In my video Preventing Childhood Allergies, I noted a study in Japan that found higher maternal intake of meat during pregnancy was significantly associated with about three times the odds of both suspected and physician-diagnosed eczema. The researchers suggest that certain components of meat may affect the fetal immune system. But what about the moms, themselves? A plant-based diet may also help alleviate allergies in adults. See Say No to Drugs by Saying Yes to More Plants and Preventing Allergies in Adulthood.
Seasonal allergies have exploded in Japan in the past few decades, starting with the first reported case in 1964 and now affecting millions every year. We’ve seen a rising prevalence of allergic diseases around the industrialized world in past decades, but perhaps nothing quite this dramatic.
Some have suggested that profound changes in the Japanese diet may have played a role. Over the latter half of the century total meat, fish, and milk intake rose hundreds of percent in Japan, so researchers decided to look into dietary meat and fat intake and the prevalence of these seasonal pollen allergies. No association with overall fat, but “higher meat intake was significantly associated with an increased prevalence.”
Saturated fat wasn’t associated with increased prevalence either, so what other constituents in meat may be to blame? The researchers considered the cooked meat carcinogens, the heterocyclic amines, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and the nitrosamines.
A new review, highlighted in my video, Alkylphenol Endocrine Disruptors and Allergies, however, raised an intriguing possibility. There’s a class of industrial pollutants called alkylphenols, recognized as common toxic endocrine disrupting chemicals that tend to accumulate in the human body and may be associated with allergic diseases. A variety of studies have shown how they may exacerbate allergen-induced inflammation, “suggesting that alkylphenol exposure may influence the onset, progression, and severity of allergic diseases.” These toxic xenoestrogens can be found in human breast milk, in our body fat, in our urine, in our bloodstream, and even in the umbilical cord blood going to our babies. How did it get there? Through contaminated food.
It all goes back to a famous study about the reduction of penis size and testosterone levels in alligators living in a contaminated environment. I don’t know what you do for a day job, but these researchers observed that a population of juvenile alligators living on one lake in Florida exhibited a “significantly smaller penis size” and lower blood concentrations of testosterone compared to animals on some different lake. The most important difference between the two lakes was that Lake Stubby was fed by relatively polluted waters. They attributed the “short penis phenomenon” to estrogen-mimicking (xenoestrogenic) environmental metabolites of DDT that still pollute our Earth. This seminal work introduced the concept of endocrine disruptors. Environmental xenoestrogens might result in feminization of exposed male animals. And that’s just the shriveled tip of the iceberg.
Since then, endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been implicated in the dramatic rise over the last 50 years of diseases like breast cancer, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, diabetes, obesity, and fertility (such as dropping normal sperm counts), genital birth defects such as penile malformations, preterm birth, neurobehavioral disorders in children linked to thyroid disruption, and earlier breast development in young girls. Because genes do not change fast enough to explain these increases, environmental causes must be involved. Since our greatest exposure to the environment is through our gut, it’s no surprise that our greatest exposure to these endocrine-disrupting chemicals is through diet.
To find out which foods may contain these alkylphenol endocrine disruptors, check out my video Dietary Sources of Alkylphenol Endocrine Disruptors.
More on endocrine disruptors in:
A different class of chemicals has been found to be associated with smaller penis size in humans. See Chicken Consumption and the Feminization of Male Genitalia.
-Michael Greger, M.D.
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