Allergies and Children

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”

-- Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window    

 

What is happening to our children?  Why are so many kids allergic these days?  This is the question titling an article I read last week.  When I was growing up I don't remember any kids with allergies.  Today, the CDC says 1 in 20 kids have an allergy to foods and 1 in 8 had skin allergies.  Seems like a lot to me, and that's up 50% and 69%, respectively, from the 1990s.  The 1990s?  What the????

What's going on?

Well, there may be a couple of issues here.  It seems the CDC "study" was pretty narrow with their study group, only surveying parents that self-reported the supposed allergies.  What kind of a protocol was that?  Kind of defeats "scientific method" doesn't it?  And, the parents got their medical degree where, Sears?  Hmmm.

And then there is my belief that we have, since the 1970s, been raising a crop of whiners and, by extension, hypochondriacs.  This is a direct result of bleeding hearts breeding more children than the more conservative, bill paying, strong backs.  I don't blame the children.  Nazi breed Nazis because that's all the children are brought up to know.  It is the same with weakness, alcoholism, drugs, and hypochondriacs.  The fact that our enabling government and legal system prohibits us from seriously disciplining our children doesn't help the problem, especially when these kids are being sent off to battles and haven't even had a fist fight, much less their butts spanked.  God forbid we should violate their civil liberties.  We'd rather see them come home in a box.

The point I'm trying to make, from far out in left field, is that we end up watching out for our kids so closely it's a wonder they aren't living their formative years like the boy in the bubble.  Or, are they?

 

We raise them on rarefied air in our HVAC systems, a breeding ground for Legionnaires Disease; Hepa filters in air purifies and vacuum cleaners; charcoal filter everything good from life giving water; and kill the good bacteria along with the bad by sterilizing our kitchen counters, our laundry, and our bodies with antiseptic soaps.  Yet, the wife of a poor Vietnamese farmer can stop picking rice long enough to squat in the paddy, squeeze out the baby with no assistance, clean it up and go back to picking rice.  No big surprise the Viet Cong kicked our fat, lazy, antiseptic asses out of their country.

 

Yes, we have a better mortality rate for our children.  It's nice to know they will live long enough to become the hypochondriac we always hoped they'd be so we can label them.  Oh joy!  By the way, those increases in allergies...more pronounced in "developed" economies.  Still want to reach for that Clorox wipe?  

 

My mother always kept her kitchen and house clean with soap and water, sponge and a rag.  She vacuumed with an old Hoover and dusted with an old t-shirt of Dad's that she tore into rags.  I was rarely sick.  I do the same around my place.  I cook, a lot.  I clean the kitchen with, heaven forbid, a sponge and soapy water.  Not a germ ridden sponge!  Yes!  And no one has gotten sick eating my food.  I cut meat on the veggie side of the cutting board and veggies on the meat side.  Big whoop!  I wash both sides!

 

Eat eggs or don't eat eggs.  Whole milk, no, skim!  Don't eat pork, eat pork.  Don't want to breast feed your baby?  Use formula!  Formula?  Would you eat something called formula?  This seems a bit reminiscent of the drug sub-culture of my youth.  Who in their right mind would ingest something called "Acid?"  It was aptly named for what it did to your mind.

 

Today we have drugs disguised as candy to make it easier to get our children to take it when they're sick.  So we, as parents, become the "candy man" to our kids, and are surprised when they find a new candy man as they get older.  

 

I think we could dissect all the findings and suppositions of countless studies and still arrive at the same conclusion.  It all boils down to what we've done to ourselves.

 

Like the poor Vietnamese farmer, kids in this country that are raised on farms or in rural areas tend toward better health than those in urban, city habitats.  Fresh non-processed foods do better for us than the processed counterparts and fast foods.  Butter is better than margarine, and a bit of meat grease (bacon or pork fat) never hurt.  Your body knows what to do with this kind of fat and cholesterol, taken in moderation.  Rule of thumb:  If the fat stays congealed above body temperature -- don't eat it!

 

Does it really surprise anybody when advice telling us to stop old habits is superseded by new advice telling us to reinstate the old advice?  We keep trying to find the new "right thing," while our bacon gulping, pipe smoking, white lightning drinking, collard greens eating, buttermilk churning grandmothers turn 100 and shake their heads at us in disappointment.

 

I was told by doctors I suffer from hereditary cholesterol that diet and exercise won't help.  I was on meds for it until I went to Mexico and discovered that diet and exercise lowered my cholesterol.  I stopped taking my meds and cut my blood pressure meds in half as well.  Turns out I was my own best advocate.  Does this mean it's right for everyone to do?  Absolutely not, but ask questions, get educated about what you suffer from, and be your own best advocate.

 

So, what's going on with our children?  We're turning them into us, and that may not be a good thing.

 

Maybe we believe too much what we read and hear, forgetting what we've known all our lives, what our grandmothers always knew.  Less is more, natural is better, if it tastes good it is probably bad and if it tastes nasty you should probably learn to love it.  I finally learned to love collard and mustard greens, yogurt, vinegar, buttermilk and cottage cheese.  I drop the milk fat somewhere else in my diet.

 

I rarely get sick and have no allergies.  Will my path work for others?  Probably not, it's my path, and I will never advise anyone to follow my diet any more than I would to follow my path.  You need to be your own advocate and follow your own path.

 

My girlfriend's niece is a vegetarian, but she has been craving hamburgers lately, constantly!  Her view?  She says her body is telling her she is anemic so eat some red meat.  I like the idea of listening when our bodies try to tell us something.  So it should be with our children and allergies (wondering when I was getting back around to this).  Before you jump to conclusions, make certain your conclusion is valid.

 

My daughter had an aversion to milk products when she was very young.  She would eat ice cream and urp it all back up.  She liked ice cream.  Any time she ate it I just made sure we weren't in the car.  It's really hard to clean all the nooks and crannies in a car.  The doctor said she would grow out of it, and she did.  his advice was to monitor, be judicious, and see what happens, but let her be a child!  For us, this was good advice.

“every session I had no fewer than sixteen girls with “allergies” to dairy and wheat—cheese and bread basically—but also to garlic, eggplant, corn, and nuts. They had cleverly developed “allergies,” I believe, to the foods they had seen their own mothers fearing and loathing as diet fads passed through their homes. I could’ve strangled their mothers for saddling these girls with the idea that food is an enemy—some of them only eight years old and already weird about wanting a piece of bread—and I would’ve liked to bludgeon them, too, for forcing me to participate in their young daughters’ fucked-up relationship with food.”                                                     

-- Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones, and Butter:

   The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef   

 

Again, ask your doctor what is recommended for your child's particular circumstance and read up on it yourself.  Don't just take the doctor's word for it.  Hell, they'd rather die of cancer than take their own advice for radiation and chemo.  They don't call it "the practice of medicine" because they have it down pat.  They are practicing!  At the end of the day it's all about moderation and maybe antiseptic isn't perfect for all situations when soap and water will suffice.  Remember, there are good bacteria trying to keep us alive and healthy, anti-bacterial products don't differentiate between the good and the bad.  It took life on this planet billions of years to learn to coexist.  We have developed a symbiotic relationship with some of it, a symbiosis that both systems rely on to survive.

 

Is it God's plan, or is it just the science of life?  Whatever works for your belief system, but, before you go off on some nouveau tangent of modern science, health and medicine, how about we do something old fashioned.  Ask grandma for some sage advice, some pot liquor from the greens, and some cornbread to sop it up with..

 

God bless her!

 "I think we're getting to the point where everyone's getting fat and everyone's getting allergic, or claims to be allergic to something and people can't walk from their front door to their car without a bottle of water in their hand because they have to hydrate every three and a half steps."            -- Adam Carolla