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Allergies seem nearly impossible to avoid – unless you're Amish

The "farm effect" may be the reason allergies are relatively uncommon among the Amish, who see more exposure to farm animals or barns as young children.

“Certain kinds of farming practices, particularly the very traditional ones, have this extraordinary protective effect in the sense that, in these communities, asthma and allergies are virtually unknown,” said Donata Vercelli, a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of Arizona. The “hygiene hypothesis” - first proposed in a 1989 study by American immunologist David Strachan - suggests that early childhood exposure to microbes protects against allergic diseases by contributing to the development of a healthy immune system. In a study of 60 schoolchildren by Ober, Vercelli and their colleagues, the prevalence of asthma was four times lower in the Amish as compared with the Hutterites, another U.S. farming community with a similar genetic ancestry and lifestyle.

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