Why the Amish have almost no allergies

7 bookofjoe 6 7/20/2025, 11:53:01 PM washingtonpost.com ↗

Comments (6)

bookofjoe · 14h ago
airhangerf15 · 14h ago
There's a world that's missing from this post and it's the answer. But you can't talk about it here. It should be painfully obvious.
toomuchtodo · 13h ago
> “Certain kinds of farming practices, particularly the very traditional ones, have this extraordinary protective effect in the sense that, in these communities, asthma and allergies are virtually unknown,” said Donata Vercelli, a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of Arizona. “The studies that have been done in these farming populations are critical because they tell us that protection is an attainable goal.”

Too clean, or not too clean: the Hygiene Hypothesis and home hygiene - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2222...

bix6 · 14h ago
The answer isn’t microbes and exposure?
passing_by_and · 14h ago
Vaccines?
jleyank · 13h ago
Larger challenges to the immune system, and perhaps those who could not handle this load died off or left over the generations? Selection pressure should be familiar to those in CS.