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Children born without cesarean sections? Check. Children nursed by mother for months after birth? Check. Children played outside in dirt and wild plants every d
by tokenadult 12y ago
Children born without cesarean sections? Check. Children nursed by mother for months after birth? Check. Children played outside in dirt and wild plants every day? (Largely) check. Had living plants at home? (Occasionally) check. But the children in my parents' families (including eleven who were brought up on a farm) and the children in my birth family and the children I now have (and their cousins in another country) still have quite a few problems with allergies. There surely is some family history involved in our susceptibility to allergies, as well as childhood environmental factors from our upbringing. Learning about the environmental factors is helpful, especially for understanding whole-country-scale epidemiological trends, but full understanding of the causes and treatments of allergies will have to come from studies with genetically sensitive designs.
- Houshalter 12y agoUse of antibiotics was a big one too.
- voidlogic 12y agoI also wonder about modern soaps being much better at killing harmless bacteria then traditional animal fat bar soap? Think about all the liquid hand soap, shampoo, etc that is everywhere. The purpose of soap used to be more solvent then germ killer.
- graeme 12y agoI use Savon de Marseille at home for this reason. It's a variant of traditional olive oil soap. Aleppo soap or any of the other Mediterranean olive oil soaps should work just as well.
- voidlogic 12y agoIn case anyone is interested here is making soap from animal fat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk7rFk7IxT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk7rFk7IxT8 You can also make the lye yourself by saving your stove/fireplace ashes and mixing in water.
- freehunter 12y agoHow many people have wood burning stoves or fireplaces (and actually use them)? Most fireplaces I see these days are gas, same with stoves.
- voidlogic 12y agoI can't speak for other places, but its very common in rural Wisconsin/Minnesota; myself and every one of my neighbors have some form of wood heat, usually in addition to propane. We were glad we had it when propane hit $6.50/gal this winter, up from $1.75/gal the previous summer. I get requests from people all the time to harvest dead wood on my land they can see from the road. http://www.greenwoodusa.com/blog/2011/10/wood-the-fastest-growing-heating-fuel-in-the-united-states/ http://www.greenwoodusa.com/blog/2011/10/wood-the-fastest-gr...
- contingencies 12y agoBest soap I've ever used was a herbal thing from Bhutan. Unfortunately, ~zero supply.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- driverdan 12y agoYour anecdote is not data. There will always be exceptions or as Houshalter points out factors that are easy to overlook.
- tokenadult 12y agoDid you not finish reading my comment to see the sentence "Learning about the environmental factors is helpful, especially for understanding whole-country-scale epidemiological trends, but full understanding of the causes and treatments of allergies will have to come from studies with genetically sensitive designs"? The article kindly submitted for our discussion talks about correlational observations, that is collections of anecdotes. Anecdotes and correlational observations generate hypotheses, but it is precisely looking at exceptions, especially with experimental treatment-control designs, which will tease out what environmental factors are causative and what factors are sheer coincidence.
- freehunter 12y agoHell, I grew up on a farm and never had problems with allergies a day in my life... until I moved to a different state. Now I'm dying all summer.