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To most, allergies are merely a nuisance consisting of a stuffy nose, itchy eyes, and general malaise, but there are many people worldwide for whom the same mechanisms of the common allergy can be dangerous–including anaphylactic shock or death. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation estimates that one out of four Americans are allergy suffers; for an ailment so common, it is one that is poorly understood, but progress is being made. For some people the cure looks worse than the disease.
To keep things in context, the term “allergy” was coined only a hundred years ago, and even then it was a very rarely diagnosed condition. Previous to that time, allergy sufferers were labeled “hyper sensitives”, and were fairly rare. There is no doubt that medical diagnosis has improved since 1906, and that some cases of allergies or asthma went undetected, but barring that, the occurrences of these maladies have increased exponentially in a century. By all accounts, we have only ourselves to blame.
There are generally two schools of thought surrounding the growth of allergies in the twentieth century. Both have evidence in their favor, and neither is complete. Both explain why developed countries have seen such a dramatic increase of allergies, whereas developing nations have not.
Everyday Chemicals
Since the end of World War II, an abundance of chemicals has been introduced into the human environment. Not just the HFCS in our soda pop, but the things in soap and shampoo, the chemical residue on our dishes, leftover Teflon from a pan, or the phthalates that leech out of PVC pipes. It’s true that preservatives and additives all undergo years of testing before they are approved for human consumption, but that handful of years mayn’t be adequate to understand what a lifetime of use can do to a body. No one assumes that any one of our common chemicals is responsible, but all in conjunction are creating an adverse holistic effect.
This concept meets its epitome in a scenario call “Sick Building Syndrome” where a plethora of chemical contaminates join forces to make the interior of a building cause some people headaches, runny-nose, ear-aches, and other allergy-like symptoms.
The Hygiene Hypothesis
Over millions of years the human body has armed itself against a number of ills. It’s had to stockpile immune system weapons for all manner of parasites, germs, and junk, but in our age of daily baths, kitchen sanitizers, and purified water those weapons are somewhat superfluous. A million years of hard-won evolution don’t turn inactive after a mere hundred years of environment. No, instead they go cabin-fever, and freak out attack even benign substances like pollen and dust with a fervor of pent-up frustration.
Both ideas have their merits, and both sides have garnered support from past allergy and asthma suffers. The former has a cult of people who have excised the wonders of modern science from their lives–much like the organic food trend taken to an interesting extreme. The internet abounds with tales of people who grind their own flour to those who make soap, cheese, and their own cloths.
But those who profess the Hygiene Hypothesis often go to the extreme of purposefully introducing parasites like hookworm and intestinal worms into themselves in hopes of relief. Some are starting to think we’re too clean for our bodies to handle, and it’s messing us up. This dogma says to introduce young children to pets, let them get intestinal worms, and eat food off the floor even after the five-second rule–these things are contaminated, but that’s okay because they will teach the young body about what is a real concern, and what is trivial. This works fine for the offspring, I guess, but for the full-grown adult with trouble breathing? How about a quest to Cameroon for a hookworm that infects a person through contact with contaminated feces? The larva can breech intact skin, then travel the circulatory system until they reach a pulmonary artery where they use their teeth to dig in, and hang out for the rest of their lives. In a healthy adult, the hookworm symptoms are mild, and to some, a fair trade.
At the University of Iowa, some people are drinking a regular dose of whipworm eggs. The eggs hatch in the digestive tract, and the worms attach to the lining of the intestine where they skim off a supply of nutrients. Again, the side-effects are negligible, and most patients report a drastic reduction of allergic symptoms. Just don’t look into the toilet bowl before you flush.
I’ll just stick to Claritin.
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um… im sure that we have brought alot of things upon our selves without our knowledge… but ingesting hookworms just sounds a little drastic to me… then again, the picture might be making me over-react…
I’m helminthophobic; meaning, I’m scared of being infested with worms. This article freaked me out. I take drastic measures to avoid any contact with a potential parasite carrier (ex. dog shit). But it’s funny…I do have terrible allergies.
Drinking worms? Based on this video, no thanks.
While it’s only my own experience, I have a friend whose parents are neat freaks; everything is spotless at their house. She gets sick all the time. Compared to her, I live in a sty; I hardly ever get sick, and it’s usually mild. Coincidence?
Contact with dog poop ? My dog has horrible allergies. And I know he has a lot of contact with dog excrement!
It’s known that kids who grow up with pets have far fewer allergies than kids in antiseptic households. If the chemical hypothesis were true, the opposite would be true. Of course there will always be those legions of idiots who assume anything “natural” is good and all “chemicals” are bad, even though they rarely seem to understand what either of these terms actually mean.
Jason Bellows said: drinking a regular dose of whipworm eggs
ummmm whipworm eggs. . .
If I am getting the point, the immune system needs a little something to react to if it is going to operate at peak performance and the earlier it starts developing immunities, the better it will be at neutralizing foreign contaminants? I would suppose that immunizations work on the same principals so, except for the worm stuff, this shouldn’t be too startling. A little cowpox will keep away smallpox. Some exposure to pollen and cat dander and dog slobbers will prevent hypersensitive reactions later in life. Maybe Mother Nature or Darwinism has been tending to us for so long, we have have missed one of the points of childhood…finding out how to get along in the world that we are born into.
Well, if the everyday chemicals hypothesis is anything to go by, we should be pretty imune to most of those in the next million years or so…
“…but that handful of years mayn’t be adequate to understand…”
“MAYN’T”? Despite knowing what you were saying, I couldn’t even concentrate after reading that word.
Well, whatever may or may not help the immune system, one thing I won’t do is “introduce” a hookworm into my body, that’s for damn sure. Interesting article, nevertheless.
giving a child with allergies some honey from that area they live in is able reduce the symtoms. don’t stop any prescribed meds, give in conjuction.
the rising level in the west are down to diagonisis occuring …. it’s very hard to get treatment or to be able to afford the inhalers if you have to pay full cost for all meds, or even pay to see a doctor. the person will view their symtoms as self limiting and not life treating. i’m sure most people have the same incidence or potential but some of our western cities have higher pollution, triggers for ashma.
I grew up with a cat in the house (he died when I was err.. eleven I think), I’ve even had intestinal worms once, but I still get the sneezers at certain periods of the year and I’m prone to rashes. Guess it’s due to the fact that at some point, I stopped playing outside, and just sat at the PC constantly. Also, since a couple of months, I’ve been on a gram of meds everyday, Valproaïc Acid and Sodium Valproate if I remember correctly (them names are a shit to remember), that probably isn’t good.
Maybe it’s just that all the new chemicals are giving allergies to them a chance to surface. If you never come into contact with what you’re allergic to you’ll never find out you’re allergic to it.
I grew up in a house that was being renovated and in the company of a couple of dogs and I’m pretty healthy now.
Then again, I did have an allergy to raw eggs and moderate cases of ashma and eczema when I was young, all three of which have disappered now. (Although I still have an allergy to some types of fish)
“the occurrences of these maladies have increased exponentially in a century.”
OK, I’m confused. What does that mean?
You know, there might be something to the hygiene hypothesis.
Previously, I used to be allergy-free, but I would get alot of colds. Then I decided to embark upon a fairly strict hygiene regimen.
The colds pretty much went away, but all of a sudden, I became allergic to all sorts of perfumes and soaps.
no way i would eat a can of worms.
on the other hand, i was terribly allergic in my twenties. what i did was to change diet drastically. i only ate raw, organic, vegetarian food and eventually my allergy disappeared, and i mean totally. in my case it had nothing to do with hygiene, at all. google around for “living food” and you will find several examples of similar stories.
Grew up with dogs in the house all the time, the place was constantly under construction(never ending renovations…) and out in the country where I tended to play anywhere, from the sand pile to the swamps. We were not neat freaks, I generally ignore the 5 second rule and go swimming in the local lakes.
I also get mildly sick about 3 times a year – usually not even keeping me from going to work. I get badly sick about once every 4 – 5 years, and even then it usually takes no time at all to get over it.
I also know that my family on my mothers side has allergies to cats. My grandmother is deathly allergic, my mother was mildly alergic, and if I hang out at a friends place with a cat for more then about 5 days, I start reacting to them…
Byrden said: “”the occurrences of these maladies have increased exponentially in a century.”
OK, I’m confused. What does that mean?”
There are three ways in which a number can increase. Mathematically: 1,2,3,4,5… Geometrically 1,2,4,8,16,32 and Exponentially 1,10,100,1000.
Here’s the thing. True allergic responses are IgE mediated. Only about a third of the population has the IgE antibody. IgE is an antibody produced by one of the types of immune cells in the body, namely the B cells. B cells are also known as memory cells, they are the ones that remember something bad that happened the last time this organism entered the body (things that shouldn’t be there). Therefore the first time you are exposed you won’t have a response, a person may develop a response over repeated exposure as the B cells start remembering this irritant. The immune system does not recognize the allergen initially because it is not deemed a serious threat. This is why people develop allergies later in life. More than likely, the reason more people seem to have allergies now, is not because we are cleaner but because it is being diagnosed more often (or mis-diagnosed) since we have an abundence of medications to treat the ailment. This happens with many other diseases as well, ie. depression. Please don’t eat worms!
When my husband was little, his mom bleached the tub between every bath and taught him not to eat food if flies were in the same room. She went to the doctor and complained that her kids were always sick, when the kids who lived behind them would eat dirt and never get sick. She told me the doctor looked her in the eye and said “Ma’am, sometimes you have to let your kids eat dirt!” She never did, and the first two years of our marriage and my less-than-perfect housecleaning, he was sick all the time. Now he is the healthiest from his family.
I’ve been monitoring Damn Interesting for a few weeks now and now I feel I need to give some input. About the people drinking whipworms in Iowa- this is true, although misleading.
Diseases such as Colitis and Crohn’s are auto-immune diseases. Currently there is no known cure and the causes are still very speculative. Most current treatments for Crohn’s involve taking anti-inflammatory drugs specifically targeted for the large intestine or supressing the immune system with IV drugs like Remicaide. People in Iowa a drinking whipworms because they are able to deliver an immune suppressant directly to the affected area – the large intestine. I- personally- would not have a problem letting some worms live inside of me if it meant I could get off of medications. Also, the worms are sterilized and can not reproduce so getting rid of them simply means to stop drinking them and waiting a few weeks.
debbiebf said: ” She told me the doctor looked her in the eye and said “Ma’am, sometimes you have to let your kids eat dirt!” She never did, and the first two years of our marriage and my less-than-perfect housecleaning, he was sick all the time. Now he is the healthiest from his family.”
As a side note to the idea of a little less cleanliness leading to a healthier environment, I recently read a news article that claimed that an unmade bed was cleaner than a made one. Putting your blankets over the bed traps moisture that facilitates the growth of bacteria. This is especially true for fibers that don’t breathe very well. It seems to me that the healthiest people are those who don’t live in total squalor or unbelievable cleanliness.
Hooray for Cass — a happy medium is the best approach. Seriously, that whole infecting yourself with tapeworms is crazy. Parasites only take resources, they don’t give anything back. We have natural defences against a few, but they’ve evolved to be able to counter them. It’s an evolutionary arms race — who can evolve defences/resistance to defences first?
Having to deal with parasites just puts extra strain on the body. I’m not a doctor, but I would guess that a healthy lifestyle and diet would help a whole lot.
Sylph-DS, valproic acid is an anti convulsant, not an allergy med. It can be used to treat headaches though, however if you get headaches as a result of allergies, the valproic acid is unlikely to help.
The picture of that worm freaks me out. I can’t imagine willingly drinking worms or letting them inhabit my body. If I were a burn victim and had to have my burns packed with maggots, that’s one thing. If I had a head trauma and needed leeches to suck the blood out of my skull, that’s okay. But worms in my intestines? Little hard pressed on that one…
actually, i changed my mind. put a giant monolith in the desert that says “CI4L1S V14GRA L1P1TOR CHEAP DISCREET SHIPPING GET A B!GG3R P3N15!!!”
people will walk right past it and never come back… ever again.
Yes! Slather it in advertising. In spam.
you want immune system gone bad, this woman had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic called Bactrim and her skin began falling off
http://www.10news.com/health/2751809/detail.html
The ingestion of certain worms for increasing immune response has been getting more and more creditability in the last few decades. Even using tape worms for loosing weight has been experimented with, with success. Heck the use of maggots and leeches on certain post op patients would have never been used 50 years ago but are routinely incorporated today. Diseases such as Colitis and Crohn’s, as banana989 posts, use intestinal worms to help out in suppressing immune response. There are studies being conducted in several places that involve very young kids (crawling age) to eat food off a floor. So far the evidence is that these kids are healthier, get sick less and are less prone to allergies.
Wow, another great article by DI.
I think the Hygiene theory weighs a lot heavier in the balance. We allready know about continuous exposure to antibiotics that can make virii mutate and become immune to their action, the reverse could similarly be the same for our body. Clearly however the synthetic chemicals we ingest daily surely do not have any positive role either.
After a few germs, bacteria, viruses and who knows what else, what’s a few worms going to hurt?
Bon appetite!
So Moms should start saying “Put that in your mouth!” instead of “Get that out of your mouth!”
I don’t know about eatting/drinking parasitic worms… I mean, some those things can cause death if they happen to find the wrong spot to hang out…
who here dislikes the idea of drinking worms? i know i do. ewwwww….
jchristman said: “There are three ways in which a number can increase. Mathematically: 1,2,3,4,5… Geometrically 1,2,4,8,16,32 and Exponentially 1,10,100,1000.”
A geometric progression is one in which one term is multiplied by a constant factor (called the common ratio) to get the next term, so your third example is also a geometric progression with a common ratio of 10. A geometric progression with a common ratio greater than 1 is said to exhibit exponential growth.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_progression
http://www.AubreyOrganics.com and http://www.ImusRanchFoods.com
Why would anybody want to inject worm eggs into their body. these do breed, and then there is more and more in your intestines. They basically eat your crap so you poop less so less of them come out of your body. I dont know if im mistaking these are pinworms, but i am pretty sure they are the same. Unfortunately, I have had pinworms and they are not to fun. They become active at night and your butt starts to itch. Its not too fun
cheeze, not all worms are the same. Hookworms and whipworms can’t breed in your body and have to be re-ingested to keep a population in your system. (Pinworms and tapeworms can however.) Not for me, but I have no problem with others who feel like going this route. Being miserable all the time will make you consider lots of things that a healthy person would freak out over. Like, for instance, whipworm pie.
I suspect that the huge increase in allergies is attributable to a combination of chemicals and oversanitation, not one or the other. The answer is almost always in the middle.
Everyone who says “wow, that picture freaked me out” and “ew, parasites are gross” needs to have a look at the worms living in their eyelash follicles, the microscopic acari mites living in their beds, and their mutualistic intestinal fauna!
No idea if any of that worm stuff would work or not, but it sure would be cool to have a proper set of data rather than anecdotes. That would be MAD interesting.
cheeze13 said: “Why would anybody want to inject worm eggs into their body. these do breed, and then there is more and more in your intestines. They basically eat your crap so you poop less so less of them come out of your body. I dont know if im mistaking these are pinworms, but i am pretty sure they are the same. Unfortunately, I have had pinworms and they are not to fun. They become active at night and your butt starts to itch. Its not too fun”
Honey you can cure those by taking a medicine called Venitation Violet. My spelling may be off but your local pharmacist will know what your asking for. They used to sell it otc in some states (USA). But back in 1979 I had to go to Louisianna to get it with out a script for my kid. It was little red pills, looked like Sudephed. He peed the prettest shade of purple for two weeks, but the worms died and his little bottom stopped itching. Now you realy should get that fixed ’cause pinworms are very contagious. Oh and stop picking your nose. LOL
I had the same reaction, its not permanent I hope….LOL