06-05-2006, 10:57 PM
Not sure if this correlates, but the thing that really stands out to me is ear infections. When I was in elementary school, it was like a really big deal if someone got an ear infection, and it almost never happened. Almost all of my nieces and nephews have had ear infections. A few of them having had *many*, going through multiple ear tubes and other treatments and risking permanent hearing loss. This type of thing appears (anecdotally) to be fairly commonplace in their generation.
My parents theory on ear infections was that contemporary parents were setting up these supersterile home environments for their infants, and then sending them to daycare where they were exposed to massive germ attacks with no built up defenses. Throw in the increased use of antibiotics and the resistant strains of bacteria that are evolving, and it gets worse. This almost makes sense, and I guess it is similar to one of the article's theories on allergy increase as well.
For what it's worth, my cousin's wife and one of my mother's best friends seem to each have hundreds of very bad allergies (as do their children). So it is not as though these things haven't existed in the older generations. And the seasonal allergies can easily be mistaken for colds or just not reported... parents now may be more hasty to take their kids to the doctor for whatever reason.
My parents theory on ear infections was that contemporary parents were setting up these supersterile home environments for their infants, and then sending them to daycare where they were exposed to massive germ attacks with no built up defenses. Throw in the increased use of antibiotics and the resistant strains of bacteria that are evolving, and it gets worse. This almost makes sense, and I guess it is similar to one of the article's theories on allergy increase as well.
For what it's worth, my cousin's wife and one of my mother's best friends seem to each have hundreds of very bad allergies (as do their children). So it is not as though these things haven't existed in the older generations. And the seasonal allergies can easily be mistaken for colds or just not reported... parents now may be more hasty to take their kids to the doctor for whatever reason.