What Drug Companies Don’t Want You To Know About Allergies

by Steven Gordon

When I was growing up, allergies seemed like something some few unfortunate souls had to deal with when we were eating lunch or getting treated by the school nurse.

Allergies were there, but they never seem like they were out of control or rampant in the entire country.

If you have kids, you’re probably more than well aware how allergies are almost omnipresent in our schools and our communal areas. You can’t last a day or pick up your child without a new allergy alert memo being sent home

At first, I thought I was being victim of nostalgia and seeing my childhood through pink glasses. Maybe it was just lack of access to the education regarding these conditions or just access to the technology to share allergy stories, right?

I was wrong.

It’s actually been proven that allergy rates have incredibly increased by a mind blowing 50% between 1997 and 2007.

You’re probably wondering the same thing that troubled me: how on earth did this happen?

I always assumed allergies were determined by genetic factors that were completely beyond our control, or that it was simply a fact of life that some of us had to inevitably cope with.

A New Development

Fortunately, a new study from the University of Chicago could offer answers on the reasons why we’ve had this massive allergy spike. It may also hold the key to finally curing allergies.

Headed by Dr. Cathryn Nagler, these researchers took a group of mice that were allergic to peanuts and introduced Clostridia, a bacteria only found in humans, into their digestive systems.

The results were mind blowing: the mice no longer had any food allergies!

Dr. Nagler, an immunologist, has spent the last decade trying to discover why we’re developing so many food allergies. More importantly, because everything you eat is foreign material, she’s trying to learn why we’re not allergic to everything.

Her studies showed that the presence of Clostridia determined whether or not the mice had allergic reactions to the food they ate.

What Is Clostridia?

Clostridia is actually a class of bacteria that holds thousands of types. Although there’s still a lot of information regarding digestive bacteria science still doesn’t understand, Nagler and her team were able to identify it by the unique spores it forms.

This bacterial group works by preventing the allergens in food to enter the bloodstream of whomever is eating it. Although the allergens are still technically there, they can’t cause an allergic reaction.

What’s Next For Humans?

Although Nagler is optimistic, she acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to be done to make sure it is safe to be made into medicine.

However, the study did show a culprit: our rampant use of antibiotics. Antibiotics are indiscriminate in what bacteria they destroy. They ultimately destroy the “good” bacteria that protect our bodies from foreign allergens.

This explains why some antibiotic manufacturers are not happy with these results.

Now it seems more obvious why previous generations did not have this issue and why our children are so prone to having them.