Why Is Everyone Allergic to Everything Now?

Jun 3

Once upon a time, a peanut was just a peanut.
Bread was bread.
And strawberries were fruit, not fear.

Now, we live in a world where a child can carry an EpiPen like a talisman against snack-time doom, where adults swear off gluten like it’s a curse word, and where the phrase “I can’t eat that” has become the background hum of dinner parties and doctor’s offices alike.

So what happened?

Why are so many of us suddenly allergic to everything?

The Rise of the Sensitive Body

It’s not your imagination.

Over the last 50 years, food allergies have skyrocketed. According to the CDC, between 1997 and 2011 alone, childhood food allergies increased by 50%. In the U.S., over 32 million people now suffer from food allergies…including nearly 1 in 13 children.

But it’s not just peanuts. Or shellfish. Or strawberries.

We are becoming allergic to the air. To sunlight. To our own cities.

People who once brushed against a cat and walked away are now covered in hives. Others wake up sneezing in homes they’ve lived in for decades. Some can’t eat wheat. Others react to fragrances. Some find their throats tighten at the whisper of soy.

This isn’t just about immune systems misfiring.
This is a story of the modern world rewriting what it means to be alive inside a body.

Allergies: A Malfunction, or a Message?

Allergies are, at their core, an immune system gone awry.

They happen when your body sees something harmless (like a peanut protein or a pollen grain) and decides it’s a threat. It attacks with antibodies, inflammation, and histamines. What should be ignored becomes a battlefield.

But the real question isn’t what an allergy is.

It’s why so many more are happening now.

And why our bodies, these miraculous systems shaped by thousands of years of evolution, suddenly seem so confused.

The Microbiome: A Garden We Forgot to Water

Let’s start in the gut.

Inside your body, trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea live together in a tangled ecosystem called the microbiome. They’re not invaders, they’re residents. And they help regulate everything from digestion to mental health to, yes, the immune system.

When we are born, we inherit these microbes from our mothers…through birth, breast milk, and the world around us. Dirt. Air. Skin. Trees.

But something changed.

Modern life sanitized our childhoods.
We wiped down every surface.
We bathed in antibacterial soap.
We ate processed food instead of fermented, fiber-rich plants.
We took antibiotics (life-saving, yes), but nuclear bombs to our internal ecosystems.

The result?
A gut out of balance.
An immune system without a compass.
A garden with nothing left growing but weeds.

The Hygiene Hypothesis: Too Clean for Our Own Good

In 1989, epidemiologist David Strachan proposed something radical: that the rise in allergies might be due to a lack of early exposure to microbes.

It came to be known as the Hygiene Hypothesis.

The idea is simple but powerful: our immune systems evolved to encounter dirt, bacteria, even worms. These challenges helped train the body to distinguish between real threats and harmless bystanders.

But in our scrubbed-clean, Purell-pumped society, we’re not training the immune system, we’re confusing it. And so it panics. Overreacts. Attacks shadows.

A strange microbial discovery is unlocking new potential for human medicine, and reminding us that the smallest organisms can have the biggest impact.

Processed Food: A Love Letter to What We Lost

We live in a world where convenience is king.

But shelf-stable food doesn’t just last longer, it’s often stripped of complexity. Processed food is usually low in fiber, rich in emulsifiers and preservatives, and lacking the wild diversity that once fed our gut flora.

Additives like carrageenan and polysorbate-80 have been shown in animal studies to alter the gut lining and trigger immune responses.

Our ancestors ate fermented vegetables. We eat “cheese food.”
They ate sourdough. We eat Wonder Bread.
They shared meals. We eat in cars, staring at screens.

We are feeding ourselves, and starving the microbes who keep us whole.

Environmental Chaos: Breathing in the Unknown

Allergies don’t stop at food.

Rates of pollen allergies, mold sensitivity, and respiratory inflammation have also surged. And that’s no surprise, our environment has changed, too.

Climate change is making pollen seasons longer and more intense. Air pollution damages the mucosal barriers that protect us from invaders. Plastics, pesticides, and microtoxins now float in the air, seep into our water, and lodge in our lungs.

We are breathing more unknowns than ever before.

And our bodies (smart, defensive, and ancient) respond the only way they know how:
Attack. Alert. React.

What happens when food isn’t food anymore, and how modern ingredients are quietly reshaping biology.

The Chemical Feast

We were not meant to eat lab experiments.

Today’s packaged food is a cocktail of preservatives, colorants, artificial sweeteners, thickeners, and stabilizers, many of which didn’t exist a century ago. Red 40. Yellow 5. TBHQ. BHT. Carrageenan. Titanium dioxide. Words that sound more like codes than ingredients. Many are banned in other countries, yet still line our grocery aisles.

These compounds aren't always overtly toxic. But they wear the body down slowly. They confuse the gut, trigger immune reactions, and disrupt hormonal signals in ways science is only beginning to understand.

Our cells recognize real food.
They don’t recognize this.

And sometimes, that confusion becomes inflammation.
Or a rash.
Or a closed throat.
Or a lifelong allergy.

Genetics Plus The Environment

There is no single reason allergies are rising. There is a storm of them.

Yes, genetics play a role. If one parent has allergies, a child is more likely to develop them. But genes don’t shift this quickly. What’s changed most rapidly is our exposure, our diets, our homes, our habits.

This is not just nature. It’s nurture, too.

We live in boxes with filtered air.
We bathe in chemicals and call it clean.
We spend more time with screens than with soil.

And our immune systems, long used to the rhythm of the natural world, are sounding alarms we can’t quite decode.

Sensitivity Isn’t a Weakness

It’s easy to feel frustrated. To roll our eyes at the rising tide of dietary restrictions and air filters and hypoallergenic everything.

But what if sensitivity isn’t a flaw?

What if it’s a feature?

What if the people reacting to gluten, mold, fragrance, or dairy are not broken, but responding to a world that is?

Sensitivity is a signal.

It’s the body’s poetry, written in inflammation and intuition, trying to tell us something:
This isn’t right. This doesn’t belong. This hurts me.

The Quiet Revolution of Healing

Some people are finding their way back.

They are healing their guts with fermented foods and fiber-rich meals.
They are planting gardens, touching soil, raising sourdough starters like pets.
They are walking barefoot. Spending time with dogs. Letting their kids get dirty again.

This is not about avoiding all modernity.

It’s about remembering who we were before we forgot.

It’s about rebuilding the symbiosis we once had with the world around us, the bacteria on our hands, the dust in our homes, the wildness in our diets.

What we eat doesn’t just feed us, it programs us. And healing often starts with memory.

Allergies as a Mirror

In a way, allergies are a mirror, reflecting not just our immune systems, but our societies.

They show us what we’ve lost.

They whisper of ancestral dirt, of fermented life, of complexity now replaced by plastic and corn syrup and pharmaceutical band-aids.

But they also offer a way forward.

Every sneeze, every hive, every tightening throat is a message:
Go back. Not in time. But to what matters.
Reconnect. Rebuild.
Remember.

A Personal Note: I Used to Eat Everything

And then, one day, I couldn’t.

Wheat made my skin itch. Dairy made my joints ache. Something in the air gave me rashes that felt like static under my skin.

Doctors offered steroids. Creams. Dismissals.

But it wasn’t until I started listening that I began to understand.

My body wasn’t being dramatic.
It was being intelligent.

And so I began to unlearn. To rebuild. To touch the earth again. To grow some of my own food. To ferment. To slow down.

And slowly, I began to heal.

The Road Ahead

Not everyone can grow their own vegetables.
Not everyone can quit the city.
Not everyone can afford to eat organic, or even find it.

But all of us can do something. Even something small.

Feed your microbes. Touch a tree. Let your child get dirty. Learn what’s in your food. Rethink your products. Reclaim your rhythm.

Because the rise in allergies is not just a health crisis.

It’s a call to change.

When strange marks appear in the snow, or in our bloodwork, it’s not always clear where they come from. But they tell us something has changed.

Why We Break, Why We Heal

Maybe we are more allergic now because the world itself has become more artificial.
Maybe our bodies are trying to help us see what our eyes can’t.

We were not made for monochrome food. For endless noise. For fluorescent light.
We were made for bacteria and balance and sun on the skin.

So if your body is reacting, if it is refusing, know this:

It’s not weakness.
It’s wisdom.

Michele Gargiulo http://michelegargiulo.com