How People Are Changing Their Approach to Work & Why Your Allergies Are Getting Worse - SYSK Choice

Are you keeping a secret? Everyone does - usually more than one. The problem with keeping secrets is that it is a burden that impacts your life in ways you may not realize. This episode begins with an explanation. ⁠⁠http://now.tufts.edu/articles/how-burdensome-are-secrets⁠⁠ The world of work has changed quite a bit in the last few years. Today, more people are not just looking for a paycheck or promotion, they are looking for meaning in what they do. Another big change is that many workers today have more than one job. People relate to their work and their employer differently than they used to. Bruce Feiler has been watching and researching these changing trends and joins me to discuss what these changes mean and what opportunities they create for all of us. Bruce is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers including ⁠⁠The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World (https://amzn.to/3OKgwUI)⁠⁠ It seems like just about everyone today has allergies. But it wasn’t always this way. How do we get allergies? Why do some people get them while others do not? While allergies and little more than a nuisance for some of us, they are a serious health problem for others. Here to discuss what everyone needs to know about allergies is Theresa MacPhail. She is a medical anthropologist, and associate professor of science and technology. She is also author of the book ⁠⁠Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World (https://amzn.to/43d9uwb)⁠⁠ You know that exercise is good for your health. But did you know it is also good for your sex life? Listen as I reveal how people who exercise regularly have a lot more fun in the bedroom and feel better about their own sex appeal. ⁠⁠https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/health/a776324/can-exercise-lead-to-a-better-sex-life/⁠⁠ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MintMobile.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://FactorMeals.com/something50off⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://RocketMoney.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Introducing the new Dell AI PC . It’s not just an AI computer, it’s a computer built for AI to help do your busywork for you! Get a new Dell AI PC at⁠ https://Dell.com/ai-pc⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:27Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why holding on to a secret can be a bigger burden than you imagine. Then, the world of work, it's changing. It has to, because so many of us are unhappy.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Let's look at the numbers, Mike. 70% of people are unhappy with what they do. 75% plan to look for new work this year. A million people a week quit a job. That's 50 million people a year. That number is twice what it was 10 years ago.

• 1:56Mike Carruthers?

  Also, people who exercise have a lot more sex appeal, and a lot more sex. And allergies, why we have them, and the one good thing about them.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  If you are allergic, you might have a slightly lower chance of developing certain cancers, specifically certain types of skin cancers. And the reason is, is that your immune system is actually really strong and healthy and is constantly on the lookout.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:46Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I was just reading some very nice reviews about this podcast on Apple Podcasts and somewhere else, too. I certainly appreciate that and invite you, if you have a moment, to leave us a review, a rating for this podcast. It really does help us. First up today, if you've got a secret, and I think everybody probably has a secret, if you've got a secret, the sooner you tell someone, the better. A study from Tufts University confirms that keeping a secret can affect everything else you do. It could be good news you're waiting to announce, or something not so good that you feel you

• 5:04Mike Carruthers?

  need to hide, but holding it in can actually hurt. The burden of suppression can act as an emotional and physical weight in your day-to-day life. People who keep secrets tend to move slower and require more energy to get things done. And that is something you should know. The world of work has changed a lot. Certainly, COVID rattled the whole working landscape with so many people working from home, but there's more to the change than that. This whole idea of having a job, a career, that follows this path, that guides your life, that just isn't the way for so many people anymore. Things are different. I mean, I can feel it.

• 5:49Mike Carruthers?

  And someone who's really been looking closely at this is Bruce Feiler. Bruce is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestselling books, including The Secrets of Happy Families, The Council of Dads, and his latest is called The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World. Hey, Bruce, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Mike. It's great to be with you.

• 6:13Mike Carruthers?

  So, paint this picture for me of how work has changed, because I think many of us still have this view that you have a job, that's what pays the bills. Hopefully, it's a job you like. You work at your job, you move up in your career, and that's how it goes.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  But that's actually not the way it works today. The way it works is that each of us has up to five jobs. Many of us have a main job, but actually, the statistics show fewer than half of us even have a main job anymore. In my study, it was 39%. Two thirds of us have a care job, which is caring for young children or aging relatives. Three quarters of us have a side job, which you do for love or for money. But then there's two other categories that just became clear the longer I listened to the hundreds of hours of interviews that I collected, is that eighty-six percent of us have what I call a hope job, which is a term that I coined just because I was hearing it all the time.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  And a hope job is something that you do that you hope becomes something else, right? Like writing a screenplay or selling jewelry on Etsy or pickles at the farmer's market. And many of these hope jobs, people actually pay out of pocket to do, like starting a podcast or something like that, because they think and they hope that it might lead to something else. And then quickly, the fifth job is that ninety-three percent of us have what I call a ghost job, which is an invisible time suck that feels like a job, like battling self doubt or discrimination or sobriety or mental health. And the way you described it, I think is one thousand percent accurate. But I think it's worth pausing and celebrating that this is a powerful change.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Because what you said was, is that one or two of these jobs we might do because we need the salary or the income or the benefits. But if we don't get meaning out of that job, then we take another job, which is where we get the meaning in our lives. And that actually is an incredible opportunity. Because where do we begin? The thing that's not negotiable is that people won't work with meaning these days. But because we have this kind of collection, this three hundred and sixty degree relationship with work, if one of our jobs doesn't get meaning for us, because the meaning is not negotiable, we'll go to another job and do that because it gives us the meaning that we want and that we crave.

• 8:40Mike Carruthers?

  And so do you think that this is new? Or this is just new research on something that's been going on for a long time? And now you've put a face on it?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  The short answer is I think that it's new. For most of human history, people lived where they worked and they worked where they lived. There was no word for career, there was no word for job. It wasn't until the 19th century that for the first time, two things happened. A third of the country left rural areas and moved to cities and this massive wave of people emigrated to the United States. And in 1908, a man named Frank Parsons invented the idea of the career. The career is a Latin word for chariot that goes around a course. And in 1908, he opened the first career counseling center in Boston.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  And within two years, that went everywhere around the country and every college had a career counseling program. So in effect, he invented the idea of the career. But what did he say? It was only for boys, you only did it once, and if you ever changed your career, there was something psychologically wrong with you. Fifty years later, then the embodiment of that linear career was created and it was the resume. Before 1950, no one ever needed or had a resume. And what was the resume but a linear trajectory of jobs that you did? And that was an age when the only people doing this were a certain kind of person. And that was a person who left home, went to work, and there was somebody back at home

• 10:19Speaker 01

  who took care of the kids and the laundry. Well, now, the workforce is entirely different. Beginning in 2019, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the majority of all people hired are black and brown women. Okay, so the workforce is changing and as a result, they've changed the way we think about work. So I think that this is a long historical shift and it's something that we have to reckon with. And by the way, if you work in a company and you want to recruit and retain talent, the old days when you can say, "I'm paying you, that should make you happy," that doesn't work anymore. Companies have to realize, whether it's mental health, whether it's family leave,

• 11:00Speaker 01

  whether it's finding ways for your workers to feel engaged. If you don't offer these opportunities to your workers, they're going to leave in two and a half years. So this is a massive inflection. And what are the stakes? Let's look at the numbers, Mike. Seventy percent of people are unhappy with what they do. Seventy-five percent in a poll released in May of this year. Seventy-five percent of people plan to look for new work this year. A million people a week quit a job. That's 50 million people a year. That's a third of the workforce. That number is twice what it was 10 years ago. And another third is saying, I don't want to come into the office every day. I want to maybe come in several days.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  That's 100 million people who are in a state of flux. These numbers are unprecedented. This is new. We have to grapple with it. And it creates great opportunity, but we need help trying to figure out how do we ask the questions and make the decisions we all need to make.

• 12:01Mike Carruthers?

  What is the impact of this? And when you say people have up to five different jobs, they have side jobs. What is the impact of that? Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? Or it just depends?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  The research on this is actually quite interesting, Mike. Okay, so let's just take a side job, which as we said, three quarters of Americans have a side job. Here, the research is quite telling. If you have a side job that is the same as what you do during the day, it will actually make you less happy and less productive. So for example, if you work in a design shop and you spend your weekend calligraphing wedding invitations, it actually will undermine your performance at work. But as in the case with most people, if your side job is something different, if you, as I said, make jewelry or sell pickles, right? Or are notary public or do DJ at weddings and you work in a design office, because

• 13:00Speaker 01

  those are different, because it gives you meaning in that other part, you'll actually be more effective, more productive and happier at work. So this is not a threat to the workplace. It's an opportunity, but it requires a rethink and a reframing on everyone's part.

• 13:20Mike Carruthers?

  Why do people have side jobs typically? Is it just for the money or what?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  The short answer to that question is people have side jobs because it will give them meaning. For some, that meaning is money. Okay, I need to replace the tires, or put a new roof on my house, or prepare to send my kid to college. But for others, it's a sense of service or getting back. So I'm going to serve on the condo board, right? Or I'm going to, I'm going to write a memoir, right? Or I'm going to do something else that gives me meaning. Because we don't just make meaning in one area of our lives.

• 14:03Mike Carruthers?

  So how are, how are you supposed to find, or what are the questions you ask to find out what it means to find meaning in your career or in your work?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  What is a problem you've been trying to solve since you were a child? What were the upsides and downsides you learned about work from your parents? And by starting in the past, and then moving to the present, and filling out basic questions like, "I'm in a moment in my life, when?" Or "My purpose right now is..." People begin to find out that they have a variety of things they want to accomplish. Sure, they need to support their families, if that's their role in the family, but also, they also need to support their own life story. "I want to give back. I want to have purpose. I want to, to, to somehow make the world a better place."

• 14:56Speaker 01

  And by the way, that's a lot of people. There are 3 million schoolteachers in this world. There are 5 million people in arts and culture. There's 10 million people who work in religious institutions or higher education. And there's 20 million people who work in public service. That's 50 million people. That's 30% of the workforce that is saying, "Meaning is not exclusively about money for me. I draw a broader definition, and I seek a more fulfilling story."

• 15:24Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about the ever-changing world of work, and my guest is Bruce Feiler. He's author of the book, "The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World."

• 15:36Mike Carruthers?

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• 16:19Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:02Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:47Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:28Mike Carruthers?

  of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. So Bruce, I get what you're saying that people are rethinking work and career, but aren't there also a lot of people who don't have this deep philosophical inner dialogue about their work? They have a job or they want a job to pay the bills and that's it?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  I interviewed a woman and she was, she grew up in a horrific self-circumstance. And she was gang raped as a child and she pursued education and it was not the right fit for her. She went off and worked on a boat for many years. And then she began this path to healing. And now she does body work and she helps people recover, you know, their inner trauma and move beyond it and reclaim their lives and their life stories. And I asked her this question in almost exactly the same words. And she said, but what if you're just going about your day and you don't feel that you have a story to tell? And what she said has really resonated and stuck with me. She said, if that's where you are right now, keep going.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  But you're not necessarily always going to be there. And there are going to be moments in your life when you say, ah, now I'm confused. Now I'm stuck. Now I'm unhappy with what I do, as 70% of us are, as we just were saying. And now I want to ask those questions. So if you're not in this place right now, that's great. Keep going. But you or someone you know is in that place right now. And for them, this is what they need to do. Because the story that we have told in this country since the very beginning is that success is all about climbing. Rags to riches, greater salary, higher office, you know, better view, more benefits.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  But having done this now for 1,500 hours of listening to people tell their stories, I can tell you one thing I know with confidence. The people who are happiest, feel most fulfilled and are most successful in what they do, they don't just climb, they also dig. They excavate the story they've been trying to tell their whole lives. And they say now is the moment that I'm going to start telling it.

• 20:53Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I mean, I get, I get that. It just seems like those people are more the exception than the rule. But it sounds like what you're saying is it's really the rule.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Three quarters of people are looking for new work this year. 70% of us are unhappy. This is what the data are telling us very, very clearly. 80 million of us are in a work quake right now. You or someone you know is going to sit down with someone they love today over breakfast, a cup of coffee, late at night and say, I'm unhappy with what I do and I want to do something that makes me happy. Because here's the thing, Mike. Those of us of a certain age grew up with the expectation that the American dream was that each generation would do better than the prior generation.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And that better was almost exclusively defined by one metric, money and these external metrics of achievement.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  We still have that desire. But what happens when you go talk to people is that their definition of doing better than their parents is they want to be happier and more fulfilled. I asked everybody, the first question I asked people in my interviews were, what were the upsides or values of work that you learned from your parents? 64% said working hard. Then I asked them, what were the downsides or shadows of work that you learned from your parents? The number one answer, they worked too hard. The number two answer, they sacrificed the family. That is the change.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  86% of millennials say that they are more committed to well-being at work than the generations prior. That's the Xers and the Boomer. 86% of millennials self-identify as caring more about a meaningful workplace and work that gives them meaning than their parents or the generation immediately before them. That is a massive change. This is built in. Fewer people are searching merely for work. More people are searching for work with meaning.

• 23:04Mike Carruthers?

  And what does it mean to have work with meaning? Because you get what from that?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  I love this question because I think it allows me to do what I know you love to do in your, in your podcast, which is to geek out a little bit on, on the science. There's a difference between happiness and meaning. Okay, so happiness is present oriented. It's a, it's a fleeting emotion. Okay, I cite in the search, this incredible research by Roy Baumeister of Florida State, who was a kind of the meaning guru in American academia today. And he says animals can be happy because anybody can be happy in the present. But meaning is different. Meaning is about stitching together past, present, and future. And for example, meaning is about accommodating in your own life story unhappy events as well as happy events. Okay?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  And the way you do that is with a story. Because what we've learned through neuroscience is that our brains are wired to tell a story. Life is the story that you tell yourself. That story you have in your head about who you are and what brings you purpose and where you came from and where you're going. That's not just part of you, that is you in a fundamental way. Okay, that's what we've learned from neuroscience. And while work is out there, we have a story to tell. For whatever reason, that has not really been in the world of work. So the idea that I explore in this book, that each of us has a work story. That's actually a new way of thinking about it. But that's exactly where career counseling has gone. So now the cutting edge of career counseling is what's called narrative career construction.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  The idea that your work is a story. And that every time you have one of these work quakes, which as we've been saying is every two and a half years. That's like a plot twist in your own life. And it causes you to revisit the decisions that you're making and the choices that you choose to follow. So that is the big change. Our work is a story. And at different times of our life, we want to tell a different story.

• 25:06Mike Carruthers?

  And so what's going to happen? Or what is happening with those jobs that are inherently fairly meaningless? You know, if you're if you're working the fry machine at the fast food place. Hard to imagine you're going to find a lot of deep meaning in that, but somebody has to do it.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Well, in fact, what happens when you talk to people is that they find great meaning. I tell the story about an iconic study at the University of Michigan Hospital. Where researchers talked to people who worked mostly women in janitorial roles. And when they ask somebody, they ask a woman, what does it mean to empty a bedpan? What do you do? She doesn't say that I empty a bedpan. She doesn't say that I do the most menial and meaningless job you can imagine. She says, I'm an essential part of the care team. That's what I am. I am making people's lives better. And when you ask people, as I did, all of the hundreds of people that I interviewed.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  What is the thing that is? Who are the?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  And when I ask people, as I've done for hundreds of people, like, what is it that brings you most meaning? They say the people, but they don't mention the colleagues. Okay, they mention the people that they help. So if you talk to people, as I have done now for years, and say, what is it that does make you happy and bring you meaning from what you do? They tell a story. So somebody in the cement business, my father was a builder. Okay. And I remember a conversation from when I was 10. And I was like, Dad, like everybody else's parent seems to have a job. Like you seem to do like four or five different things. Okay, you work in multifamily and solo family and you have apartments and like, and every two years it's changing because that's what the real estate business was like in the 1970s.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  I was like, what do you do, Dad? And he said, I'm in the shelter business. And now, almost 50 years later, I can remember the beauty and power of that statement. Wow, he's in the shelter business. And that's one of the essential things that we all need as human beings. Okay, he doesn't see it the way I do. He's going to apartments and houses and in construction sites. He is serving a purpose that we all have. And that's what people do, no matter what job they have.

• 27:29Mike Carruthers?

  So there's a difference, or maybe there isn't a difference, between finding work with meaning and finding meaning in your work.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a beautiful, beautiful question. And I do think, I love that question and I'm reflecting on it. I'm absorbing it as you ask. The way to think about that beautiful question is each of us wants a life with meaning. And the work is only one part of that. And at different times in our lives, we may prioritize different things. So maybe we say my family is most important to me right now. So therefore, I'm willing to take work that has less meaning because I need other things from it, a sense that I can provide for my family and the security and the benefits and things like that. But then, maybe in a few years, we become empty nesters. And we all know people like this who say, okay, you know what? I devoted myself to belonging.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I wanted something for myself now.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Or we also know people who said, I've been focused on myself and my agency and my contributions and my own salary and title and status. You know, I'd like to give back first. I'd like to give back now. So my answer to your question is, what's most important to us is that we have a meaningful life and we can adjust how we find meaningful work to suit that larger purpose.

• 28:47Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I think everybody who works at some point has that sense of, you know, is this all there is? Is this it? Is this really what I want to do? And it's remarkable that so many people are having that kind of epiphany moment and saying, oh, let's think about something else. Let's find meaning in what I do. And this is a whole new world of work. I appreciate you sharing it. I've been talking with Bruce Feiler. The name of his book is The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here, Bruce. So here's the problem with drinking water. You can't tell if it's clean just by looking

• 29:30Mike Carruthers?

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• 30:14Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:20Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know too many people who don't have allergies. Seems like everyone's allergic to something. And a lot of times, it's just stuff in the air. I have that allergy. I have no idea what specifically I'm allergic to, but on certain days, I and a lot of other people start sneezing and get watery eyes, get stuffed up. And then there are food allergies. Seems like a lot more people today have food allergies than in the past. Why is that? What is an allergy? Why do we get them? Can you get rid of them? Here to explain all this is Teresa McPhail. She is a medical anthropologist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies,

• 33:02Mike Carruthers?

  and author of the book Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World. Hi, Teresa. Thank you for coming on Something You Should Know.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Hi, thanks so much for having me.

• 33:14Mike Carruthers?

  So what exactly is an allergy? What's going on when you have an allergic reaction to something?

• 33:21Speaker 02

  It's basically an immune reaction and it's basically just a hypersensitive immune system response. So your immune cells are responding to an allergen, whatever it is, peanut protein or oak tree pollen in the air, grass pollen, and it's deciding that that thing should not be part of you. And it's triggering the, a similar immune response that we have to things like bacteria and viruses. So it's basically just gearing up the immune system.

• 33:56Mike Carruthers?

  To attack?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  To cope, I would say. So it's mistaking a pollen grain for something that is potentially harmful. A normal person will just tolerate a, a piece of pollen that enters your nasal passageways. But for those of us who have allergies, your immune system cells respond to that pollen as if it's a bacteria or a virus. So it starts turning on inflammation. So that's why you get the swelling. It turns on the mucus production, which is why you get all sneezy and your nose starts to run and your eyes start to itch. So all of the same mechanisms come on, which is why it's sometimes, especially, you know,

• 34:39Speaker 02

  in the spring, it's really hard to tell sometimes if you have a cold or allergies because the initial response is the same.

• 34:45Mike Carruthers?

  So you said something a moment ago that if you're, a normal person does this and someone with an allergy does that. Well, it seems like it's pretty normal to have an allergy. I mean, what are the numbers of, who, who has allergies and who doesn't?

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's growing. It's about, it's hard to get an accurate number because it's really hard to measure these things. But we think anywhere between 30 and 40% of the total global population has an allergic response to at least one thing. So that's a ginormous number of people.

• 35:22Mike Carruthers?

  And I think that's, that sounds low to me because I don't know anybody that doesn't say, oh God, my allergies, oh my God, that.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Right?

• 35:31Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. Well, what about in, in, in Western society, is it worse?

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Yes, there tends to be more allergies in developed countries, or I would say richer countries. And there are various theories for why that is, and it all boils down to our lifestyles. And one of the interesting things that might surprise people is that you often see, like, say, someone is living in sub-Saharan Africa, and then they immigrate to the United States or England. In about three years, a lot of them will develop allergies, and they had absolutely no allergic response in their country.

• 36:16Mike Carruthers?

  You mentioned a moment ago asthma and eczema. Are those considered allergies?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  That is such a tricky thing to answer. Most of the researchers and clinicians that I talk to would say yes. There are some people that hold out a no. And the reason is that something like asthma, even though it's a similar immune response, it uses the same pathways. You can get asthma from exertion, and that's not an allergy. So a lot of people want to keep asthma separate and then refer to people who have allergic triggers. They'll call it allergic asthma.

• 36:54Mike Carruthers?

  So here's what I'm trying to understand here is that you say that people, for example, come from the desert and move to the West. Within three years, they have an allergy. Why? What happened in those three years that they now have an allergy because they came here?

• 37:13Speaker 02

  It could be a variety of things. The number one reason is probably that their bodies are being introduced to things that they've never seen before. So the immune system, before we turn three years old, your immune system is learning the world, if you want to think of it that way. So your early exposures really train your immune system to respond to the things in your environment. So if you grew up in one area and then you moved to another area, your immune system, if you've never been around elm trees and suddenly you're breathing in elm pollen, there's a chance that your immune system might think, hey, wait a minute. We've never seen this before. This shouldn't be here and react. So that's the primary way.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  But the secondary way is that their diets change likely in all likelihood. And also their lifestyles are changing. So if you think about people moving from more rural areas to more urban centers, they're being exposed to more particulate matter in the air from air pollution and things like that. So their immune systems are being bombarded with a lot of things that they haven't seen before. So that can go either way. Some people are fine and then other people who would never have developed possibly an allergy in their home country then start their immune systems start having trouble with coping with all of the new things in their environment.

• 38:39Mike Carruthers?

  So help me understand something. When I was a kid, I don't remember many people having allergies and I certainly don't remember people, very many people, having food allergies. Today, you know, you can't bring peanuts to school. This is a peanut free zone. There seems to be a lot more people with food allergies than there used to be. These aren't people coming from another climate, from another part of the world. So what happened? What changed that now this is such a thing and it didn't used to be?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  It's interesting because allergic responses to food were likely around for a very long time, but they flew under the radar. And there are possible reasons for this. A, we weren't looking for them and there's always the the trope of if you're not looking for something, you don't see it. But also, you know, children were, they were just growing up in a different way. The other problem is that we gave mothers and fathers bad advice, especially in terms of peanuts, as I, you're probably, some of your listeners are aware. We changed the guidelines a few years ago, so.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Up until fairly recently, they would advise mothers not to ingest certain foods during the latter stages of their pregnancy and not to give toddlers and young children things like peanut butter just in case. And it turns out that was the exact wrong advice, that early introduction is better, even though someone might still have an allergic response. But we kind of created a bigger problem because, again, that training. So if you withhold it until older, then the immune system doesn't get trained on it. So they've actually reversed course and they want parents to introduce things like peanuts

• 40:42Speaker 02

  as soon as possible into the diet to see if there is a problem. And if there's not, to potentially prevent a problem from developing by getting the baby immune system used to that form of protein. So that is another reason that we saw this explosion of food allergies.

• 41:01Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing someone explain that the increase in allergies in people has something to do with the fact that we tend to live in a very clean environment. We're not exposed to a lot of things. It's kind of that argument of, you know, you should let your kids play more in the dirt and get dirty because the more things we're exposed to, then that helps our immune system. And that because we live in such a clean environment, the immune system gets bored and it needs something to do, so it attacks itself. And that's why we have all these allergies. Does that explanation line up with what you found in the research?

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Yes. That is usually called the hygiene hypothesis. So the idea is that when you're not exposed to a lot of bacteria and viruses when you're young, The immune system was evolved to deal with a lot of that. And so in the absence of it, your immune system is rather like a toddler that has not been given anything to do. It's bored and wants to do something. And so it's actively looking for something to do. I mean, the evidence does show that kids who grow up on farms particularly.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  So if you grow up on a farm, but interestingly enough, it has to be a farm with animals. And there's something about being in the barn. Like, so if you carry your infant into the barn and they're exposed to all these animals and dirt in the barnyard, those kids tend to have extremely low rates of allergies. So we know that at least partially, the hygiene hypothesis is definitely true.

• 42:48Mike Carruthers?

  Can you give me a sense of like, what are the most common allergies? And what are, you know, like, how many people have peanut allergies? And how many people have allergies to, you know, stuff in the air? I mean, I have allergies to stuff in the air. I don't know too many people who don't.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  It's really hard to say. And the reason is we usually rely on self-reported surveys. So you're basically asking people who may never have been to an allergist to say if they have an allergy. So it's really hard to get a good number on this. Obviously hay fever or respiratory allergies are really prevalent. It's probably, so again, this number, you're like, why is it this big? It's the difference. It's either 10% to 30%. I like to go right in the middle and say about 20% of the whole global population has hay fever or respiratory allergies. It could be more than that, but it's definitely not less than that.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Like you said, almost everyone I talk to has something. Food allergy typically is smaller. The best information we have is around 9%, 8 or 9% of children.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Are having issues with one or more food allergens. And that seems fairly stable, but again, it's really hard to get those numbers because not everyone has access to an allergist, which is, you know, another huge problem everywhere.

• 44:20Mike Carruthers?

  Is it true that allergies will sometimes just disappear?

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, because the, especially food allergies, a lot of them, like nut allergy seems to persist over time, but a lot of allergies that people have when they're younger tend to disappear over time because for whatever reason, your immune system develops a tolerance over time. Also, your immune system function changes in relationship to things like stress, hormones. One of the really interesting things I learned was that more boys have asthma than girls, but adults, females have asthma at higher rates than males. And the reason is that testosterone is protective because it dampens down the immune response.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  So testosterone kind of turns the dial down on the immune system, which is exactly why more men were prone to dying in response to COVID. And that's also why you might have heard that sometimes when women get pregnant or go through menopause, they'll develop new allergies that they haven't had before.

• 45:31Mike Carruthers?

  But the truth is, if you have an allergy, pretty much the best thing you can do is to avoid as best you can, whatever it is you're allergic to, because there's, there's no cure typically for an allergy. And so you just have to avoid it or live with it, right?

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Yep. That's one of the worst parts about writing this book is that there's no happy ending. Like, I would love to say that we're so close to solving this problem, but you can't solve it, partially because you can't turn off the immune response. I mean, none of us want that, because then you might die of pneumonia. I mean, you can't, you have to modulate it. So there's no cure that we know of. Like I said, you can learn to tolerate it. So the treatment's coming online now. That's what they're aiming to do is like, can you moderate the immune response? So that it turns it down a notch? So that your immune system learns to tolerate?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Or you just shut off that part of your immune response that is reacting? And that is the best we can do for now. So there really isn't a possibility for a cure that we know of.

• 46:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, the one thing that that seems to help with allergies is just getting older, right? I mean, a lot of kids have allergies and those allergies, as they age, will disappear. Is it just the immune system just gets tired of it and just stops responding?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  So your immune response will get less strong as you age. So often, the allergies will fade. Because it's just your immune system overall is not as robust as it used to be. So in a sense, it's kind of a double edged sword, right? You're, you're living a better quality of life, because maybe your allergies are a bit better than they used to be when you were young. But also then you're more vulnerable to things like the influenza virus or COVID. So it is tricky. It really is tricky.

• 47:37Mike Carruthers?

  I understand that that a lot of people claim to have allergies to foods or whatever, that, that aren't actually allergies. That if you, if you want to know if you really have an allergy, you really need to see an allergist. But a lot of the things that people say are allergies are maybe sensitivities, but, but they're not allergic reactions.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Especially with food allergies. I just like to underline that. It's really hard to tell, because so many things have the same symptoms. So if you're getting stomach upset, it could be an intolerance, right? You could be lactose intolerant, or you could have a milk allergy. And if it's not a severe response, then it's going to look similar. And the only way to tell is to go and have the The testing done and to go and see a food allergist and do the the golden test is the double-blind food challenge. But even something as simple as a respiratory allergy, you could have something else going on.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  And it's always a good idea to, if you can, to get a referral to an allergist. Because also, and this is a fun fact that I think will surprise a lot of people, is that your GP in medical school, they don't really get allergy training. They get about two weeks. So most GPs actually are not really the right people to diagnose allergies because, yes, while they may see it a lot, they're not exactly trained in the same way and they definitely don't get the same level of training. So even if you get a test at a GP, you should always try to see an allergist if you can.

• 49:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, here's the thing. If if every spring, when the flowers come out, you start sneezing and your eyes get watery and you don't have a cold, what else could it be?

• 49:34Speaker 02

  It's probably allergies.

• 49:36Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  You could have, I mean, you could have a sinus infection you don't know about, a persistent one.

• 49:44Mike Carruthers?

  That comes out, that comes on every year in May.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. Exactly. You can put the pieces together yourself, which is what most of us do. Very few people with hay fever go to see an allergist. I get it because why? And also, it's really hard to tell what you're allergic to. And even if you know, like, so say you do go to an allergist and you get the panel done and they say, oh, you're allergic to grasses and mold. Well, what are you supposed to do?

• 50:14Mike Carruthers?

  Right, exactly.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be the same. And they're probably just gonna tell you to take a daily antihistamine during the season.

• 50:22Mike Carruthers?

  I could have told you that.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. And so I get it. I get why people wouldn't want to go. But for those people who are having serious responses. But you know, some of the people I talked to, they can't sleep at night. They're so congested that it really affects their quality of life. For those people, it's really important to go to a specialist because you you can get stronger antihistamines that are not available over the counter.

• 50:54Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think of allergies, I think of, you know, food allergies like peanuts and shellfish and respiratory allergies, hay fever, pollen, that kind of thing. What else are people allergic to?

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so pollen, dust mites, mold, different chemicals, milk, egg, wheat, corn, soy. I mean, those are the shellfish, those are the main ones. Peanuts, obviously, tree nuts is huge. Those are the main ones, I would say, like. And then, though, if we kept going, I can't even list them because there are people who will have allergies to really random things. I mean, you know, during the course of researching this book, I mean, it's not unheard of, occasionally you'll get someone who's allergic to cold.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  And it's real, or allergic to sun.

• 51:55Mike Carruthers?

  Is there anything good? Is there anything good about allergies? Or is it just all, it's just a nuisance and it's horrible? Is there any silver lining?

• 52:06Speaker 02

  If you are allergic, you might have a slightly lower chance of developing certain cancers, specifically certain types of skin cancers. And the reason is, is that your immune system is actually really strong and healthy and is constantly on the lookout. So it's possible that an allergic person's immune system is spotting those rogue cells earlier and doing something about them faster than a non-allergic person. So that's a little silver lining in an otherwise big cloud.

• 52:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's such a weird thing, allergies. I mean, it's not a sickness, it's not an illness, but it sure is a pain in a lot of ways to deal with, and I appreciate you coming on and explaining it. I've been speaking with Theresa McFail. She is a medical anthropologist, associate professor of science and technology, and author of the book Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks, Theresa.

• 53:11Mike Carruthers?

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