Why Society Treats Allergies Like a Nothingburger

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Allergies are estimated to affect upwards of 30% of people globally, so why are they so often swept under the rug? People in restaurants lie about their allergies, food labelling is difficult to understand, and those with the allergies are often forced to be their own advocate to avoid a potentially life-threatening medical situation. On this episode, senior producer Teresa Carey interviews allergist Dr. Samira Jeimy to discuss the day-to-day realities of allergies, new potential medications, and why better societal support is needed for those with severe allergies. Host Dr. Samantha Yammine also explores how multilingualism can slow brain aging and a new study that is trying to cleanse wine from the taste of wildfire smoke.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to Curiosity Weekly. I'm Dr. Samantha Amin. Here in Toronto, I've been lucky to be surrounded by so many languages and to get to learn about different cultures and connect with new people. But a new study has found yet another benefit that being multilingual may actually slow brain aging. I'll talk about that first, and then after,
0:22.6	senior producer Teresa Carey will chat with my pal, Dr. Samira Jamie,
0:27.1	about big breakthroughs in allergy treatments,
0:30.1	alongside the everyday challenges navigating this common issue.
0:34.1	Finally, we'll wrap with an intriguing discovery
0:36.6	about a microbe that could help save wine
0:38.7	from wildfires. Let's get started. It might be time to re-download Duolingo. A recent study
0:47.2	led by researchers at Adolfo Ibniz University in Santiago, Chile found that speaking more than one
0:53.0	language may protect our brains from accelerated
0:55.6	aging. Now, this might seem familiar. It's long been speculated that being multilingual is good for your
1:01.6	brain because it takes a lot of mental effort to learn, use, and maintain another language. Just like
1:06.8	keeping up with physical exercise, the ideas if you keep your brain working, keep those
1:11.1	neurons firing, that will keep healthy into old age, right? Well, previous research on this topic
1:16.6	has suggested just that, that speaking multiple languages can improve cognitive functions like
1:21.2	memory and attention, which can protect brain health as we get older. But they haven't been
1:26.0	as robust as you might think when it comes to
1:28.1	looking at brain aging specifically. We know that being multilingual results in denser gray matter
1:33.3	and more white matter integrity than people who only speak one language. And this has been studied for a
1:38.3	long time. You can even see the difference between multilingual brains and monolingual brains on an MRI.
1:44.0	When it comes to researching
1:45.1	brain aging, on the other hand, this study ups the ante on previous research, which have had smaller,
1:51.0	more heterogeneous sample sizes, and inconsistent results. This study was large scale,
	...

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