We were having a discussion last night about allergies, lactose
intolerance and breastfeeding and a couple of interesting questions and

hypotheses came up.  Does anyone know about any research on these
questions?
1. It seems clear that people are much more allergic to lots of things
these days than used to be the case.  It occurred to me that this may
in part because the last several generations of babies have been, by and
large, formula fed and it is known that formula fed babies have more
problems with allergies than bf babies.  Does this hold true into
adulthood?  Is there any epidemiological research on this?
2.  Is it possible that allergies can be passed from one generation to the
next through breastmilk.  If a mother was formula fed and
consequently has al
lergies, would this immune deficiency be passed on
to her children through her breastmilk? (What she did not receive from
her mother she cannot pass to her children - the chain of inheritance
has been broken).
3. Does any of this hold true for lactose intolerance as opposed to
allergies or are they basically the same thing?
Thanks,
Naomi Bar-Yam