http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/condi....ap/index.html

<font color=skyblue>A girl with a serious peanut allergy kissed her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter snack of some sort...and she died from it even though she was immediately treated with the shot that we all carry around for our children who have this allergy. Yes, my youngest daughter also has an allergy, but I do not know how severe it is.

I have never heard of anyone dying in this way before in an allergy-related case. Its opened my eyes, though. My daughter has to date a guy with a disdain for peanuts. </font>

Yikes, I didn't realize it could be quite that severe! Your daughter needs to date a guy who is also allergic and stays away from them entirely!

From my limited knowledge of allergies...that level of allergy is exceedingly rare.

Holy crap! that really sucks :(
I know lots of people have worse reactions than others, but usually the shot will keep them fine.

Allergies... Ugh. How is it that they haven't fallen out of our gene pool yet? You'd figure an aversion to a type of edible food isn't the most favourable trait to have...

<font color=skyblue>Its because stuff like peanut allergies is increasing moreso than before. That link I provided says that a new theory is that baby lotions that contain peanut oil as an ingredient could be causing the problem. My daughter's allergy doctor told us that it should be made widely known that giving a child allergy-prone proteins before the age of 3 is likely to cause that child to create an allergy for it.

The allergy comes on when the body does not recognize the protein as a useful substance but rather a danger to the body and tries to attack it with the immune system. (From what I have been told and can remember). The good news is that if I can keep all peanuts away from my two year old for another year...there is a small chance that her body would have forgotten what that protein looked like and so when reintroduced...she may be normal. Its all I have to hope for for her sake.

Nutritionists and doctors will tell you that a mother's breast milk is supposes to decrease the chances of allergies coming on in life, and give the child even more chances at a healthy body than one fed with formula. My research has found scientific proof in professional peer-reviewed journals indicating that the peanut allergies may in fact be given to the child through the mother if the mother consumes a lot of peanuts. Some medical professionals disagree, fo course...but what then is causing all the allergies these days if things like these theories are not the cause?</font>

DaVinci Code style!

I thought allergies arose due to an extreme obsession with hygene(sp?)?

Nah pretty sure your born with them man, maybe your thinkin of obsessive compulsive disorder?

Interesting, Larry, because I read that exposure to allegens, generally, develops immunity. Scientists found that children with cat/dog dander allergies actually did better with exposure (after a time, of course). Now, maybe there's some rule regarding the 3 year mark at work here. I don't know.

But, it stands to reason that we, and our society, must be doing something to increase the allergies among children. It HAS to be an environmental factor, because I'm pretty darned sure random gene mutation isn't causing the increase in allergies.