision to functional blindness due to out-of-control ocular inflammation. I couldn't drive. I couldn't read. I couldn't even see the cutting board well enough to chop an onion. It was the most terrifying experience of my life! Fortunately, my disease has so far been responsive to immunosuppressive therapy, so my vision has returned to near normal with some minor residual cloudiness. With luck it will remain that way.
My point is that I have lived exactly the kind of life that is supposed to prevent this kind of thing. Nobody knows why I have the disease, although it's correlated with being positive for a particular HLA factor, which probably means that it's at least partly genetic. Who knows? I can tell you, however, that other than testing positive for a specific antigen, there is nothing in my background that would indicate I would develop the disease. Absolutely nothing.
I don't have a clue why so many kids' and adults' immune systems are going haywire, but I'd really like to know. As for peanut allergies, I have no doubt that the problem is real. People aren't making this stuff up just to make life difficult for peanut butter lovers.
Last edited by randomparent; 03-14-2014 at 09:31 AM..
Attention?
Convincing people they're special?
Having the satisfaction of getting other people and institutions change procedures just for them?
It sounds cooler than saying "I just don't like that food."
Look at the so-called "gluten allergies." Very, very few people have an actual allergy or adverse reaction to gluten, as defined by medical tests. Most are self-diagnosed, internet-diagnosed, or diagnosed by weary doctor just to quiet an annoying patient.
You might not think it's fashionable, because as a sane reasonable person, you would probably think it's ridiculous to "adopt" a medical condition because it's fashionable. I agree with you. But lots of people are not as reasonable as you & I are. If someone has a medical condition and they quietly live with it, and maybe only discuss it with people very close to them and their medical provider, that's one thing. But if someone talks on and on about a medical condition to all kinds of people, even strangers and casual acquaintances, and pushes an agenda to get others to change behavior because of their supposed medical condition, then yes, you can pretty much conclude that it's very likely a condition that's been adopted because it's fashionable, or it's about manipulating others, or both.
Pretty much agree. Well said. I have a DIL who is "deathly" allergic to anything she doesn't like, i.e., mushrooms, onions, cigarette smoke (not marijuana smoke, oddly enough), etc.
Pretty much agree. Well said. I have a DIL who is "deathly" allergic to anything she doesn't like, i.e., mushrooms, onions, cigarette smoke (not marijuana smoke, oddly enough), etc.
That reminds me of a guy I knew who had OCD with severe germ phobia that would result in not being able to work, clean his apartment, or perform almost any responsibility in life because if his severe obsessions about germs. But with his weed, he could pick up little bits that fell on the (dirty) floor and (sticky) table, and a joint could probably fall in a pile of dog dirt, and he'd have no problem picking it up.
On the allergy thing, I saw a study that said farm kids didn't get allergies because they grew up with lots of dirt and exposed to all sorts of bugs and germs and molds. Today's kids, many of them, are raised in a sterile environment. It could just be that children's immune systems are no longer challenged to develop.
The immune system isn't underdeveloped; it's over-reactive. That's an aspect of autoimmune disease that intrigues me, because I was a child who hardly ever got sick. My friends came down with all sorts of bugs, so I was obviously exposed, but I rarely developed illness. Now, here I am as a 40-something with an autoimmune disease that is treated by suppressing my immune response. Something to ponder.
Last edited by randomparent; 03-14-2014 at 10:01 AM..
Of course, a lot of people who say they are allergic just don't want to eat whatever it is.
This can be a very ignorant and dangerous assumption. One of the cases I remember clearly involving peanuts occurred in the mid 1980s. A teenage girl died after biting in to a nut filled cooking at her friends house. The girl that died had asked the friend mother if the cookies had any nuts, to which the woman responded "no". A few minutes later the girl was dead. Afterwards the mom admitted to lying about the nuts, because she thought the girl "was just a picky eater". So a girl died because of some Susie Housewife thought she was being cute.
This can be a very ignorant and dangerous assumption. One of the cases I remember clearly involving peanuts occurred in the mid 1980s. A teenage girl died after biting in to a nut filled cooking at her friends house. The girl that died had asked the friend mother if the cookies had any nuts, to which the woman responded "no". A few minutes later the girl was dead. Afterwards the mom admitted to lying about the nuts, because she thought the girl "was just a picky eater". So a girl died because of some Susie Housewife thought she was being cute.
And we always need to make sweeping changes in public policy in response to single isolated unfortunate stories.
I've wondered this myself! I've also recently had people tell me they were allergic to green veggies such as spinach and another that was allergic to citrus. I never would have even thought to think of that.
My daughter at 20 had a reaction to a bee sting. Her whole arm swelled up. So, she was treated by an allergist who then suggested she get a series of tests run to see if she had an allergy to bee stings as well as everything else. Turned out she's allergic to pretty much every tree in New Jersey as well as foods like spinach that she eats all the time. She didn't stop eating those foods because she had no reaction to them, but they show up as allergies in her. It's weird.
And we always need to make sweeping changes in public policy in response to single isolated unfortunate stories.
As I mentioned earlier I had a student who almost died because he was not informed about peanuts
being in something he ate. He almost died and in the hospital they had to do a tracheostomy (putting
a breathing tube through a small hole in his throat). He was in the hospital for almost a week.
There are allergies that can be very serious and life threatening. Would we be questioning those
allergic to penicillin too?
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