Article: Allergies seem nearly impossible to avoid — unless you’re Amish

[Ken]

We are literally killing our kids with our lifestyles in this country.

How did I ever survive my pre-EPA childhood?

What was childhood mortality when you were young compared to today? That is an easy enough question to answer.

[JohnH]

On a Hutterite colony, most the trucks and other equipment are kept a nice distance away from the living spaces, so where you live (and children play) is very, very nice and quiet. You specifically don't have tractor trailers driving in and out of your farm line making deliveries and so forth. They are usually in locations where there is minimal road traffic, too.

In the Amish setting, you are more integrated with your neighbors, and deliveries are common. Not to mention trucks driving right past you on the road. The Amish family that lives 3 miles or so from me is located directly on a state highway with lots of truck traffic coming through.

It's probably also worth nothing that smoking tobacco is still common in many Amish circles, so that doesn't explain any differences.

I bet that the prairie country air that the Hutterite children breathe, have by far fewer diesel traces in it, than the air that children in the average large city breathe.
The occasional diesel tractor driving through a windswept colony sitting in the middle of wheat fields is probably insignificant exposure compared to city with all manner of diesel engines running 24/7/365.

Possibly, who knows

Some people do know.

if they have diesel trucks idling next to their homes or if children are following diesel tractors picking potatoes as shown in the photos.

Having spent time at several Hutterite colonies, I never observed children walking in the shadows of "diesel tractors".

But in any case, it's irrelevant, since Amish also use diesel tractors on their farms, although many of them use the odd combination of a motor mounted on a cart pulled by a horse, or else have a stationary tractor used just for its PTO. Which is often located quite close to the house, or at least near the grain bins.

Diesel and petroleum pollution in cities is a major cause of asthma as well. Millions of American children suffer from pollution-related asthma in the US much of it from diesel and gasoline car exhaust (as well as coal fired powerplants and other industrial pollution). The death toll is in the thousands in the US and millions worldwide.

Thanks for letting us know. However, Amish children also live in the U.S., and are around the same diesel and gasoline car exhaust. More specifically, if you'd actually read the article (or the papers published) you'd see they compared Amish children with their neighoring populations, who often live right next door and sometimes even attended the same school district. Yet the asthma rates were different.

Amish (and non-Amish) in my state, which has the largest amount of Amish of any such jurisdiction in North America (or anywhere in the world, for that matter) has its coal-fired powerplants, various factories, and so on mixed in with Amish (and non-Amish) homes and communities.

We are literally killing our kids with our lifestyles in this country.

... because of factories and powerplants? Those have been around for nearly 150 years. Last I checked, industrial pollution, vehicle emissions, and emissions from coal plants have gotten significantly better, not worse. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Whatever is killing our kids is not due to increased emissions from vehicles and power plants"?

[Ken]

We are literally killing our kids with our lifestyles in this country.

... because of factories and powerplants? Those have been around for nearly 150 years. Last I checked, industrial pollution, vehicle emissions, and emissions from coal plants have gotten significantly better, not worse. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Whatever is killing our kids is not due to increased emissions from vehicles and power plants"?

I said lifestyle. We have designed a world and a landscape in which kids mostly sit indoors sedentary rather than being active outdoors and then get shuttled about by car. They mostly eat processed foods and drink processed drinks because everything is about convenience. Pollution is a factor in childhood respiratory disease. There is zero question about that. But it is far from the only health threat facing American children today. The skyrocketing incidence of asthma, obesity, and childhood allergies in this country isn't because Americans stopped being Amish. There are other things going on.

Why don't kids walk to school, go outside and play, and take their bikes to visit their friends like they used to in the 1950s? It's a mystery

[JohnH]

I said lifestyle. We have designed a world and a landscape in which kids mostly sit indoors sedentary rather than being active outdoors and then get shuttled about by car.

Yet both Amish and Hutterites have lifestyles where kids aren't indoors mostly sedentary and aren't shuttled about by car. Yet the Hutterite children had higher rates of asthma and allergies (same as surrounding population) whereas the Amish had lower rates than their "English" neighbors.

They mostly eat processed foods and drink processed drinks because everything is about convenience.

Amish children certainly eat their share of processed foods. Yet they have much lower rates of asthma / allergies.

Pollution is a factor in childhood respiratory disease. There is zero question about that.

Yet pollution is less than it used to be, and Amish are affected by pollution just like their neighbors.

Why don't kids walk to school, go outside and play, and take their bikes to visit their friends like they used to in the 1950s? It's a mystery

What does that have to do with the topic of the thread?

If you're arguing people should live more like Amish (or Hutterites), I'd agree with you. Yet most people want the convenience of cars, and also seem to want to live in big cities.

[Ken]

Why don't kids walk to school, go outside and play, and take their bikes to visit their friends like they used to in the 1950s? It's a mystery

What does that have to do with the topic of the thread?

If you're arguing people should live more like Amish (or Hutterites), I'd agree with you. Yet most people want the convenience of cars, and also seem to want to live in big cities.

The topic of this thread is that there are rising rates of asthma and allergies across the world except in the Amish.

Which raises several questions:

1. Why are allergy and asthma rates rising around the world? What are we doing differently today compared to 50 years ago?
2. Why are the Amish seemingly immune to this trend?
3. What can the rest of the world do to reduce their rates of childhood asthma and allergies?

Since everyone becoming Amish isn't a viable answer on a planet of 8 billion people. The question is how can we improve the health of our children who aren't Amish?

Trying to track down the original study referenced in the above article, it appears to be a comparison study of 30 Amish children and 30 Hutterite children. Which is a pretty small sample size to make any precise statistical conclusions. So clearly this is an area where much larger scale studies are needed. The authors clearly think it has to do with barn dust. Maybe. But that doesn't answer the question as to why asthma and allergy rates are rising everywhere else.

[JohnH]

Trying to track down the original study referenced in the above article, it appears to be a comparison study of 30 Amish children and 30 Hutterite children. Which is a pretty small sample size to make any precise statistical conclusions. So clearly this is an area where much larger scale studies are needed. The authors clearly think it has to do with barn dust. Maybe. But that doesn't answer the question as to why asthma and allergy rates are rising everywhere else.

Did you read the original article?

In 2021, Järvinen-Seppo and her colleagues compared the gut microbiomes of 65 Old Order Mennonite infants from a rural community in New York with 39 urban/suburban infants from nearby Rochester. Like the Amish, the Old Order Mennonites follow a traditional agrarian lifestyle. Almost three-fourths of Mennonite infants in the study were colonized with B. infantis, a bacterium associated with lower rates of allergic diseases, in contrast to 21 percent of Rochester infants.

“The colonization rate is very low in the United States and other Western countries, compared to very high rates in Mennonite communities, similar to some developing countries,” Järvinen-Seppo said. “This mirrors the rates of autoimmune and allergic diseases.” These clues about the origin of the farm effect represent a step toward the prevention of allergic diseases, Järvinen-Seppo says.

Whatever form the treatment takes, the impact on prevention of allergic diseases, which affect millions of people worldwide and reduce quality of life, could be enormous, experts say.

A rather obvious answer to the "why" is "lower colonization rates of B. infantis".

“I don’t know that we can give every family a cow. … But we are learning from these time-honored and very stable environments what type of substances and exposures are needed,” Vercelli said.

Assuming one is willing to accept Amish family sizes (10 people per household), that leaves more than enough arable land (4.5 acres per household) for every family to have several cows. Perhaps the problem here is that people groups who have been adapted for thousands of years to grow up around cows aren't growing up around cows anymore.

[Valerie]

We are literally killing our kids with our lifestyles in this country.

... because of factories and powerplants? Those have been around for nearly 150 years. Last I checked, industrial pollution, vehicle emissions, and emissions from coal plants have gotten significantly better, not worse. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Whatever is killing our kids is not due to increased emissions from vehicles and power plants"?

I said lifestyle. We have designed a world and a landscape in which kids mostly sit indoors sedentary rather than being active outdoors and then get shuttled about by car. They mostly eat processed foods and drink processed drinks because everything is about convenience. Pollution is a factor in childhood respiratory disease. There is zero question about that. But it is far from the only health threat facing American children today. The skyrocketing incidence of asthma, obesity, and childhood allergies in this country isn't because Americans stopped being Amish. There are other things going on.

Why don't kids walk to school, go outside and play, and take their bikes to visit their friends like they used to in the 1950s? It's a mystery

My children were born in the early 80s. Child abduction became a fear widespread in America at the time. The horrible story of the boy Adam came out- unless you could be out with your children watching them, sadly parents quit letting their children go out & play unsupervised. So they turned to indoor activities.

[Valerie]

Interesting. My husband always dealt with seasonal allergies. Big problem. SS out 7-8 years ago he started taking a supplement called “Thymex” by Standard Process we buy at a Chiropractor. Changed his life! No more allergy medications (which had affected his prostate) and no more seasonal allergies! Like a miracle! He won’t be without it and it’s completely natural. Asthma is related to allergies. I grew up in busy southern CA with extreme auto traffic & industry & never suffered allergies nor did my children- (except son had allergies to some antibiotics).

[JohnH]

I would note that I didn’t grow up Amish, and also have rather serious allergies. I’ve been doing allergy shots for a few months now and it’s made a huge difference. I can actually handle hay or spend a day in a barn and not be completely stuffed up the next day.

They aren’t cheap but insurance usually pays for them. Interestingly all they are is a shot that’s made from the substance you’re allergic to, and they gradually increase the dose each time. You do it a medical office because they want to observe you to make sure you don’t have a serious reaction.