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Advice to feed babies peanuts early and often helped thousands of kids avoid allergies (www.pbs.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/health@lemmy.world
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A decade after a landmark study proved that feeding peanut products to young babies could prevent development of life-threatening allergies, new research finds the change has made a big difference in the real world.

Peanut allergies began to decline in the U.S. after guidance first issued in 2015 upended medical practice by recommending introducing the allergen to infants starting as early as 4 months. The rate of peanut allergies in children ages 0 to 3 fell by more than 27% after guidance for high-risk kids was first issued in 2015, and by more than 40% after the recommendations were expanded in 2017.

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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Somehow I had missed the memo to you feed your babies nuts. All my kids were raised on peanut butter by the spoonful.

One did develop a cashew and pistachio allergy, despite eating both of them as a kid.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    It's not a magic bullet, those don't exist in medicine. Statistics operate on a population level, and the statistics show a pretty dramatic reduction in nut allergies overall. In your case specifically there is a good chance that the allergies that did develop are significantly less severe than they would have been otherwise. Still, applying population level statistics to individual sample sizes is an exercise in futility.

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    • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    This is so interesting - I'm not planning on having kids but last I'd been around new parents I heard giving young 'uns allergens was a big no-no. Wild and comforting how medicine is constantly evolving

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    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Oh dang, I was always told it was like a latex allergy and developed with repeat exposure.

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