If I asked this question only 20 years ago I would get so many negative answers. In my younger years, it was only one person in my class that actually had an allergy. But now when I look around we are all lactose, gluten, pollen allergic, or at least have someone in our family who is. So why the sudden increase in the numbers? Why are we becoming allergic?

Most people would say that before people didn’t do allergy tests so they were mostly undiagnosed. People didn’t know so much about allergies as now and didn’t have the proper tools to recognize them. But still, it’s only part of the explanation. And what worries me more is the fact that allergies are affecting our children now so much more than before. If you work in daycare, kindergarten, or your normal primary school you would see food instructions and lists of allergens for almost every single child. And that makes me more worried than ever before. Because when you have a child with a food allergy you start reading food labels and wondering if is it all listed there? Because if only one ingredient that is missing from the label it could mean a visit to the doctor. So what it is that is causing people to suffer from allergies?

Going back to basics

What is an allergic response? An allergy is caused by the immune system fighting substances in the environment that it should see as harmless, known as allergens. These innocent substances become targets, leading to allergic reactions.

Symptoms range from skin redness, hives, and swelling to, in the most severe cases, vomiting, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, and anaphylactic shock. Some of the most common foods for children to be allergic to are:

• milk
• eggs
• peanuts
• tree nuts (eg walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, brazil nuts, pecans)
• sesame
• fish
• shellfish (eg crustaceans and molluscs)

But it’s not only foods that we are becoming allergic to. There are pollens from various trees, and people get allergic reactions from medications, antibiotics, and even eye drops. The list goes on since new allergies are discovered every day. And some people have the misfortune of having multiple allergies. You can be allergic to one or more milk proteins, eggs, and medications. I have a person close to me allergic to all animal milk proteins including whey, eggs, sulfites as in eye drops, and certain antibiotics to make his life more interesting. So it directly affects his quality of life and how many monthly visits to the doctor he will have.

What causes allergies?

You can’t pinpoint one specific thing to explain why people are becoming more and more allergic. Our way of life is more industrialized than it was 20 years ago. I remember when I was small in my community it was a common thing to switch babies from breastfeeding or formula to cow milk around one year of age. The parents would buy fresh milk from a dairy farm that was still raw and just cook it at home first before giving it to their child. It would be delivered in glass liter bottles early in the morning just in front of your door. Everybody was doing that. Only 50 years ago in those same communities, almost every family had at least one cow to have milk, and make cheeses and butter. Now we would never think about doing something like that. We like our food sterilized, cleaned, sanitized, and packaged. Oh, the good old days.

Another reason the scientists agree that could possibly cause a rise in allergies is the fact that we are now living much cleaner than before. Now almost every house has a steam cleaner, industrial sanitizer, and bleach. Homes are vacuumed, mopped, bleached, and polished every day leaving less and less bacteria for our children to grow their immune systems. So their immune systems cant recognize bacteria anymore and allergies happen. Kids don’t play in the mud anymore, they are not making mud cakes, climbing trees, stealing fruits, and eating them without washing them. Something else to think about.

Is there a solution?

Unfortunately, modern science has not been able to pinpoint any specific solution to allergies. Several recommendations could serve to try to prevent them or to make reactions less severe. Using allergy medications only helps in the short term and it’s not the solution to the problem. But in the cases of severe allergic reactions, it’s the only way to survive.

Some doctors recommend immunotherapy and it has been known to lessen the symptoms of allergies in certain patients. Immunotherapy, which takes the form of allergy shots, is a preventive treatment used to train your body to become less allergic to a substance. Immunotherapy makes your body increasingly less sensitive to the allergen until it is no longer seen as a threat. Although immunotherapy isn’t guaranteed to cure your allergies, it should at least severely diminish their effects to the point that you no longer notice them.

The only way to stay safe is to make a change in your lifestyle. Recognizing what triggers your allergic reaction and staying away from the allergens is the number one way to stay healthy.