Why children’s allergies are on the rise and how dirt may hold key to reducing cases
Are we too clean for our own good? New studies, presented at the International Congress of Immunology in Melbourne this week, shed more light on the rising incidence of allergies in the developed world
Can being too clean be a bad thing? Emerging research on allergic diseases – a growing epidemic in the developed world, including Hong Kong – seem to suggest so. In one new study involving 57,000 five-year-olds in Australia, scientists found the environment in which the children grew up in greatly affected their risk of developing nut allergies.
Conducted in the state of Victoria, where the third biggest source of migrants is China (behind the UK and India), the study revealed that children who were born in Asia but moved to Australia seem to have complete protection against developing a nut allergy. However, children of Asian descent born in Australia were three times more likely to develop a nut allergy than non-Asian infants.
The finding suggests Asians are at higher risk of developing food allergies for genetic reasons, and provides solid evidence that there’s something in the environment driving the allergy epidemic, said researcher Katie Allen of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
“We see that children who grow up in developing countries are protected from allergic disease, while children who grow up in developed countries have very much higher rates of allergic disease, said Allen, speaking at the International Congress of Immunology in Melbourne on August 22. “We wonder whether the Asian environment activates the immune system in some way in the first few years of life in order to fight infectious diseases that are much more rampant there, whereas if they come to Australia or a developed country they are having less activation of the immune system and therefore increasing their allergy risk as a result.”
Other research presented at the six-day congress – the largest global event in its field and held every three years – provides further evidence of the role environment plays in allergic diseases, or what researchers call the “hygiene hypothesis”.
In Allen’s study, which appeared in the April 2016 issue of the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy, 3.4 per cent of metropolitan Victorian children had nut allergies, compared to 2.4 per cent in non-metropolitan areas. Allen thinks the “hygiene hypothesis” is behind this – as well as an important reason why Melbourne has been dubbed the “food allergy capital of the world”.
“Exposure to microbes in the right form, whether it’s getting out to play in the dirt or with dogs or going to farms, appears to be protective – and we’re just not getting enough of that here in the built environment of Melbourne,” Allen said.
A second important factor, she said, is the “vitamin D hypothesis”: previous studies show that children with food allergies are more likely to have low vitamin D levels, and that the further from the equator one lives, the higher one’s risk of food allergy. Australia is the only developed country that does not supplement or fortify its food chain supply with vitamin D, Allen said, and this could explain the vitamin deficiency in Australian infants.
The third and final factor is the way infants are fed food in the first few years of life. “The new consensus guidelines for Australia and around the world is we should no longer delay the introduction of important foods, such as peanut and cow’s milk, in infants’ diets,” says Allen. “They should have these foods introduced in the first year of life soon after solids have commenced, which is about six months of age but not before four months.”
So should all children be rolling around in dirt to boost their health? In Europe, Hammad said, people have started building day care centres within farms so that children under two years old are continuously exposed to hay and cattle to try to induce protection.
“Getting down and dirty is a simple way of looking at it, but we want it to be targeted – we don’t want infants to be getting infections that could potentially kill them. We want them to get friendly bugs,” Allen said. “Rolling around in haystacks seems to be the right way to go, but we’d like to isolate [the mechanism behind the protection] so that we can do it in a way that’s consistent, standardised and safe.”
Comment:
The Eisenstein Clinics patients have typically had less illness allergies less visits to the doctor. This was not because they were dirty! Sometimes it seems we turn ourselves on our head and forget the obvious. There is a natural correct way to raise a child. Dr. Eisenstein practiced these fundamental points needed to raise a healthy child:
Can being too clean be a bad thing? Emerging research on allergic diseases – a growing epidemic in the developed world, including Hong Kong – seem to suggest so. In one new study involving 57,000 five-year-olds in Australia, scientists found the environment in which the children grew up in greatly affected their risk of developing nut allergies.
Conducted in the state of Victoria, where the third biggest source of migrants is China (behind the UK and India), the study revealed that children who were born in Asia but moved to Australia seem to have complete protection against developing a nut allergy. However, children of Asian descent born in Australia were three times more likely to develop a nut allergy than non-Asian infants.
The finding suggests Asians are at higher risk of developing food allergies for genetic reasons, and provides solid evidence that there’s something in the environment driving the allergy epidemic, said researcher Katie Allen of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
“We see that children who grow up in developing countries are protected from allergic disease, while children who grow up in developed countries have very much higher rates of allergic disease, said Allen, speaking at the International Congress of Immunology in Melbourne on August 22. “We wonder whether the Asian environment activates the immune system in some way in the first few years of life in order to fight infectious diseases that are much more rampant there, whereas if they come to Australia or a developed country they are having less activation of the immune system and therefore increasing their allergy risk as a result.”
Other research presented at the six-day congress – the largest global event in its field and held every three years – provides further evidence of the role environment plays in allergic diseases, or what researchers call the “hygiene hypothesis”.
In Allen’s study, which appeared in the April 2016 issue of the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy, 3.4 per cent of metropolitan Victorian children had nut allergies, compared to 2.4 per cent in non-metropolitan areas. Allen thinks the “hygiene hypothesis” is behind this – as well as an important reason why Melbourne has been dubbed the “food allergy capital of the world”.
“Exposure to microbes in the right form, whether it’s getting out to play in the dirt or with dogs or going to farms, appears to be protective – and we’re just not getting enough of that here in the built environment of Melbourne,” Allen said.
A second important factor, she said, is the “vitamin D hypothesis”: previous studies show that children with food allergies are more likely to have low vitamin D levels, and that the further from the equator one lives, the higher one’s risk of food allergy. Australia is the only developed country that does not supplement or fortify its food chain supply with vitamin D, Allen said, and this could explain the vitamin deficiency in Australian infants.
The third and final factor is the way infants are fed food in the first few years of life. “The new consensus guidelines for Australia and around the world is we should no longer delay the introduction of important foods, such as peanut and cow’s milk, in infants’ diets,” says Allen. “They should have these foods introduced in the first year of life soon after solids have commenced, which is about six months of age but not before four months.”
So should all children be rolling around in dirt to boost their health? In Europe, Hammad said, people have started building day care centres within farms so that children under two years old are continuously exposed to hay and cattle to try to induce protection.
“Getting down and dirty is a simple way of looking at it, but we want it to be targeted – we don’t want infants to be getting infections that could potentially kill them. We want them to get friendly bugs,” Allen said. “Rolling around in haystacks seems to be the right way to go, but we’d like to isolate [the mechanism behind the protection] so that we can do it in a way that’s consistent, standardised and safe.”
Comment:
The Eisenstein Clinics patients have typically had less illness allergies less visits to the doctor. This was not because they were dirty! Sometimes it seems we turn ourselves on our head and forget the obvious. There is a natural correct way to raise a child. Dr. Eisenstein practiced these fundamental points needed to raise a healthy child:
- Homebirth
- Breastfeed exclusively for the first six months.
- No vaccines
- Later he added vitamin D and probiotics to this list.
- These simple points maintained a practice whose children had no allergies no ear infections no autism no diabetes. Sometimes its the simple that gets the job done.
