The latest results from a long term study of Australian children are just in, showing a huge increase in asthma sufferers nationwide. This is starting to really worry healthy professionals because although a lot of children grow out of childhood asthma, it often reasserts itself in adulthood and we are looking at a major health problem. Currently, 2 in 5 Australian children manifest some symptoms. I would guess that some of this increase is because mild asthma is more readily diagnosed these days than in the past.

My 3rd child actually has mild asthma which we deal with easily, but all my family has had it for generations back as far as anyone can remember, so I put us in the category of people who would always have had it, no matter when or how they lived. But the children who feature in the study are children without family histories of asthma and who are suffering considerable problems with the disease.

The study directors attribute part of the rise to the increasing state of antiseptic cleanliness in which many children live and the lower challenges their immune systems face as a result. They found that children in big families and children in daycare were less likely to get asthma.

I agree that dirt is good for kids, but I feel intrinsically that there must be more to this - the range of medicines routinely prescribed in the mainstream? The amount of tampering that goes on with chemicals on fresh foods? The increasing consumption of pre-prepared foods? The chemical challenges posed by urban environments? What do you all think?

THE RESPONSES:

• Not to mention the advent of anti-bacterial EVERYTHING! It is basically IMPOSSIBLE to buy anything anymore that is not anti-bacterial. When is humankind going to figure out that bacteria are our friends?!?! WE need them not only to put our immune systems to work but there are those tiny microscopic friends that live in our bodies and fight with those nasty microscopic enemies of ours. I remember Dirt talking about the fall of Rome once, I think the entire Western world is thinking/inventing/polluting themselves out of existence. I only hope we can survive it.

  Yes, I think this super sanitized world of ours has a huge part to play in the huge rise in Asthma all over the world, and I think immunizations play a huge part too.

• In the US, poor kids have a much higher risk of asthma - so I think some serious environmental triggers are going on. The inner-cities are toxic dumps for decades of industry that has since moved on. Kids play in parks that were once toxic sites.

  I lived near a superfund site once. We received documents in our mailboxes warning us, and everyone had to stop growing food. Many had been living/playing/breathing/eating there for years unaware. Needless to say, it was a poor urban area and the residual waste was from decades ago.

  Also, poor kids get diets high in dairy and eggs and peanuts thanks to WIC programs. Early exposure to these foods can trigger asthma, as can roaches, which are everywhere. I have never lived anywhere without my friends the roaches, and every one I see makes me so sad, because I know it increases the risk that my kid will get sick. Also, poor mothers have a hard time breastfeeding when they are back to work at McDonalds 3 weeks postpartum. *sigh*

• I read an article once that talked about the low rate of asthma in Manchester, England, as compared with asthma rates in places such as Tulsa where the pollution is relatively low. Manchester is a DIRTY DIRTY town - the pollution is just awful - yet they do not have rates anywhere near as high as even other places in England. They also found that Manchester had an extremely low vaccination rate which they attributed to the "lack of education in those living below the poverty line" which is a large number of people in Manchester as it is an economically depressed town (or was at the time the article was written). So although I may have one believed it had to do with pollution I am not as convinced now.

  The asthma rates are also quite low in most Asian countries.Yet I know when I was in Bangkok just three days I was coughing up black shit out of my lungs. The pollution is unbelievable. Anyway it is really so hard to know, we have messed with so much in our world it is near to impossible to sift through it all and find the culprit.

• That is fascinating. I wonder why US inner cities have such a high asthma rate when Manchester doesn't? What could be the difference? The WIC diet most poor kids are on? (okay, maybe I want to blame WIC for everything . . .)

• What are their vax rates like? Do they receive them when they are born before leaving hospital?

• It's interesting to think about. My older son has asthma and it was quite severe until a couple of years ago. He is not vaxed so I'm not sure about the connection between vaccines and asthma. We were on WIC and now he is very allergic to dairy so I think early/too much dairy made it worse for him. I also think dust is a problem and crowded living conditions make that worse. (I mean house dust, not dirt).

• The thing that makes me question this though is if you look at non-industrialized counties they are very dusty, and they live in tiny houses, sometime with up to 15 siblings, yet their asthma rates are VERY low. I am convinced it has to do with messing with the immune system, by vaccinating, not letting kids come into contact germs, feeding them food to early and exposing them to chemicals such as cleaning products, pesticides, herbicides, building materials and drugs (including antibiotics, steroids, and over the counter "pain" medication). The asthma manifests itself to make a child allergic to inert substances like dust, peanuts, pollen, mold, and other foods and natural substances. I think we need to look beyond the actual allergy and look at WHY our children's bodies are becoming allergic to things which actually pose no threat and have been around since time began.

  Don't get me wrong, I do believe that being exposed to copious amounts of dairy could cause asthma, but I question if it is the actual dairy or the chemicals that come out (or don't come out) IN the dairy. Even the milk that we get at the health food store has been homogenized and pasteurized thus killing any of the biotics in it. I don't even want to think about the chemicals in regular milk, all the hormones, antibiotics, plus all the shit in the feed they are given..YUCK!

  Anyway, I just think we are looking at the asthma thing the wrong way.

• I agree. There are so many things it could be. I often wonder, when I hear about breastfeeding moms talk about how their kids have allergies, specifically food allergies, if supplementing at birth has anything to do with it. I read somewhere that supplementing with formula in newborns (like that mandatory bottle some hospitals give!) damages the gut. Then when breastmilk is introduced, with it's small proteins and immunities, it can pass straight into the bloodstream thanks to the damage. If this is the case, my oldest should have allergies and my youngest shouldn't. I know I just didn't explain that very well. Anyhow, I find this all fascinating and I'm pretty sure it's a combination of things, probably vax + antbiotic over use + chemicals + over-cleanliness + processed foods. I'm sure there are a few more things in the mix!!

• I could be way off the mark here, but do you think it could have something to do with the fact that people just aren't as active as they used to be? In order to make our bodies strong, don't we need to exercise them? We have really bad asthma on my side of the family, and I have exercise-induced asthma. So far my kids have been very healthy. As a family we walk every day, and I try to get on the treadmill as much as possible. Does anyone think this could be a small part of it? Just guessing.

• I agree about the milk. We have a milking cow. (Actually, our old one just died and we are about to take delivery of a Jersey cow called Clarice.) I suspect my 3rd child has a very mild level of milk allergy but it doesn't seem to impact on asthma - he sometimes goes months without needing a puffer. I wonder if the straight milk from a grass fed cow doesn't affect him as badly?

  There is asthma on both sides of our family - as I said above, in my family it goes back generations and is almost exclusively seasonally linked, with an occasional response to rapidly changing weather conditions. My BIL has much more serious asthma though. I've always thought the fact that I was a breastfed baby to almost a year and never received formula, while MIL fed her babies for less than three months has to have contributed to my lower level of problems. Extended breastfeeding has absolutely definitely contributed to my children's lower level of problems. We have a strong genetic pre-disposition on both sides and so far, very few problems (really mild in my 3rd child, non-existent in my older sons and my daughter).

  I do agree that the amount of messing with immune systems that the average urban child endures in the Western world has to have a response of some kind. That's what's so interesting about this study - the children who are suffering are not, in the main, people with family histories like mine. Asthma comes out of the clear sky (or maybe not so clear) for their families or is much worse than previous generations have had. It *has* to be environmental in some way.

• I think that is so neat that you have your own dairy cow. My dream is to move out of the city to a rural area where we could have a cow and some organic farmland. I also believe that breastfeeding definitely can help otherwise susceptible children to overpower some environmental factors.