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Intuitively, it sounds logical. I fit right into the profile of female getting shellfish allergies in my late 30s. Sure wish I hadn’t.
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Great article! I think the information about the rise in allergies relative to the eradication of parasites our immune system used to more routinely have to deal with was particularly interesting.
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I loved that line too! Busy doing stupid stuff is exactly right.
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We have a saying in Germany “Dreck reinigt den Magen.” It predates current generations.
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Then there’s my f-i-l, who claims an allergy to anything he doesn’t want to eat.
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My SIL’s younger brother, a physician, brought this up once as a subject that was being studied and they were beginning to arrive at this theory, only rather than parasites, the theory was that we’ve eliminated most diseases so our immune systems were “looking for stuff to do”. This was 10-15 years ago, so they’ve been studying it for a long time.
BTW- He wasn’t a part of the research, he’d heard about it elsewhere.
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