Builds Immunity ;>)
Posted on 05/04/2012 10:07:46 PM PDT by neverdem
Amish children raised on rural farms in northern Indiana suffer from asthma and allergies less often even than Swiss farm kids, a group known to be relatively free from allergies, according to a new study.
"The rates are very, very low," said Dr. Mark Holbreich, the study's lead author. "So there's something that we feel is even more protective in the Amish" than in European farming communities.
What it is about growing up on farms -- and Amish farms in particular -- that seems to prevent allergies remains unclear.
Researchers have long observed the so-called "farm effect" -- the low allergy and asthma rates found among kids raised on farms -- in central Europe, but less is known about the influence of growing up on North American farms.
Holbreich, an allergist in Indianapolis, has been treating Amish communities in Indiana for two decades, but he noticed that very few Amish actually had any allergies.
As studies on the farm effect in Europe began to emerge several years ago, Holbreich wondered if the same phenomenon might be found in the United States.
He teamed up with European colleagues to compare Swiss farming children and non-farming children to Amish kids in Indiana.
Amish families, who can trace their roots back to Switzerland, typically farm using methods from the 1800s and they don't own cars or televisions.
The researchers surveyed 157 Amish families, about 3,000 Swiss farming families, and close to 11,000 Swiss families who did not live on a farm -- all with children between the ages of six and 12.
They found that just five percent of Amish kids had been diagnosed with asthma, compared to 6.8 percent of Swiss farm kids and 11.2 percent of the other Swiss children.
Similarly, among 138 Amish kids given a skin-prick test to determine...
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
ChiroQUACKtic is a big scam.
Absolutely!
4 kids - not an allergy among them.
In fact at one point my children's pediatrician thought we had moved or something since it had been so long since we had been in :) I said nope... they just never get sick much beyond a runny nose.
Actually, peanut allergies are frequently misdiagnosed. Statistically, the vast majority of people with peanut allergies are either misinformed (they don’t actually have allergies because of an incorrect diagnosis) or are victims of me-first parents (my kid is SPECIAL!).
I have a friend who supposedly has a child with a peanut allergy. They gave him a peanut and apparently he got red. To them, this means he has a life-threatening peanut allergy. I’m sure dozens of parents believe this about their children, but again statistics do not support this at all. Food allergies - real food allergies, that is - are responsible for about 150 deaths a year in the U.S. Yet I can guarantee that in any given elementary school, there are probably 50 children or more walking around with epi-pens because they’ve been conditioned to believe they can’t go near peanuts.
I am not convinced that peanut allergies are even increasing. I have said the same thing that you have - when I was growing up (in the 80’s) I had never even heard of a peanut allergy. Hell, even in high school I didn’t. Yet now it seems like 75% of all children born in the 90’s or later has a peanut allergy. That’s statistically not possible without a major environmental change. The most logical conclusion is that it’s nothing more than massive and frequent misdiagnosis. It also may be deliberate based on the lawyer-happy mentality of most people dealing with doctors.
Human beings are not designed to live in sterile environments for extended periods of time. This seems to really shock some folks.
Oooh! A post-post spell checker! Where can I get me one? ;-)
unpasteurized milk has been redefined by th EPA as illegal contraband.
Engaging in the production and sale of this dangerous substance has prompted the FBI to conduct undercover sting operations against these amish criminals!
They also are not put into daycare from 6 weeks and do not attend school with hundreds of other kids who all have parents that work outside the home and bring germs back.
Schools are a giant soup of germs.
Exposure to every allergen you can think of from conception.
That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Let’s hope exposure to Obama makes us stronger in the same way that exposure to Carter made us stonger by giving us the Reagan resurgence of America! No THAT is a change we can believe in! (Democrat grammar ends in a prepositon)
Were not Eloi... yet.
My daughter is allergic to cat dander. She loves animals. We have animals. It takes her about two weeks to get used to one.
She only has reactions at other people’s houses.
Although I wish she would have a reaction to the new kitten in the house. He is my best friend, in the middle of the night, when he feels my hair MUST have a milk giving nipple somewhere......
More than we think.
I have eaten lunch w/Amish: iceberg lettuce in July, canned sauces, such as tomato, commercial lunch meat. I have also watched them in the grocery store: flour, sugar, canned vegetables, juices and out of season produce. Not all of them farm. Some have businesses.
My husband is a medical massage therapist. He has Amish clients. A lot of depression, which can manifest somatically and, of course, a lot of congenital conditions, such as cerebral palsy. They do use the medical system. Some have pacemakers, for example. One local pediatrician used to go out to a farm and give mass vaccinations such as MMR. Entire extended families would bring their kids. Back in the late 60s we had a local epidemic of measles and people remember. This doc and another one set up a clinic that caters to Amish. One even added a birthing area just for them. There is also a midwife who works almost exclusively w/Amish, utilizing an ultrasound. She will call the EMTs and get the mother to a hospital quickly if anything untoward happens.
Point being, that the Amish are no longer as isolated as people think.
Well, he definitely won the "hijack the thread spam war".
Builds Immunity ;>)
I should add that there was a severe outbreak of salmonella last summer in our Amish community. They had made homemade ice cream for a large gathering with raw eggs. There were a couple of really severe cases and many were hospitalized. A friend took van-load into the ER.
Really? Tell that to my back and two my two kids who’ve never been sick. With a free market economy, you would think there would be no chiropracters left if your assumption is true. Your purpose on this thread is to stir $hit up and get people arguing. I don’t know who peed in your Cheerios this morning but it wasn’t me.
The study was about Amish rural farm children having very low rates of allergies.
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