My Kid is a Damn Nutter

[Aliantha]

And yet, the rates of a crapton of other things are inexplicably rising at an alarming rate, including but not limited to autism, Celiac disease, life-threatening allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, type 1 diabetes, and all types of thyroid disease. Science works very hard, no doubt, but it's not the God you want it to be.

I still challenge the notion of these types of diseases actually being on the rise as opposed to them having always been as prevalent but undiagnosed. The problem with this is of course, that it's very difficult to come to a solid conclusion.

I can say though, that in my family, we have a history of gut and digestive problems and it's only recently (over the last ten years or so) that a family tendancy towards Barretts disease is becoming apparent which is also coupled with several members of the family being diagnosed as Celiacs. It could be that because our diet has changed over the last 20 to 30 years and this has caused these family members with a predisposition to exhibit enough symptoms to follow up. Or that they're financial enough to go through the process of finding out instead of just putting up with it. Or it could be that something particular to my family's particular gene set doesn't like something that has been recently introduced to our diets.

Knowing my famly history though, I'm inclined to believe these two particular diseased have always been there. They just weren't diagnosed. That seems to be the concensus among the family also...and there are a lot of us, so it's not a bad study group.

Isn't it true the type 1 diabetes has been attributed to a generally more sedentary lifestyle with a high sugar diet in general?