We’re the ‘allergy capital of the world’. But we don’t know why food allergies are so common in Australian children
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Australia has often been called the “allergy capital of the world”.
An estimated one in ten Australian children develop a food allergy in their first 12 months of life. Research has previously suggested food allergies are more common in infants in Australia than infants living in Europe, the United States or Asia.
So why are food allergies so common in Australia? We don’t know exactly – but local researchers are making progress in understanding childhood allergies all the time.
What causes food allergies?
There are many different types of reactions to foods. When we refer to food allergies in this article, we’re talking about something called IgE-mediated food allergy. This type of allergy is caused by an immune response to a particular food.
Reactions can occur within minutes of eating the food and may include swelling of the face, lips or eyes, “hives” or welts on the skin, and vomiting. Signs of a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) include difficulty breathing, swelling of the tongue, swelling in the throat, wheeze or persistent cough, difficulty talking or a hoarse voice, and persistent dizziness or collapse.
Recent results from Australia’s large, long-running food allergy study, HealthNuts, show one in ten one-year-olds have a food allergy, while around six in 100 children have a food allergy at age ten.
In Australia, the most common allergy-causing foods include eggs, peanuts, cow’s milk, shellfish (for example, prawn and lobster), fish, tree nuts (for example, walnuts and cashews), soybeans and wheat.
Allergies to foods like eggs, peanuts and cow’s milk often present for the first time in infancy, while allergies to fish and shellfish may be more common later in life. While most children will outgrow their allergies to eggs and milk, allergy to peanuts is more likely to be lifelong.
Findings from HealthNuts showed around three in ten children grew out of their peanut allergy by age six, compared to nine in ten children with an allergy to egg.
Are food allergies becoming more common?
Food allergies seem to have become more common in many countries around the world over recent decades. The exact timing of this increase is not clear, because in most countries food allergies were not well measured 40 or 50 years ago.
We don’t know exactly why food allergies are so common in Australia, or why we’re seeing a rise around the world, despite extensive research.
But possible reasons for rising allergies around the world include changes in the diets of mothers and infants and increasing sanitisation, leading to fewer infections as well as less exposure to “good” bacteria. In Australia, factors such as increasing vitamin D deficiency among infants and high levels of migration to the country could play a role.
In several Australian studies, children born in Australia to parents who were born in Asia have higher rates of food allergies compared to non-Asian children. On the other hand, children who were born in Asia and later migrated to Australia appear to have a lower risk of nut allergies.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that having pet dogs and siblings as a young child may reduce the risk of food allergies. This might be because having pet dogs and siblings increases contact with a range of bacteria and other organisms.
This evidence suggests that both genetics and environment play a role in the development of food allergies.
We also know that infants with eczema are more likely to develop a food allergy, and trials are underway to see whether this link can be broken.
Can I do anything to prevent food allergies in my kids?
One of the questions we are asked most often by parents is “can we do anything to prevent food allergies?”.
We now know introducing peanuts and eggs from around six months of age makes it less likely that an infant will develop an allergy to these foods. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy introduced guidelines recommending giving common allergy-causing foods including peanut and egg in the first year of life in 2016.
Our research has shown this advice had excellent uptake and may have slowed the rise in food allergies in Australia. There was no increase in peanut allergies between 2007–11 to 2018–19.
Introducing other common allergy-causing foods in the first year of life may also be helpful, although the evidence for this is not as strong compared with peanuts and eggs.
What next?
Unfortunately, some infants will develop food allergies even when the relevant foods are introduced in the first year of life. Managing food allergies can be a significant burden for children and families.
Several Australian trials are currently underway testing new strategies to prevent food allergies. A large trial, soon to be completed, is testing whether vitamin D supplements in infants reduce the risk of food allergies.
Another trial is testing whether the amount of eggs and peanuts a mother eats during pregnancy and breastfeeding has an influence on whether or not her baby will develop food allergies.
For most people with food allergies, avoidance of their known allergens remains the standard of care. Oral immunotherapy, which involves gradually increasing amounts of food allergen given under medical supervision, is beginning to be offered in some facilities around Australia. However, current oral immunotherapy methods have potential side effects (including allergic reactions), can involve high time commitment and cost, and don’t cure food allergies.
There is hope on the horizon for new food allergy treatments. Multiple clinical trials are underway around Australia aiming to develop safer and more effective treatments for people with food allergies.
Jennifer Koplin, Group Leader, Childhood Allergy & Epidemiology, The University of Queensland and Desalegn Markos Shifti, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Managing Sibling Relationships In Adult Life
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Managing Sibling Relationships In Adult Life
After our previous main feature on estrangement, a subscriber wrote to say:
❝Parent and adult child relationships are so important to maintain as you age, but what about sibling relationships? Adult choices to accept and move on with healthier boundaries is also key for maintaining familial ties.❞
And, this is indeed critical for many of us, if we have siblings!
Writer’s note: I don’t have siblings, but I do happen to have one of Canada’s top psychologists on speed-dial, and she has more knowledge about sibling relationships than I do, not to mention a lifetime of experience both personally and professionally. So, I sought her advice, and she gave me a lot to work with.
Today I bring her ideas, distilled into my writing, for 10almonds’ signature super-digestible bitesize style.
A foundation of support
Starting at the beginning of a sibling story… Sibling relationships are generally beneficial from the get-go.
This is for reasons of mutual support, and an “always there” social presence.
Of course, how positive this experience is may depend on there being a lack of parental favoritism. And certainly, sibling rivalries and conflict can occur at any age, but the stakes are usually lower, early in life.
Growing warmer or colder
Generally speaking, as people age, sibling relationships likely get warmer and less conflictual.
Why? Simply put, we mature and (hopefully!) get more emotionally stable as we go.
However, two things can throw a wrench into the works:
- Long-term rivalries or jealousies (e.g., “who has done better in life”)
- Perceptions of unequal contribution to the family
These can take various forms, but for example if one sibling earns (or otherwise has) much more or much less than another, that can cause resentment on either or both sides:
- Resentment from the side of the sibling with less money: “I’d look after them if our situations were reversed; they can solve my problems easily; why do they resent that and/or ignore my plight?”
- Resentment from the side of the sibling with more money: “I shouldn’t be having to look after my sibling at this age”
It’s ugly and unpleasant. Same goes if the general job of caring for an elderly parent (or parents) falls mostly or entirely on one sibling. This can happen because of being geographically closer or having more time (well… having had more time. Now they don’t, it’s being used for care!).
It can also happen because of being female—daughters are more commonly expected to provide familial support than sons.
And of course, that only gets exacerbated as end-of-life decisions become relevant with regard to parents, and tough decisions may need to be made. And, that’s before looking at conflicts around inheritance.
So, all that seems quite bleak, but it doesn’t have to be like that.
Practical advice
As siblings age, working on communication about feelings is key to keeping siblings close and not devolving into conflict.
Those problems we talked about are far from unique to any set of siblings—they’re just more visible when it’s our own family, that’s all.
So: nothing to be ashamed of, or feel bad about. Just, something to manage—together.
Figure out what everyone involved wants/needs, put them all on the table, and figure out how to:
- Make sure outright needs are met first
- Try to address wants next, where possible
Remember, that if you feel more is being asked of you than you can give (in terms of time, energy, money, whatever), then this discussion is a time to bring that up, and ask for support, e.g.:
“In order to be able to do that, I would need… [description of support]; can you help with that?”
(it might even sometimes be necessary to simply say “No, I can’t do that. Let’s look to see how else we can deal with this” and look for other solutions, brainstorming together)
Some back-and-forth open discussion and even negotiation might be necessary, but it’s so much better than seething quietly from a distance.
The goal here is an outcome where everyone’s needs are met—thus leveraging the biggest strength of having siblings in the first place:
Mutual support, while still being one’s own person. Or, as this writer’s psychology professor friend put it:
❝Circling back to your original intention, this whole discussion adds up to: siblings can be very good or very bad for your life, depending on tons of things that we talked about, especially communication skills, emotional wellness of each person, and the complexity of challenges they face interdependently.❞
Our previous main feature about good communication can help a lot:
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Policosanol: A Rival To Statins, Without The Side Effects?
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Policosanol (which can be extracted from various sources, but is mostly made from sugar cane extract) is marketed as lipid-lowering agent for improving cholesterol levels, but its research history has not been without controversy:
2001: it works!
After a lot of research in the 1990s, it came out of the gate strong in 2001, with:
❝Policosanol (5 and 10 mg/day) significantly decreased LDL-cholesterol (17.3% and 26.7%, respectively), total cholesterol (12.9% and 19.5%), as well as the ratios of LDL-cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol (17.2% and 26.5%) and total cholesterol to HDL-cholesterol (16.3% and 21.0%) compared with baseline and placebo❞
This, by the way, is comparable in efficacy to the most powerful statins, but without the adverse side effects.
Source: Efficacy and tolerability of policosanol in hypercholesterolemic postmenopausal women
Furthermore, its effects were not limited to postmenopausal women, and additionally, it was found that 20mg/day was sufficient for optimal effects; 40mg worked exactly the same as 20mg:
2006–2010: we do not trust the Cubans!
After it had been marketed and used in much of the world for some years, extra scrutiny was brought upon it, because the initial studies had been performed by the same lab in Cuba, a commercial lab that had tested them for a private interest (i.e., a company selling the supplement):
Heart Beat: Policosanol: A sweet nothing for high cholesterol
And furthermore, US-based labs were unable to replicate the results:
Policosanols as Nutraceuticals: Fact or Fiction
The Cuban researchers countered that the composition of policosanol as produced in their lab was different than the composition of the policosanol as produced in the US labs, because of the purity of the ingredients used in the Cuban lab.
Which, on the face of it, could be true or could just be the claim of a commercial lab with an association with a company selling a product.
Of course, importing Cuban ingredients to test them in the US was not a reasonably accessible option for the US-based labs, because of the US’s embargo of Cuba. In principle it could be done, but unless there is already a huge clear profit incentive, research scientists are usually on their hands and knees begging for grants already, so getting extra funding for specially-important Cuban ingredients was not going to be likely.
2012: never mind, it does work after all!
An American meta-analysis of 4596 patients from 52 eligible studies (from around the world, so many of them not affected by the US’s embargo; some were from within the US using non-Cuban ingredients, though), found:
❝policosanol is more effective than plant sterols and stanols for LDL level reduction and more favorably alters the lipid profile, approaching antilipemic drug efficacy❞
Those last words there, to be clear, mean “yes, the original claim of being on a par with statins is at least more or less true”.
Source: Meta-Analysis of Natural Therapies for Hyperlipidemia: Plant Sterols and Stanols versus Policosanol
2018: also yes, the Cuban kind does get those extra-effective results, even when tested outside of Cuba
A Korean research team verified this; it’s quite straightforward so for brevity we’ll just drop links:
- Consumption of Cuban Policosanol Improves Blood Pressure and Lipid Profile via Enhancement of HDL Functionality in Healthy Women Subjects: Randomized, Double-Blinded, and Placebo-Controlled Study
- Long-Term Consumption of Cuban Policosanol Lowers Central and Brachial Blood Pressure and Improves Lipid Profile With Enhancement of Lipoprotein Properties in Healthy Korean Participants
Mystery resolved!
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon—it’s not the Cuban kind, because the US’s trade embargo makes it difficult for the US to import even things that are theoretically now exempt from the embargo such as food and medicines. In principle they can now be imported, but in practice, the extra regulations added to Cuban imports make it nearly impossible, especially for small sellers.
Still, it’s 40mg/tablet policosanol from sugar cane extract, and 3rd party lab tested, so it’s the next best thing 😎
Enjoy!
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Do We Need Supplements, And Do They Work?
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Does our diet need a little help?
We asked you for your take on supplements, and got the above-illustrated, below-described set of results.
- The largest minority of respondents (a little over a third) voted for “I just take something very specific”
- The next most respondents voted for “I take so many supplements; every little helps!”
- Almost as many voted for “I just take a vitamin or two / a multivitamin”
- Fewest, about 8%, voted for “I get everything I need from my diet”
But what does the science say?
Food is less nutritious now than it used to be: True or False?
True or False depending on how you measure it.
An apple today and an apple from a hundred years ago are likely to contain the same amounts of micronutrients per apple, but a lower percentage of micronutrients per 100g of apple.
The reason for this is that apples (and many other food products; apples are just an arbitrary example) have been selectively bred (and in some cases, modified) for size, and because the soil mineral density has remained the same, the micronutrients per apple have not increased commensurate to the increase in carbohydrate weight and/or water weight. Thus, the resultant percentage will be lower, despite the quantity remaining the same.
We’re going to share some science on this, and/but would like to forewarn readers that the language of this paper is a bit biased, as it looks to “debunk” claims of nutritional values dropping while skimming over “yes, they really have dropped percentage-wise” in favor of “but look, the discrete mass values are still the same, so that’s just a mathematical illusion”.
The reality is, it’s no more a mathematical illusion than is the converse standpoint of saying the nutritional value is the same, despite the per-100g values dropping. After all, sometimes we eat an apple as-is; sometimes we buy a bag of frozen chopped fruit. That 500g bag of chopped fruit is going to contain less copper (for example) than one from decades past.
Here’s the paper, and you’ll see what we mean:
Supplements aren’t absorbed properly and thus are a waste of money: True or False?
True or False depending on the supplement (and your body, and the rest of your diet)
Many people are suffering from dietary deficiencies of vitamins and minerals, that could be easily correctable by supplementation:
However, as this study by Dr. Fang Fang Zhang shows, a lot of vitamin and mineral supplementation does not appear to have much of an effect on actual health outcomes, vis-à-vis specific diseases. She looks at:
- Cardiovascular disease
- Cancer
- Type 2 diabetes
- Osteoporosis
Her key take-aways from this study were:
- Randomised trial evidence does not support use of vitamin, mineral, and fish oil supplements to reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases
- People using supplements tend to be older, female, and have higher education, income, and healthier lifestyles than people who do not use them
- Use of supplements appreciably reduces the prevalence of inadequate intake for most nutrients but also increases the prevalence of excess intake for some nutrients
- Further research is needed to assess the long term effects of supplements on the health of the general population and in individuals with specific nutritional needs, including those from low and middle income countries
Read her damning report: Health effects of vitamin and mineral supplements
On the other hand…
This is almost entirely about blanket vitamin-and-mineral supplementation. With regard to fish oil supplementation, many commercial fish oil supplements break down in the stomach rather than the intestines, and don’t get absorbed well. Additionally, many people take them in forms that aren’t pleasant, and thus result in low adherence (i.e., they nominally take them, but in fact they just sit on the kitchen counter for a year).
One thing we can conclude from this is that it’s good to check the science for any given supplement before taking it, and know what it will and won’t help for. Our “Monday Research Review” editions of 10almonds do this a lot, although we tend to focus on herbal supplements rather than vitamins and minerals.
We can get everything we need from our diet: True or False?
Contingently True (but here be caveats)
In principle, if we eat the recommended guideline amounts of various macro- and micro-nutrients, we will indeed get all that we are generally considered to need. Obviously.
However, this may come with:
- Make sure to get enough protein… Without too much meat, and also without too much carbohydrate, such as from most plant sources of protein
- Make sure to get enough carbohydrates… But only the right kinds, and not too much, nor at the wrong time, and without eating things in the wrong order
- Make sure to get enough healthy fats… Without too much of the unhealthy fats that often exist in the same foods
- Make sure to get the right amount of vitamins and minerals… We hope you have your calculators out to get the delicate balance of calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and vitamin D right.
That last one’s a real pain, by the way. Too much or too little of one or another and the whole set start causing problems, and several of them interact with several others, and/or compete for resources, and/or are needed for the others to do their job.
And, that’s hard enough to balance when you’re taking supplements with the mg/µg amount written on them, never mind when you’re juggling cabbages and sardines.
On the topic of those sardines, don’t forget to carefully balance your omega-3, -6, and -9, and even within omega-3, balancing ALA, EPA, and DHA, and we hope you’re juggling those HDL and LDL levels too.
So, when it comes to getting everything we need from our diet, for most of us (who aren’t living in food deserts and/or experiencing food poverty, or having a medical condition that restricts our diet), the biggest task is not “getting enough”, it’s “getting enough of the right things without simultaneously overdoing it on the others”.
With supplements, it’s a lot easier to control what we’re putting in our bodies.
And of course, unless our diet includes things that usually can’t be bought in supermarkets, we’re not going to get the benefits of taking, as a supplement, such things as:
Etc.
So, there definitely are supplements with strong science-backed benefits, that probably can’t be found on your plate!
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How To Keep On Keeping On?
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How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!
For many when it comes to health-related goals and practices, it’s easy to find ourselves in a bit of a motivational dip around this time of year. The enthusiasm of new year’s resolutions has been and gone, and there’s not yet much of a drive to “get a beach body” or “be summer-ready”.
A word to the wise on those before moving on, though:
- How to get a beach body: take your body to a beach. Voilà. Beach body.
- Remember: the beach is there for your pleasure and entertainment, not the other way around!
- How to be summer-ready: the real question is, will summer be ready for you?
But what is this, demotivational rhetoric to discourage you from getting fit and healthy?
Not at all, but rather, to be sure that you’re pursuing your own goals and not just what you feel might be expected of you.
All that in mind, let’s get to the tips…
Focus on adding health
It can be tempting (and even, good) to cut down on unhealthy things. But when it comes to motivation, it’s harder to stay motivated for deprivation, than it is for some healthy addition to life.
So for example, this philosophy would advocate for:
- Instead of counting calories, count steps! Or even…
- Instead of counting calories, count colors! Eat the rainbow and all that. No, skittles do not count, but eating a variety of naturally different-colored foods will tend to result in adding different nutrients to your diet.
- Instead of cutting out sugar, add fruit! How many per day will you go for? If you don’t eat much fruit as it is, consider making it a goal to have even just one piece of fruit a day, then build up from there. Find fruit you like! If you pick the fruit you want instead of the fruit you think you “should” have, it’s basically a dessert snack.
We’ve recommended it before, and we’ll recommend it again, but if you’re interested in “adding health”, you should definitely check out:
Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen (checklist, plus app if you want it)
More details: it’s a checklist of 12 things you should try to include in your diet, with a free streak-tracking app, if you want it, all based on the same scientific research as the best-selling book “How Not To Die”.
“Minimum effort!”
Did you see the movie “Deadpool”? The protagonist has a catch-phrase as he goes into battle, saying to himself “Maximum effort!”.
And, that’s all very well and good if your superpower is immediate recovery from pretty much anything, but for the rest of us, sometimes it’s good to hold ourselves to “minimum effort!”.
Sometimes, something worth doing is worth doing just a little a bit. It’s always better than nothing! Even if feels like you gained nothing from it, it’s the foundation of a habit, and the habit will grow and add up. Sometimes it may even take you by surprise…
Don’t feel like doing 20 bodyweight squats? Do literally just one. Make a deal with yourself: do just one, then you can stop if you like. Then after you’ve done one, you might think to yourself “huh, that wasn’t so bad”, and you try out a few more. Maybe after 5 you can feel your blood pumping a bit and you think “you know what, that’s enough for now”, and great, you did 5x as much exercise as you planned! Wonder what you’ll do tomorrow!
(personal note from your writer here: I’ve managed to “just extend this exercise a little bit more than last time” my way into hour-long exercise sessions before now; I started with “just 10 squats” or “just one sun salutation” etc, to get myself out of a no-exercise period that I’d slipped into, and it’s amazing how quickly adding just a little bit to the previous day’s “minimum effort!” adds up to a very respectable daily exercise session)
Wondering what a good, easy, respectable short term goal could be?
Check Out, For Example: The Seven-Minute Workout
(You might have heard of this one before; it’s an incredibly efficient well-optimized short complete workout that requires no special equipment, just a bit of floorspace and a wall—the above app allows for customizations of it per your preferences, but the basic routine is an excellent starting point for most people)
Commit to yourself (and do any self-negotiation up-front)
Really commit, though. No “or I will look silly because I told people I’d do it”, no “or I will donate x amount to charity” etc, just “I will do it and that’s that”. If you find yourself second-guessing yourself or renegotiating with yourself, just shut that down immediately and refuse to consider it.
Note: you should have break-clauses in this contract with yourself, though. For example, “unless I am ill or injured” is a sensible rule to have in advance for most exercise regimes that weren’t undertaken with your illness or injury in mind.
Make a “To-Don’t” list
Much like how addicts are often advised to not try to quit more than one thing at once, we must also be mindful of not taking on too much at once. It can be very tempting to think:
“I will turn my life around, now! I’ll quit alcohol and animal products and sugar and refined grains, and I’ll go for a run each morning, and I’ll do this and that and there, I’ve got it, here is the blueprint for my healthy perfect life from this day forth!”
And, it’s great to have any and all of that as your end goal if you want, but please, pick one or two things at most to start with, focus on those, and when those have become second nature to you and just a normal part of your life, then choose the next thing to work on.
(You can plan out the whole thing in advance if you want! i.e., I’ll do this, then this, then this, but just… make sure that you’ve really got each one down to a matter of comfort and ease before you take up the next one)
In summary:
- Focus on adding health, whatever that looks like to you
- Figure out what “minimum effort!” is for you, and let that be your baseline
- Commit to yourself (and do any self-negotiation up-front, not later)
- Decide what you’re not going to do yet, and stick to that, too.
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- How to get a beach body: take your body to a beach. Voilà. Beach body.
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3 Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic
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Dr. Annette Bosworth gives her recommendations, and explains why:
What and how
We’ll get straight to it; the recommendations are:
- Coffee, black, unsweetened: not only suppresses the appetite but also boosts the metabolism, increasing fat burn.
- Salt: especially for when fasting (as under such circumstances we may lose salts without replenishing them), a small taste of this can help satisfy taste buds while replenishing sodium and—depending on the salt—other minerals. For example, if you buy “low-sodium salt” in the supermarket, this is generally sodium chloride cut with potassium chloride and/or occasionally magnesium sulfate.
- Ketones (MCT oil): ketones can suppress hunger, particularly when fasting causes blood sugar levels to drop. Supplementing with MCT oil promotes ketone production in the liver, training the body to produce more ketones naturally, thus curbing appetite.
For more on these including the science of them, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Ozempic vs Five Natural Supplements
- Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety
- The Fruit That Can Specifically Reduce Belly Fat
Take care!
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Psychedelics and Psychotherapy – Edited by Dr. Tim Read & Maria Papaspyrou
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A quick note on authorship, first: this book is edited by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist credited above, but after the introductory section, the rest of the chapters are written by experts on the individual topics.As such, the style will vary somewhat, from chapter to chapter.
What this book isn’t: “try drugs and feel better!”
Rather, the book explores the various ways in which assorted drugs can help people to—even if just briefly—shed things they didn’t know they were carrying, or otherwise couldn’t put down, and access parts of themselves they otherwise couldn’t.
We also get to read a lot about the different roles the facilitator can play in guiding the therapeutic process, and what can be expected out of each kind of experience. This varies a lot from one drug to another, so it makes for very worthwhile reading, if that’s something you might consider pursuing. Knowledge makes for much more informed choices!
Bottom line: if you’re curious about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, and want a reference that’s more personal than dry clinical studies, but still more “safe and removed” than diving in by yourself, this is the book for you.
Click here to check out Psychedelics and Psychotherapy, and expand your understanding!
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