• TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    As a late millenial, my guess for the cause of high prevalence of peanut allergy among younger people was because of being less exposed to dirt and being subjected to over-cleanliness when we were growing up. Iirc, the news and medical community overemphasised cleanliness in the 1990s. So, parents overdid it and the children’s immune system has become less attuned and familiar to different foreign objects in the body. The immune system then overreacts to non-threatening objects in the body resulting in allergy.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      being less exposed to dirt and being subjected to over-cleanliness

      I’ve read talk of this over the years. Anything definitive ever come out? Makes all the sense in thw world to me.

      • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        I am not an expert on the topic, but I have learned about this when I was in college. My understanding is that the medical community admit they were wrong about overemphasising cleanliness decades ago and it backfired. Not exposing children to dirt at a healthy dose caused the immune system to overreact leading to allergy and other immune disorder. As someone who was sheltered growing up, that may explain my eczema. I also get hay fever as an adult even though when I wasn’t before, when I was younger.