> D. Jay Newman wrote:
> 
> > Any clue why the USA, being one of the richest nations on earth,
> > supposedly having one of the highest living standards, has one the
> > highest indices of allergies? That's quite possibly one of the
> > difficult to imagine effects that only appear in the distant future and
> > usually are not easily linked to a single cause.
> > 
> My allergist is told me it is because we are *too* healthy. Since there
> are very few parasitical infections here the antibodies that fight
> parasites have nothing to do. So the immune system starts attacking the
> next most dangerous things, like pollen and dust mite crap.

You have an *allergist*???  Good grief, the American medical profession has gone mad!  :-)

Anyway, my personal one-episode evidence is the reverse.  I've never had any allergies, except that an 
overload of pollen makes me sniffle a bit, but I think that's just a dust-like overload.  A couple of years 
ago I went into hospital for 17 days suffering from Cellulitis, a nasty Staphallococus infection of the deeper 
regions of the skin in my lower left leg.  I was on IV antibiotics for most of that time, and after about a 
week I developed a rash all over, which was a reaction the antibiotics I was on.  They changed to another type 
and all was well until I was released.  I then went to stay with my brother and his wife while I convalesced, 
and the next morning I was itching all over, apparently a reaction to the washing powder used on the bedlinen 
- re-washing it all with hypoallergenic powder solved that, and I haven't had any allergic-type reactions ever 
since.

So it looks like my immune system was hyped-up by the infection, trying to fight it off, and in that state 
reacted to things that it wouldn't have done otherwise.  So rather than a system that had nothing to do 
attacking things it shouldn't, it was that it was overenthusiastic when it had a lot to do!

Cheers,



Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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