Summary Of Nesse And Williams 'Why We Get Sick'

In a similar vein to the previous hypothesis presented by Nesse and Williams, in which they posit that mobile societies may be a cause of respiratory allergies due to exposure, they also posit that the modern industrialized societies might be a cause of respiratory allergies. The argument for this is that the toxins in the air, affect the ability of the mucosal lining of the nose to properly prevent allergens from entering the body. While this does not seem to be the underlying cause of respiratory allergies as a whole, the theory does point out an interesting phenomenon. Allergies, as a whole are more prevalent in countries that have industrialized than those that have not. While the impurity of the air may prove to be a factor in the symptoms
In Why We Get Sick, Nesse and Williams focus on the increased prevalence of allergies such as hay fever, and underemphasize the amount that food allergies have increased in a similar time span. When the book was first being written the main increase in allergies were in respiratory allergies, but in recent years food allergies have become just as problematic as they are increasing just as rapidly as respiratory allergies. In the United Kingdom, where it’s estimated up to fifty percent of all children are diagnosed with an allergic conditions, the shift from respiratory to food allergies is especially apparent. This recent phenomenon may pose as a greater threat than respiratory allergies such as hay fever, since often times food allergies are lethal in nature often causing
In the brief time they spend covering food allergies in this section the only solid idea Nesse and Williams put forward is that at the present moment in history we have less control and awareness over what it is they we actually eat, due to the commercialization of the food industry and consequent standardization of food products. While this is certainly true, the fact that we have less control over what we intake seems unlikely as source of food allergies in and of itself. Rather, it seems more likely that an exposure to more types of foods would prove to be an advantage as opposed to a