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Why the Amish Are Basically Immune to Allergies · Abide Meditation App

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  Speaker 1: A huge national survey found that over half of Americans
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  Speaker 1: about fifty four percent, have at least one common allergy,
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  Speaker 1: and Europeans aren't much better off. A massive international study
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  Speaker 1: of more than seven thousand kids across multiple countries found
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  Speaker 1: similar rates of asthma, hay fever, and exzema across Europe.
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  Speaker 1: But one community seems almost immune to allergies, the Amish.
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  Speaker 1: According to recent reporting in The Washington Post, one study
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  Speaker 1: of Amish kids found that only seven percent showed any
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  Speaker 1: allergic response at all, making the Amish one of the
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  Speaker 1: least allergic populations ever measured in the entire world. So
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  Speaker 1: what's going on here? Is it something in the environment,
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  Speaker 1: is a genetics or could it be that their way
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  Speaker 1: of life, they're religiously structured farming, food and family practices
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  Speaker 1: has created a social world that shields them from allergies.
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  Speaker 1: And if that's the case, what does it tell us
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  Speaker 1: about the role religion itself plays in shaping public health.
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  Speaker 1: The Amish are a Christian ethnoreligious group that grew out
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  Speaker 1: of the Anabaptist movement in sixteenth century Europe that came
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  Speaker 1: to North America in the seventeen hundreds and today, they
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  Speaker 1: are about four hundred thousand of them, mostly in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
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  Speaker 1: as well as in Ohio and Indiana. The hallmark of
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  Speaker 1: Amish life is separation from the modern world. They strive
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  Speaker 1: to live what they call a plane life, guided by
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  Speaker 1: local church rules known as the Ordinum. These rules govern
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  Speaker 1: everything from their clothing to the selective use of technology.
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  Speaker 1: Amish communities famously reject cars, phones, TVs, and the Internet,
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  Speaker 1: but they don't just shun all technology. Instead, they weigh
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  Speaker 1: each innovation against its potential to disrupt family life, faith,
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  Speaker 1: and community. For example, in some Amish communities, attractor powered
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  Speaker 1: by diesel fuel might be acceptable if it's used only
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  Speaker 1: in farming, but a car that allows people to scatter
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  Speaker 1: far from home is usually not beyond technology. Amash religious
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  Speaker 1: values emphasize community over individualism. They reject social security and
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  Speaker 1: health insurance and instead practice mutual aid. If a family
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  Speaker 1: has a medical expense, neighbor's rally to cover that cost.
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  Speaker 1: They value humility and obedience to God's will, a concept
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  Speaker 1: that they call golossanhite, or self surrender. All of this
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  Speaker 1: foster's small, tightly knit rural communities where religion directly shapes
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  Speaker 1: daily routines, and as it turns out, those same traditions
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  Speaker 1: that shape Amish daily life might also be doing something else,
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  Speaker 1: protecting them from allergies in ways that scientists are only
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  Speaker 1: now beginning to understand. Let's circle back to that seven
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  Speaker 1: percent figure. This came from a twenty twelve study when
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  Speaker 1: researchers compared allergies among Amish kids in Indiana with kids
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  Speaker 1: in Switzerland. Why Switzerland, While the Amish emigrated from regions
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  Speaker 1: around there about two hundred years ago, so they argued,
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  Speaker 1: it provides a meaningful cultural and genetic comparison. The team
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  Speaker 1: tested about one hundred and thirty eight Amish kids ages
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  Speaker 1: six to twelve, and then lined up their results with
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  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Swiss kids who were already part
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  Speaker 1: of a huge allergy study. And as I mentioned, only
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  Speaker 1: about seven percent of the Amish kids showed any allergic reaction. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: the Swiss kids who grew up on farms came in
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  Speaker 1: at about twenty five percent, and Swiss kids growing up
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  Speaker 1: in urban settings a whopping forty four percent asma showed
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  Speaker 1: the same pattern. Lowest among the Amish kids, higher among
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  Speaker 1: the Swiss farm kids, and even higher in Swiss urban kids.
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  Speaker 1: What makes this study even more interesting is that the
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  Speaker 1: Amish and Swiss farm kids had similar exposures. Most spent
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  Speaker 1: their time in barns, drank raw milk, and lived in
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  Speaker 1: large families, and yet the Amish numbers were still way lower,
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  Speaker 1: suggesting that there's some extra protective factors in Amish life.
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  Speaker 1: A few years later, another study was published in twenty
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  Speaker 1: sixteen in the New England Journal of Medicine. This compared
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  Speaker 1: two groups of farming communities in the US, the Amish
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  Speaker 1: of Indiana and the Hutterites of South Dakota. At first glance,
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  Speaker 1: the Amish and the Hutterites look similar. Both are Anabaptist
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  Speaker 1: groups that emigrated from around the same time from Central Europe.
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  Speaker 1: Both each traditional diets rich in raw milk and homegrown food,
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  Speaker 1: Both live in large families, and both avoid tobacco, smoke,
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  Speaker 1: and air pollution. They even have similar genetic ancestry. But
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  Speaker 1: just like in the Swiss comparison, the Amish once again
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  Speaker 1: came out with dramatically lower rates of asthma and allergies.
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  Speaker 1: Only about five percent of Amish kids had asthma compared
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  Speaker 1: to twenty one percent among Hutterite kids, sensitivity to allergies
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  Speaker 1: followed the same pattern, seven percent for Amish versus thirty
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  Speaker 1: three percent for Hutterites. And finally, similar findings were reported
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  Speaker 1: and yet another stone, this time comparing the Amish to
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  Speaker 1: a group that on the surface looks almost identical the
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  Speaker 1: Old Order Mennonites. Like the Amish, the Mennonites are Anabaptists
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  Speaker 1: of Swiss German origin, who also live in rural communities
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  Speaker 1: and practice traditional farming. But once again, just like the
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  Speaker 1: Swiss farm kids and the Hutterites, the pattern held. The
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  Speaker 1: Amish showed far fewer allergies. At the household level, about
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  Speaker 1: twenty six percent of Amish families reported someone with allergies,
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  Speaker 1: compared to nearly forty seven percent of Mennonite families. At
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  Speaker 1: the individual level, Amish kids and adults also had significantly
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  Speaker 1: lower rates of asthma, exuma, hay fever, and food allergies
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  Speaker 1: compared to the Old Order Mennonites. So what's going on here?
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  Speaker 1: Why are rates of allergies among the Amish so low
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  Speaker 1: even when compared to their closest cultural cousins. It turns
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  Speaker 1: out the answer might literally be in the dust, and yes,
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  Speaker 1: Amish dust is now an official term in the scientific literature.
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  Speaker 1: The researchers in that Amish Hutterite study measure dust collected
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  Speaker 1: from both houses, and they found that Amish houses were
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  Speaker 1: absolutely teeming with microbial life. The endotoxs and levels in
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  Speaker 1: Amish dust were nearly seven times higher than in Hutterite dust.
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  Speaker 1: Now endo toxin levels sound scary, but this just means
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  Speaker 1: the fragments from the outer wall of certain bacteria, which
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  Speaker 1: show up in dust when bacteria are abundant. The researchers
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  Speaker 1: tested this dust and mice. They took the dust samples
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  Speaker 1: from Amish homes, stirred them into a solution, and then
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  Speaker 1: gave that to lab mice by literally dripping it into
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  Speaker 1: their noses. The mice had been primed to develop asthma
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  Speaker 1: like reactions using allergens like egg proteins or dust mites,
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  Speaker 1: so the setup mimicked what happens in allergic kids. When
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  Speaker 1: the mice got exposed to Amish dust, their asthma symptoms
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  Speaker 1: were drastically reduced. But when the researchers tried the exact
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  Speaker 1: same experiment with Hutterite dust, nothing happened. A twenty twenty
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  Speaker 1: three study set out to pinpoint what makes Amish dust
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  Speaker 1: so unusually protective. The researchers compared dust from Amish and
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  Speaker 1: European cowsheds to dust from European sheep sheds, and the
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  Speaker 1: results were clear. Cowshed dust consistently shielded mice from asthma
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  Speaker 1: like inflammation, while sheep dust had no effect. And it
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  Speaker 1: turned out it was all about the protein content of cowsheds.
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  Speaker 1: Two proteins dominate in cowsheds. One is called BOSD two,
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  Speaker 1: which comes from cattle skin and sweat glands, and the
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  Speaker 1: other is called odorant binding protein or OBP, which is
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  Speaker 1: normally produced in the mucous membrane of the nasal cavities
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  Speaker 1: of mammals. Both are lipocalins, or transport proteins, whose job
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  Speaker 1: is exactly what it sounds like, carrying stuff around. Both
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  Speaker 1: of these proteins can bind with water repelling molecules like
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  Speaker 1: fatty acids, latch onto the receptors on the surface of cells,
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  Speaker 1: and even link up with larger molecules floating around in
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  Speaker 1: your mucous and blood. This makes lipocalins perfectly suited to
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  Speaker 1: ferry their cargo right into the membrane of your airways
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  Speaker 1: and influence how those cells respond. When researchers analyze these
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  Speaker 1: proteins in Amish dust, they found them loaded with fatty
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  Speaker 1: acids from the farm environment, oils from hay and grass,
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  Speaker 1: plant derived polyonsaturated fats, the membrane lipids of bacteria and
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  Speaker 1: fungi that live in the barnyard, air, animal hides, and manure.
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  Speaker 1: The thinking is that the cow proteins bind to these
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  Speaker 1: fatty acid packages and then deliver those packages right into
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  Speaker 1: the lining of your airways, which then trains the immune
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  Speaker 1: system to stand down instead of overreacting to harmless stuff
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  Speaker 1: like pollen or dust mites and amagh dust is pretty
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  Speaker 1: potent stuff. One fraction from Amish farm dust, just a
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  Speaker 1: half a percent of the total, was enough to completely
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  Speaker 1: suppress asthma symptoms and mice, and this transport protein fatty
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  Speaker 1: acid combo is really necessary. When the researchers stripped those
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  Speaker 1: fatty acids out using solvents, the dust lost its protective power.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not enough to just have fatty acids floating around,
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  Speaker 1: and it's not enough to have cow proteins floating around.
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  Speaker 1: The immune calibrating effects only seems to work when the
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  Speaker 1: two are working together. This fits into a bigger pattern
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  Speaker 1: that scientists have been talking about for years. Medical scientists
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  Speaker 1: call it the farm effect. Kids who grow up on
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  Speaker 1: traditional farms are far less likely to develop asthma and allergies,
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  Speaker 1: but not all farms are created equal. The farm effect
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  Speaker 1: shows up most strongly in kids growing up on traditional
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  Speaker 1: dairy farms, where they have constant early life contact with cows, hay,
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  Speaker 1: and the barns themselves. That's why kids and Amish families
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  Speaker 1: show such strikingly low rates of asthma and allergies. They're
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  Speaker 1: breathing in that barnyard air full of microbial life from cows, straw,
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  Speaker 1: and soil, day in and day out, basically from the
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  Speaker 1: time they can walk. Meanwhile, genetically similar Hutterite kids grow
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  Speaker 1: up on large, industrialized farms, where the animals are kept
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  Speaker 1: in centralized facilities and kids have far less daily contact
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  Speaker 1: with them. They don't really start working the animal facilities
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  Speaker 1: until around twelve years old. The difference in exposure seems
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  Speaker 1: to make all the difference in their immune systems, as
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  Speaker 1: does the farm environment itself, and this is the crucial connection.
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  Speaker 1: The amishway of life is not the result of some
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  Speaker 1: conscious public health strategy. It's not like they're rejecting cars
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  Speaker 1: or industrial farming to lower their allergy rates. They're following
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  Speaker 1: their individual communities or numb a set of community rules
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  Speaker 1: and traditions rooted in religious belief, practice, and identity. But
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  Speaker 1: those same rules structure daily labor, housing, and childhood experiences
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  Speaker 1: in ways that unintentionally produce a highly protective environment for
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  Speaker 1: childhood allergies. In other words, what looks like a health
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  Speaker 1: advantage is really a byproduct of a broader religious social system.
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  Speaker 1: Public health experts have a term for these kinds of
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  Speaker 1: upstream social inns influences social determinants of health. A social
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  Speaker 1: determinant of health is basically anything in your social environment
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  Speaker 1: that shapes your well being, the conditions in which you're born,
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  Speaker 1: grow up, work, and age. It's stuff like income, gender, education, race,
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  Speaker 1: neighborhood safety, strong social support network, access to clean water,
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  Speaker 1: or whether you have good public transit to get you
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  Speaker 1: to a doctor's appointment. In many ways, when it comes
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  Speaker 1: to your health, your zip code is as important as
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  Speaker 1: your genetic code. Now, religion might not be the first
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  Speaker 1: thing you think of when you hear social determinant of health,
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  Speaker 1: but scholars over the years have argued it absolutely belongs
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  Speaker 1: in the conversation. One of the leading voices here is
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  Speaker 1: the sociologist Ellen Idler. In her book Religion as a
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  Speaker 1: Social Determinant of Public Health, she points out that religion
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  Speaker 1: can influence health in all sorts of ways. For example,
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  Speaker 1: religious communities create built in social support systems. Members of
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  Speaker 1: religious communities often form strong and during relationships that can
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  Speaker 1: provide emotional comfort and material aid in times of need.
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  Speaker 1: These networks, whether form through weekly worship, volunteer activities, or
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  Speaker 1: simply through marriage and community involvement, have been link to
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  Speaker 1: lower mortality from all causes and lower rates of depression.
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  Speaker 1: Religious communities also exert social control, encouraging or discouraging certain
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  Speaker 1: behaviors like don't smoke or don't drink alcohol. Practices like
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  Speaker 1: these shape long term health on both the individual and
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  Speaker 1: population level. For example, a study of cancer incidents among
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  Speaker 1: the Ohio Amish found that they developed cancer at much
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  Speaker 1: lower rates compared to the general Ohio population. Overall, the
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  Speaker 1: Amish had forty percent fewer new cancer cases than other
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  Speaker 1: adults in the state. Their lower rate of tobacco usage
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  Speaker 1: was at least partially responsible for this. Reduced cancer risk,
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  Speaker 1: though the researchers really didn't know what other factors, if any,
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  Speaker 1: might account for the rest of the difference. Some of
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  Speaker 1: these effects can be harmful as well. Sectarian groups with
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  Speaker 1: high rates of intermarriage, like the Amish and Hasidic Jews
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  Speaker 1: see increased prevalence of certain genetic disorders. But taken together,
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  Speaker 1: these findings show that religion is absolutely an important social
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  Speaker 1: determinant of health. Its influence is complex, it's sometimes beneficial
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes harmful, but always working in the background. And
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  Speaker 1: the Amish make a compelling example of religion as a
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  Speaker 1: social determinant of health because their religious norms have reduced
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  Speaker 1: a distinct set of living conditions with measurable health consequences.
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  Speaker 1: No homagh communities, or nung ever mentions allergens or immune modulation,
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  Speaker 1: but the rules about technology, land use, and community life
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  Speaker 1: have created a social life where families work in small,
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  Speaker 1: traditional farms, which means kids have daily contact with animals
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  Speaker 1: and barns from an early age, which means they're breathing
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  Speaker 1: in air, carrying a constant stream of protein rich dust
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  Speaker 1: into their lungs. In public health terms, that's a highly
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  Speaker 1: unusual environment, one that most of the developed world has
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  Speaker 1: engineered out of existence and in critical religious studies terms.
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  Speaker 1: This case study demonstrates how religion involves way more than
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  Speaker 1: sacred texts or individual belief or doctrines. Religion can structure
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  Speaker 1: entire ways of living that shape not only the social
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  Speaker 1: environments that people inhabit, but also their physical and microbial worlds.
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