OT: unpasteurized raw milk health benefits partly explained in new study

You have quite limited experience, obviously.

Always hovering over their children.

"I think"

I think it's more that the children aren't allowed to play outside and actually get dirty.

So a little peanut causes allergy but a lot prevents it? Sounds like thin gruel to me. You do know that peanuts are a choking hazard?

My neighbors do it in 70F weather. I can understand it along a highway or the rather busy and windey tertiary road but in our development, on a dead end with maybe 10 houses?

I walked to school, five miles through the snow, up-hill. Both ways!

So you're saying that people who grew up in the US don't have poison oak allergy? Really?

They do, but there is a two-digit percentage of Americans that is not very sensitive or not sensitive at all. My neighbor can walk right through it in shorts and get a mild itch, at the most. His dad is a former gardener and he can grab bushels of it with his bare arms and gets ... nothing. All European immigrants I know without exception pretty much have to seek medical help after just touching poison oak. Me included, because you can't get Prednisone without seeing the doctor.

In some parts of Asia more people are supposedly resistant against it and they say it is because they used lacquer that contains urushiol for making fancy dessert bowls and such. Meaning they ate from it.

...and you consider this proof? BTW, I'm not affected either (not that I push my luck) but it has nothing to do with exposure, or lack thereof, when I was a child.

You can also become sensitized to allergens the same way. So, again, you say that a little is bad and a lot is good? Your logic doesn't follow.

No, what I am saying is that with most exposure (not necessarily poison oak but other stuff) a little is good, a lot all at once can be bad. Because a lot of exposure all at once at young age could mean an ambulance ride.

What is bad is when helicopter parents strive for zero exposure. That can result in children that are a bit sickly later in life.

So, because trace amounts of peanuts are in everything, children develop peanut allergies?

But I thought that peanuts were in just about everything? How can there be peanut allergies?

BTW, I didn't grow up around poison oak or ivy, either but have never had an issue with it. OTOH, my brothers all have had it, though we grew up in very similar environments. They probably had even more exposure when we were young than did I.

No, they develop them because they are fed super-controlled formula. When trace amnounts are too tiny they are the same as nothing. Nothing or too close to nothing is not a good thing when it comes to allergy prevention. Read up on this stuff.

Because peanuts are not in everything.

As I said, with poison oak this doesn't always work.

So breast milk has peanuts in it. Gotcha!

But it was just said that they are. (and they are in just about everything, which is why peanut allergy is so serious)

But *you* have a poison oak allergy because you weren't exposed to it as a child! (good grief!)

I've been right through this thread - as displayed on google groups - and I haven't found any link to any place where NOAA talked about a new global i ce age.

All things are possible, but an actual government agency prediction of a ne w global ice age, even in the 1970's, strikes me as a little improbable. Th ey might have said that it might happen, but anything as strong as a "predi ction" would have had to have been based on the kind of mindless extrapolat ion that John Larkin thinks that today's climate scientists go in for.

... but that

So re-post the link to whatever it is that you think I should have read. My bet is that it's you, rather than me, who has got his facts wrong.

Not for the first time, it's krw who is wrong - he doesn't know much, and most of what he thinks he knows happens to be wrong.

Joerg didn't actually provide a link to the site he refers to, and I haven't been able to find anything in this thread which might constitute a "fact" or anything like it.

Krw "facts" are always based on what he thinks he knows (much of which is wrong).

Speaking as socialist, I do find relevant information on the web, read it, and provide links to it. In this particular case I've not been able to find any link posted by Jeorg or krw which I might have read.

I assume you have seen this:

"Desensitisation" is a technique of exposing allergic kids to progressing increasing amounts of allergen. It's a slow process, typically taking six months or more, and starts with very lose doses of allergen.

If you are allergic to peanut butter, a little can provoke an allergic reaction. Persistent exposures to progressively increasing doses can make the allergy go away.

Some have only recorded bazuki music playing in the shop but no cheese at all.

But you can shoot them for wasting your time.

I suspect it is only partly true. From what I remember of Japanese lacquerware production the majority of Japanese people are sensitive to urushiol monomer too but they have a trick for getting through the painful phase of early exposure. It is only really bad as monomer and it can get you by contact or much worse as a vapour in the air. The latter via smoke can be fatal which is why you shouldn't burn it.

It wouldn't surprise me if native Americans have a higher tolerance of urushiol than Europeans. We don't have any native Toxicodendron species. The nastiest one is T. Vernix in the USA but not so common at least in places where humans are likely to venture.

The closest relative is Sumac which grows in the Middle East and is used as an ornamental plant in the UK.

You have to be careful with raw cashew nuts taken off the tree too as the fruit skin contains traces of urushiol and are steamed to remove the toxic resin. Correct preparation is everything. See:

The guys doing the lacquering and still worse making the lacquer have a very hard time as apprentices unless they are extremely lucky. They apparently grow out of it eventually if they last that long.

But once the urushiol lacquer has fully cured in a nice warm humid environment it is just about as inert as any other polymer plastic. The hard high gloss finish in usually in black and bright red is highly prized for rice bowls and trays and has been for a very long time.

ISRT about 10% of the population isn't sensitive but more than half the population react at about the same level as for mustard gas.

That is thought to be the case at least in the modern environment. It's incidence has increased markedly since the 1990's when stuffing processed food with traces of soya and peanut protein became common.

Child's developing immune system sees traces of peanut legume protein fragments as a hostile target and then an immune response develops.

There is a treatment of sorts for severe allergies. A friend with severe hayfever was involved in one of the early medical trials.

See the section "Hope for the fuuture" p8

Another view is based on immunological testing

It is very hard for people with peanut allergies.

Interestingly you can suddenly become allergic. A fair number of beekeepers of my acquaintance have become allergic to bee stings after having been stung perhaps a few dozen times in their lifetime. They have to carry an epi pen with them if the response is acute and ultimately give up beekeeping or get someone else to do the hives.

Same with hair dyes you should always do a patch test first.

If you have never been exposed to it you may get away with the very first exposure with relatively little effect. It is the second time after the immune system has been primed to react that you find out how bad your allergy really is.

Plenty of industrial chemicals are bad allergic sensitisers in the same way as urushiol - toluene diisocyanate (flexible foam) for instance.

As a youngster I was allergic to tobacco smoke and some perfumes sneezing uncontrollably but I grew out of it as a teenager. I still respond to strong odd smells with a sudden sneeze around a couple of seconds before I or anyone around me is conscious of the smell.

The polar opposite is also thought to be the case, also by real scientists. That's a fair indication that we don't actually know... but here is a good reference to the actual science that I commented on earlier, and no-one bothered to chase up:

So, introducing infants to peanut products early seems to reduce the prevalence of allergy to it, whatever other factors may be at play. So it's arguable that our fear of peanut allergy led to withholding it until it's introduced later, and then causes the allergy.

That would truly be a case of "nothing to fear but fear itself".

Clifford Heath.

It isn't necessarily the polar opposite. What seems to be the case is that exposure to macroscopic quantities of peanut or egg whilst still very young is a good thing. Countries where peanuts form a part of the early diet have much lower incidence of the allergy than first world.

"Avoidance" may not be possible today since so many processed foods contain soya or peanut as protein additives. It is thought that traces introduced too early to children can result in problems by priming the rather bored immune system against false targets because it no longer has to cope with a natural dirty environment it has evolved to handle.

Something has changed radically in the fairly recent past. Peanut allergy was rare when I was a youngster and they were unusual treats. The worry then was of choking on one rather than being allergic.

Overly clean near sterile environment and/or soya/peanut protein being used to fortify processed foods are both candidates. It could be something else entirely but it has to be from some recent change(s).

I am sure that eventually it will be understood why there has been such a significant rise in peanut allergy in particular and nut allergies in general during the past three decades.

Returning to the Japanese theme it is worth noting that a majority of their population are intolerant of cow's milk - lacking an enzyme to deal with lactose. Some also lack a key enzyme needed to handle alcohol and go by the unkind nickname of Litmus-san (turning bright red).

On May 30, 2017, Joerg wrote (in article ):

For the record, I?m one of those people who are minimally allergic to poison ivy. At age 2, I was allergic to peanuts, but outgrew it.

Anyway, my wife the gardener is quite allergic to poison ivy, so I was researching the issue, and came upon a statement that the American Indians, who in the Northeast (like Boston) lived in forests, solved their poison ivy problem by eating an ivy leaf every Spring, the effect lasting through the growing seasons. I have not been brave enough to try this.

Joe Gwinn