My DH is now 83, and he is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. When he was a kid, he thought he was a freak as no one else had an allergy like that. He had to take care of himself — and did.
When our daughter had the same allergy, (she is now 53) she also was the only one in school that had it and again — watched out for herself.
A grandson has the same allergy, but now it is getting so common that it is almost accepted.
I’d love to understand why it has come to be so common.
Probably because people aren’t dying from it any more and are living to pass the sensitivity along.
The latest theory on why allergies are on the rise is the connection to the hypercleanliness of our environment.
Hygiene hypothesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
Basically, early exposure (under a year old even) to harmless bacteria in our environment trains the child’s immune system to react properly to invading antigens, instead of the hypersensitivity reaction of allergies.
Studies have found that the youngest child in a family has fewer allergies than older siblings. Children living in the country have fewer allergies than city dwellers, with dairy farm kids having the least.
Another observation is that continual exposure is necessary to keep allergies at bay. College age kids who go off to college, come back to find that they are now allergic to the family cat, which never bothered them before. I have friends who developed allergies later in life after moving off the family farm.
Many people think that anti-biotics play a role in triggering allergies. Whether they do or not, all I know is that my youngest, who was virtually never on them at all, has virtually no allergies, while my older two have allergies in proportion to the amount of anti-biotics they took as babies.
There’s an excellent article in an old edition of Science News, from about 1999 IIRC, called *Germs of Endearment*. It was the cover article but Science News has changed their website and I can’t find it now in their archives.