• GluWu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    1 month ago

    Developing allergies is the biggest bullshit on earth ever. I used to forage for a staple food but now if I eat that my throat swells up and I can’t breath.

    • TheLameSauce@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I’ve heard there have been studies that indicate that in some part modern allergies are our bodies directing an evolved immune response that we once needed for all the parasites we constantly carried. They gave parasites to people that had certain food allergies and suddenly their food allergies were just straight up gone.

      https://www.science.org/content/article/got-allergies-blame-parasites

      https://healthland.time.com/2012/04/18/doctor-infects-himself-with-parasites-for-health-experiment/

      • robotica@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 month ago

        Very interesting! Something that was missing from me in the 2nd article is whether the food allergy persisted after he rid himself of worms, which I assume that it did, given how he had traded the food allergy for a constant stomachache.

        Still very interesting and all this stuff reminds me of the fact that don’t yet know almost anything in medicine and are often just treating illnesses once they come, sometimes in gruesome or expensive ways, and I’m not sure we should immediately discard all alternative medicine as useless or ineffective, maybe it’s only effective in rare cases and we don’t know what those cases look like.