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In one word - nothing. Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD. Right now every

In one word - nothing. Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD. Right now everyone has some kind of intolerance. I think for the majority it is reverse placebo effect. For the others - people spend so much time trying to be sterile and pop antibiotics like tic-tac that their immune system lacks any form of calibration and measurable response.

Hytosys 12y ago
>Or autism and ADHD Given our rapidly evolving understanding of these disorders in the past few decades, I don't see how anyone can claim a working knowledge of ASD or ADHD in the 1980s (especially in the bleak, grayscale zone of Europe). Seeing as the article makes no mention of either disorder, you seem to be lost also to its content.
- adventured 12y ago
  The diagnosis rate of ADHD in Europe is half the rate of the US. That's very likely to be a case of rampant over-diagnosis.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    Well, part of it is that often, diagnoses for ADHD in the US do not include learning disability testing.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
sasvari 12y ago
Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe [..] were virtually unheard of. Or autism [..] Can you back that up? Is there some reliable data about the occurence of autism on both sides of the iron wall back in the days?
Someone1234 12y ago
> Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD. > Right now everyone has some kind of intolerance. I think for the majority it is reverse placebo effect. Did you just call autism a fake condition? Have you ever met anyone with severe autism before? Some of these people need near constant supervision for their entire adult lives, and you think they're just, what? Faking it? For the funzies? Sorry but that's a new level of dumb. Autism has gone by many names but it has been written about since at least the year 1566. The only thing that is relatively new is its name, and that might change a few more times as "autism" seems to contain at least three different distinct conditions.
- adventured 12y ago
  They clearly did not call it a fake condition. You're being hyper reactive, and calling them dumb for something they plainly did not say. They said it was extremely rare. It was extremely rare - in terms of being diagnosed - in the 1980s in Europe. Today a diagnosis of ADHD is far more rare in Europe than in the US.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    > They clearly did not call it a fake condition. Like hell they didn't. If we reform the sentence: > Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe [autism] and the likes were virtually unheard of. Right now everyone has some kind of intolerance. I think for the majority it is [.] placebo effect. In this context a "reverse placebo" and a placebo mean the same thing (since technically a reverse placebo is a real condition, making what they said before it contradict what they had just said, so we can only assume they meant to say "a placebo by a different route" rather than a "reverse placebo" which makes no sense in the context). > You're being hyper reactive, and calling them dumb for something they plainly did not say. There's no way you can explain away that post without it coming across dumb. They just took three conditions and called them placebos. > It was extremely rare - in terms of being diagnosed - in the 1980s in Europe. Sorry, no, that is not what they said. The term "diagnosed" never appeared in that post, and reading it back when you get to the part about popping antibiotics like tick-tacks the implication is CLEARLY about us creating fictitious conditions today or treating conditions which "rarely" exist. You cannot just re-write their post and then claim the criticism of what they actually wrote originally is wrong.
jordigh 12y ago
I have heard this being called a disease of civilisation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_disease As countries become more industrialised, their population acquires new diseases. One hypothesis I've heard for explaining peanut allergies is that the much greater number of caesarean births is to blame. Apparently being shoved headfirst through a vagina full of germs is a great way to boost your immune system: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/256915.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/256915.php
- pyre 12y ago
  > One hypothesis I've heard for explaining peanut allergies is that the much greater number of caesarean births is to blame. Why would this only explain peanut allergies?
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  That's interesting. Peanut allergy is the one I've wondered most about why it suddenly was a thing. Growing up I never even heard of it, and if it's something that can cause deadly reactions so easily, you'd think it would have come up.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I don't know how big a role it plays, and I'm sure someone has looked at it, but an initial thought is "we got better at treating it, so there are more living people for whom it is a known issue" could be a part of the picture.
ljf 12y ago
Well my wife is a coeliac, and it definitely affects her - small amounts of wheat can leave her with food poisoning style symptoms, trapped in the toilet and very ill. And this isn't just when she is aware that she might have eaten, she's had this when she's eaten things supposedly gluten free, and then been ill - only to realise that someone thought 'maybe a little wouldn't hurt her'. Way before that my dads first wife had this in the late 50s in the UK - the doctors thought she had leukemia. They had basically given up on her (as there was no treatment for leukemia at the time) and she went home to her parents - there she met a student doctor who wondered if it could be wheat. Within a week she was up again after nearly a year bed ridden. I think years ago these people just wouldn't survive childhood, or if it occurred in adulthood (as it did for my wife and my father's first wife(, then it would have been misdiagnosed as something else. Those truly affected by this aren't subscribing to some fad, they really are ill, life-threateningly so. On the flip side - I had no allergy, but I feel a lot better if I cut out simple carbs, in particular bread and pasta. If I eat a sandwich at lunch I am usually dopey for the rest of the afternoon - if I eat a protein rich lunch, then I feel great. I don't blame that on the gluten - but cutting it out has done me no harm.
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  People who go gluten-free typically do not have any form of celiac -- the fad largely started with claims of non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and even the researchers who originally identified that have now retracted their claims and stated they can find no evidence that such sensitivity exists.
  - pyre 12y ago
    Said researchers have claimed[1] that reducing FODMAPs[2] (which many gluten-free diets coincidentally reduce) could be the culprit for the problems that people are experiencing (and attributing to non-celiac gluten sensitivity). It is worth noting that the follow-up study (which caused them to retract) had a sample-size of ~30 people (though it was especially comprehensive). [1] Less 'claimed' than postulated. Their follow-up study showed that the symptoms were mostly showing up in relation the presence of FODMAPs in the diet. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP
a_c_s 12y ago
The plural of anecdote is not data. Just because people suffered silently with poorly understood conditions (autism, ADHD) or didn't discuss their food issues doesn't mean those conditions didn't exist. My uncle has always had celiac disease and he grew up in the 1960's.
DanBC 12y ago
> Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD. Romanian orphanages are not the places we want to get health care advice from. http://www.theguardian.com/slideshow/page/0,,1985460,00.html http://www.theguardian.com/slideshow/page/0,,1985460,00.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/romanian-orphans-subjected-to-deprivation-must-now-deal-with-disfunction/2014/01/30/a9dbea6c-5d13-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/romanian-orphans-subject... http://www.npr.org/2012/08/19/158924764/for-romanias-orphans-adoption-is-still-a-rarity http://www.npr.org/2012/08/19/158924764/for-romanias-orphans...
- venomsnake 12y ago
  Hmm ... I think that for every orphan in Romania, there is one mentally ill homeless person on the streets of US. Watch Sicko. So can we boldly say that all US medical knowledge is void?
pyre 12y ago
So... you go from "allergies, autism and ADHD" are unheard of directly to "it's all some sort of reverse placebo effect?" Are you including autism and ADHD in that statement? If not, then why are you mentioning them?
- venomsnake 12y ago
  Not including them. It was an just an afterthought. And why the overreaction to their mentioning anyway?
steven2012 12y ago
Nut allergies are also unheard of in 3rd world countries. But this could be because they simply die and no one understands why. Places like South East Asia have a high peanut diet, so children who are allergic likely die fairly quickly without adequate medical care, which is a tragedy.
- beagle3 12y ago
  > But this could be because they simply die and no one understands why. No. Israel, a first world country, has the world's lowest incidence of peanut allergy. It has been shown that this is not genetic, but environmental. It is postulated that this is because peanut products are introduced early into the diet of virtually all Israeli kids - usually before 1 year - through a popular snack called "Bamba" [0]. You may find this surprising, but the ubiquitous advice to delay introducing allergen into children's diets is NOT based on any study, and actually contradicts some known findings. The reason nut allergies are unheard of is almost surely note because kids die very quickly. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_%28snack%29#Peanut_allergy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_%28snack%29#Peanut_allerg...
DannyBee 12y ago
"Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD." And bipolar disorder was often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, and people were generally just considered "eccentric" instead of having a disorder. That doesn't mean the disorders didn't exist :)
- cornewut 12y ago
  I suspect a guaranteed job there actually did help a lot of people with mental disorders. Also back then Eastern Europeans were eating way less meat and sugary foods. Also self grown food was very popular (due to lack of food in centralized stores)
steven2012 12y ago
Neither was rape or child molestation, but those occurred in silence for the most part until light was shed on them over a similar time period.
Broken_Hippo 12y ago
Yes, they were vitually unheard of in the US as well... but since then, we've come pretty far in medical science. Far more things are considered autism now than they were in the 80's. How many of the people have a medically substantiated intolerance that is beyond normal human intolerances? Chilis, for example, give some of us heartburn. This is well within normal variance. Some of us truly cannot eat certain foods - wheat, peanuts, onions... and so on - this is outside of normal. Medical tests can prove this. From what I can tell, however, is that most people are treating this like a fad diet and positive results can easily be attributed to other things (watching what you eat, less fatty foods, more vegetables, and so on). The comment about antibiotics is a rather different one. People couldn't just pop antibiotics if doctors didn't prescribe them (and/or if they aren't readily available otherwise). I agree on the over-sterility and so far, science is backing this up with a general message of: Be clean, but not too clean.
renaudg 12y ago
Western European 80s kid here, fully agree with you (except for autism, I suppose) Even today, living between the UK & France, it seems like every restaurant in London has nuts/gluten-free options or at least menu info, whereas in Paris hardly anyone cares. Raw milk cheese is also more or less being banned in the US. In both cases, I haven't seen any data suggesting a health disaster in the more traditional country. Besides, your being downvoted, snarkily shown links of Romanian orphanages, and generally being taught nutrition lessons by Americans, would be highly amusing if it wasn't for the blatant racism.
wil421 12y ago
Just because something has yet to be discovered or classified doesnt mean it never existed before that point. I've known people born with diabetes who probably wouldnt have made it very far in life a 100 years ago or so.

Hytosys 12y ago

>Or autism and ADHD Given our rapidly evolving understanding of these disorders in the past few decades, I don't see how anyone can claim a working knowledge of ASD or ADHD in the 1980s (especially in the bleak, grayscale zone of Europe). Seeing as the article makes no mention of either disorder, you seem to be lost also to its content.

adventured 12y ago
The diagnosis rate of ADHD in Europe is half the rate of the US. That's very likely to be a case of rampant over-diagnosis.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  Well, part of it is that often, diagnoses for ADHD in the US do not include learning disability testing.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

sasvari 12y ago

Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe [..] were virtually unheard of. Or autism [..] Can you back that up? Is there some reliable data about the occurence of autism on both sides of the iron wall back in the days?

Someone1234 12y ago

> Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD. > Right now everyone has some kind of intolerance. I think for the majority it is reverse placebo effect. Did you just call autism a fake condition? Have you ever met anyone with severe autism before? Some of these people need near constant supervision for their entire adult lives, and you think they're just, what? Faking it? For the funzies? Sorry but that's a new level of dumb. Autism has gone by many names but it has been written about since at least the year 1566. The only thing that is relatively new is its name, and that might change a few more times as "autism" seems to contain at least three different distinct conditions.

adventured 12y ago
They clearly did not call it a fake condition. You're being hyper reactive, and calling them dumb for something they plainly did not say. They said it was extremely rare. It was extremely rare - in terms of being diagnosed - in the 1980s in Europe. Today a diagnosis of ADHD is far more rare in Europe than in the US.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > They clearly did not call it a fake condition. Like hell they didn't. If we reform the sentence: > Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe [autism] and the likes were virtually unheard of. Right now everyone has some kind of intolerance. I think for the majority it is [.] placebo effect. In this context a "reverse placebo" and a placebo mean the same thing (since technically a reverse placebo is a real condition, making what they said before it contradict what they had just said, so we can only assume they meant to say "a placebo by a different route" rather than a "reverse placebo" which makes no sense in the context). > You're being hyper reactive, and calling them dumb for something they plainly did not say. There's no way you can explain away that post without it coming across dumb. They just took three conditions and called them placebos. > It was extremely rare - in terms of being diagnosed - in the 1980s in Europe. Sorry, no, that is not what they said. The term "diagnosed" never appeared in that post, and reading it back when you get to the part about popping antibiotics like tick-tacks the implication is CLEARLY about us creating fictitious conditions today or treating conditions which "rarely" exist. You cannot just re-write their post and then claim the criticism of what they actually wrote originally is wrong.

jordigh 12y ago

I have heard this being called a disease of civilisation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_disease As countries become more industrialised, their population acquires new diseases. One hypothesis I've heard for explaining peanut allergies is that the much greater number of caesarean births is to blame. Apparently being shoved headfirst through a vagina full of germs is a great way to boost your immune system: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/256915.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/256915.php

pyre 12y ago
> One hypothesis I've heard for explaining peanut allergies is that the much greater number of caesarean births is to blame. Why would this only explain peanut allergies?
waterlesscloud 12y ago
That's interesting. Peanut allergy is the one I've wondered most about why it suddenly was a thing. Growing up I never even heard of it, and if it's something that can cause deadly reactions so easily, you'd think it would have come up.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  I don't know how big a role it plays, and I'm sure someone has looked at it, but an initial thought is "we got better at treating it, so there are more living people for whom it is a known issue" could be a part of the picture.

ljf 12y ago

Well my wife is a coeliac, and it definitely affects her - small amounts of wheat can leave her with food poisoning style symptoms, trapped in the toilet and very ill. And this isn't just when she is aware that she might have eaten, she's had this when she's eaten things supposedly gluten free, and then been ill - only to realise that someone thought 'maybe a little wouldn't hurt her'. Way before that my dads first wife had this in the late 50s in the UK - the doctors thought she had leukemia. They had basically given up on her (as there was no treatment for leukemia at the time) and she went home to her parents - there she met a student doctor who wondered if it could be wheat. Within a week she was up again after nearly a year bed ridden. I think years ago these people just wouldn't survive childhood, or if it occurred in adulthood (as it did for my wife and my father's first wife(, then it would have been misdiagnosed as something else. Those truly affected by this aren't subscribing to some fad, they really are ill, life-threateningly so. On the flip side - I had no allergy, but I feel a lot better if I cut out simple carbs, in particular bread and pasta. If I eat a sandwich at lunch I am usually dopey for the rest of the afternoon - if I eat a protein rich lunch, then I feel great. I don't blame that on the gluten - but cutting it out has done me no harm.

ubernostrum 12y ago
People who go gluten-free typically do not have any form of celiac -- the fad largely started with claims of non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and even the researchers who originally identified that have now retracted their claims and stated they can find no evidence that such sensitivity exists.
- pyre 12y ago
  Said researchers have claimed[1] that reducing FODMAPs[2] (which many gluten-free diets coincidentally reduce) could be the culprit for the problems that people are experiencing (and attributing to non-celiac gluten sensitivity). It is worth noting that the follow-up study (which caused them to retract) had a sample-size of ~30 people (though it was especially comprehensive). [1] Less 'claimed' than postulated. Their follow-up study showed that the symptoms were mostly showing up in relation the presence of FODMAPs in the diet. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP

a_c_s 12y ago

The plural of anecdote is not data. Just because people suffered silently with poorly understood conditions (autism, ADHD) or didn't discuss their food issues doesn't mean those conditions didn't exist. My uncle has always had celiac disease and he grew up in the 1960's.

DanBC 12y ago

> Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD. Romanian orphanages are not the places we want to get health care advice from. http://www.theguardian.com/slideshow/page/0,,1985460,00.html http://www.theguardian.com/slideshow/page/0,,1985460,00.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/romanian-orphans-subjected-to-deprivation-must-now-deal-with-disfunction/2014/01/30/a9dbea6c-5d13-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/romanian-orphans-subject... http://www.npr.org/2012/08/19/158924764/for-romanias-orphans-adoption-is-still-a-rarity http://www.npr.org/2012/08/19/158924764/for-romanias-orphans...

venomsnake 12y ago
Hmm ... I think that for every orphan in Romania, there is one mentally ill homeless person on the streets of US. Watch Sicko. So can we boldly say that all US medical knowledge is void?

pyre 12y ago

So... you go from "allergies, autism and ADHD" are unheard of directly to "it's all some sort of reverse placebo effect?" Are you including autism and ADHD in that statement? If not, then why are you mentioning them?

venomsnake 12y ago
Not including them. It was an just an afterthought. And why the overreaction to their mentioning anyway?

steven2012 12y ago

Nut allergies are also unheard of in 3rd world countries. But this could be because they simply die and no one understands why. Places like South East Asia have a high peanut diet, so children who are allergic likely die fairly quickly without adequate medical care, which is a tragedy.

beagle3 12y ago
> But this could be because they simply die and no one understands why. No. Israel, a first world country, has the world's lowest incidence of peanut allergy. It has been shown that this is not genetic, but environmental. It is postulated that this is because peanut products are introduced early into the diet of virtually all Israeli kids - usually before 1 year - through a popular snack called "Bamba" [0]. You may find this surprising, but the ubiquitous advice to delay introducing allergen into children's diets is NOT based on any study, and actually contradicts some known findings. The reason nut allergies are unheard of is almost surely note because kids die very quickly. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_%28snack%29#Peanut_allergy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_%28snack%29#Peanut_allerg...

DannyBee 12y ago

"Growing up in the 80s in Eastern Europe culinary allergies and the likes were virtually unheard of. Or autism and ADHD." And bipolar disorder was often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, and people were generally just considered "eccentric" instead of having a disorder. That doesn't mean the disorders didn't exist :)

cornewut 12y ago
I suspect a guaranteed job there actually did help a lot of people with mental disorders. Also back then Eastern Europeans were eating way less meat and sugary foods. Also self grown food was very popular (due to lack of food in centralized stores)

steven2012 12y ago

Neither was rape or child molestation, but those occurred in silence for the most part until light was shed on them over a similar time period.

Broken_Hippo 12y ago

Yes, they were vitually unheard of in the US as well... but since then, we've come pretty far in medical science. Far more things are considered autism now than they were in the 80's. How many of the people have a medically substantiated intolerance that is beyond normal human intolerances? Chilis, for example, give some of us heartburn. This is well within normal variance. Some of us truly cannot eat certain foods - wheat, peanuts, onions... and so on - this is outside of normal. Medical tests can prove this. From what I can tell, however, is that most people are treating this like a fad diet and positive results can easily be attributed to other things (watching what you eat, less fatty foods, more vegetables, and so on). The comment about antibiotics is a rather different one. People couldn't just pop antibiotics if doctors didn't prescribe them (and/or if they aren't readily available otherwise). I agree on the over-sterility and so far, science is backing this up with a general message of: Be clean, but not too clean.

renaudg 12y ago

Western European 80s kid here, fully agree with you (except for autism, I suppose) Even today, living between the UK & France, it seems like every restaurant in London has nuts/gluten-free options or at least menu info, whereas in Paris hardly anyone cares. Raw milk cheese is also more or less being banned in the US. In both cases, I haven't seen any data suggesting a health disaster in the more traditional country. Besides, your being downvoted, snarkily shown links of Romanian orphanages, and generally being taught nutrition lessons by Americans, would be highly amusing if it wasn't for the blatant racism.

wil421 12y ago

Just because something has yet to be discovered or classified doesnt mean it never existed before that point. I've known people born with diabetes who probably wouldnt have made it very far in life a 100 years ago or so.