Recipes Food Cooking

For parents, a child food allergy is unsettling news. How can they protect their child from all contact with a particular food? Where will they find food allergy recipes? What if other kids tease and make fun of their condition?

Parents have always struggled to help their children with food allergies that make life much more difficult, but researchers are slowly developing the opinion that small exposure to the allergens will gradually build tolerance in most kids.

Children with shellfish or peanut allergies may always suffer, but a number of kids can outgrow their sensitivity to certain foods.

Despite the success for many patients, the child food allergy tests can be terrifying for some patients. After a whole lifetime of being told that certain foods cannot be eaten, some children are reluctant to try anything new, particularly if they suspect a reaction.

“There is a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome that happens after a bad allergic reaction,” explains Dan Atkins, head of outpatient pediatrics at National Jewish Health. “But the payoff in a successful food challenge is huge.”

Four-year-old Kevin Stokes still refused to try eggs at a Duke University Medical Center challenge. “He freaked out,” his mother Jodi says, adding that Kevin still suffers from preschool child food allergies like peanuts, tree nuts and milk.

The most important part of diagnosing a child food allergy is to examine the child’s dietary history. “What did he eat? What kind of reaction did he have?” the doctor will ask. Next, the doctor may recommend a blood test or a skin-prick test for added confirmation.

“If you come to me and say, ‘My child ate a peanut butter sandwich and within 15 minutes, his lips turned blue, he got hives and threw up,’ that’s enough to tell me the child has a peanut allergy,” explains Dr. Hugh Sampson of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

“The more typical history is that they were eating a meal and he had this horrible reaction and they think it’s peanuts. It’s important to do a skin or blood test to make sure.”

To read more Finding Solutions For A Child Food Allergy

Child food allergies can be a mere annoyance with frequent bouts of vomiting or eczema, or they can be life-threatening conditions that close off the windpipe and slow the pulse.

Most allergies do not result in a trip to the emergency room, but most sufferers feel that it is better to be safe than sorry and avoid these dangerous foods. What distinguishes an allergy from intolerance is the body system affected.

Allergies involve an immune system response to a perceived antagonist, whereas food intolerance involves an upset reaction from the digestive system.

A wheat allergy is another one of the common child food allergies. This type of allergy is most commonly diagnosed during infancy or early childhood years, but many children outgrow this problem by age 5. Symptoms may include a weak pulse, blue skin, difficulty breathing, dizziness, chest pain and throat swelling.

People with wheat allergies should avoid breads, cakes, muffins, cereals, pasta, couscous, crackers, beer, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, soy sauce, condiments like ketchup, meat substitutes, dairy products, hotdogs, natural flavorings, modified food starch, vegetable gum and coffee substitutes. Commonly, people with wheat allergies are allergic to grains like barley, oat and rye as well.

You can get additional information at the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network at www.foodallergy.org. You can learn about different types of child food allergies, how to treat emergencies and where to find local support groups.

You can read about all the latest studies, research and articles regarding the diagnosis and treatment for food allergy sufferers. Here you will also find recipes and local events raising support and awareness about food-related allergens.

To read more Different Types Of Child Food Allergies

Every year 50,000 people go to a hospital ER with allergic reactions to food. Of those cases, 150 people die from their reaction to milk, eggs, soy, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, fish or shellfish.

“All other allergies have lots of treatments,” says Anne Munoz-Furlong, founder of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. “With food allergy, we have nothing: Avoid the food, take epinephrine (adrenaline shots to counteract anaphylaxis, a deadly reaction) and get to the hospital.”

You may feel scared, alone and uncertain when accidental exposure occurs, so you should map out how to get food allergy help before the situation ever arises.

Of course, many parents want their children to be cured of this awful ailment once and for all. Some parents enroll their children in clinical trials to get food allergy help. During these trials, the children will be given a small amount of allergen, either with a pinprick, orally or beneath their tongue, and their reaction is monitored and treated by the doctor, as necessary.

Every few weeks, the child will come back and take a slightly higher dose until the body develops a better tolerance to the protein. At first the experience can be stressful, both for parents and children, since so much energy and effort go into typically avoiding these situations. However, this technique has worked for some children with egg, peanut and milk allergies.

The most common food allergy help is simply avoiding the troublesome food itself. Some people find it easiest to just avoid eating peanuts or anything that might have come into contact with a peanut, rather than go through the trials and tribulations of long-term immunotherapy.

There are a number of great cookbooks full of food allergy recipes and the FDA requires food manufacturers to put warning labels on just about all foods now. Over-the-counter antihistamines can relieve hives, sneezing, runny noses and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Bronchodilators can relieve the symptoms of asthma or difficulty breathing. While these methods cannot prevent the allergic reaction, they can relieve the symptoms afterwards.

To read more Knowing Where To Find Food Allergy Help

A children food allergy can be devastating news for parents — just ask the Ringstroms. Five-year-old Blake Ringstrom suffered allergic reactions to so many foods that he went from a pork and navy bean diet to being fed through a tube implanted in his stomach.

“We felt like we were grasping at straws,” says Blake’s mother, Becky. “He wasn’t getting better, he wasn’t growing, he was still kind of sick all the time… the itching was constant.

We had to put socks over his hands so he wouldn’t make himself bleed.” However, thanks to the Food Challenge, Blake is now able to eat most sit-down meals with his family.

In another case, five-year-old Ashley Garcia came to the emergency room after eating an ice cream cone with nuts, which made her parents fear that she had a life-threatening children food allergy to peanuts.

Her father recalls, “By the time we got there, her eyes were bloodshot red and it seemed like there was a whole other layer of skin. She broke out in a rash.” After some consideration, the Garcias agreed to a Food Challenge, despite the risk that she may suffer those terrible food allergy symptoms again.

“If it’s going to happen, this is probably the best place for it to happen,” they concluded. Over time, Ashley was finally able to eat a whole Reese’s peanut butter cup without reacting.

There are many stories of children food allergy patients to consider. Some parents at wit’s end say their lives have been changed by Food Challenge testing. However, this test is not for all child food allergies.

Kids who have severe asthma, are otherwise sickly, or who have lost consciousness during an allergy attack generally are not good subjects for testing. Also, the test can be very time-consuming (six hours at a shot, once a week for months on end) and, as a result, very expensive.

Other parents prefer to buy cookbooks with food allergy recipes and buy specially made products to work around the restrictive diet. In the end, it’s best to speak with an allergy specialist to determine the best course of action.

To read more Knowing About Children Food Allergy Patients

The U.S. News & World Report says the number of children with food allergies has increased 18% since 1993, and the number of kids who needed emergency treatment for food allergy reactions has tripled in that time.

An estimated 6 to 9% of all U.S. children have a food or digestive allergy. At the same time, the incidence of eczema and skin allergies has also gone up. Health care professionals are quickly looking to find a reason for this increase in children food allergies, as well as environmental allergies.

To detect children food allergies, the doctor will ask parents about their child’s food allergy symptoms and may ask them to keep a food diary to monitor the reactions. The doctor may ask parents to remove suspected foods from the child’s diet one at a time to rule out certain allergies.

There will be a blood test to look for Immunogloblin E antibodies. A negative result can help rule out food allergies, although a positive result doesn’t necessarily mean the child has the allergy.

A skin prick test involves placing small amounts of suspected food allergens on the skin of the child’s forearm or back and pricking the skin with a needle to allow the substance to get beneath the skin. If there is an allergy, a raised bump or small rash will appear.

Perhaps blood tests for children food allergies fail because they cannot distinguish between similar proteins in different foods. For instance, a child with an allergy to peanuts may also test positive for kidney bean, green bean, pea and soy allergies.

Similarly, a child with a milk allergy may also test positive for a beef allergy. Dr. David Fleischer tells parents the best indicator may be simply to note whether the child has tolerated a particular food in the past.

In some cases, intolerance to a specific food develops over time, which is different than a serious, life-threatening allergy. Also, many food allergies (such as milk, eggs, soy and wheat) can be outgrown, so food challenging tests should be done again over time.

To read more Testing For Children Food Allergies

Food allergies and children have been making headlines recently. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that food allergies are on the rise, with around 3 million children suffering with a shellfish, milk, egg, wheat or peanut allergy.

This is an 18% increase since 1997, the center reports. As a parent you may feel alarmed and wonder what you can do to prevent this fate from befalling your precious baby. While there is little evidence, aside from old wives’ tales that allergies can be prevented, researchers are finding better ways to identify allergens and possibly treat them.

An August 2009 food allergies and children headline reads, “Milk May Be Safe, Even Encouraged, For Some Children After Treatment For Milk Allergy.” This is big news, considering that milk is the most prevalent kid food allergy, researchers from John Hopkins said.

The follow-up study tracked 18 children (ages 6-16) whose severe milk allergies had eased or disappeared. Their allergic reactions grew milder and milder over time.

“We now have evidence from other studies that some children once successfully treated remain allergy-free even without daily exposure, while in others the allergies return once they stop regular daily exposure to milk,” says Robert Wood, M.D.

“This may mean that some patients are truly cured of their allergy, while in others the immune system adapts to regular daily exposure to milk and may, in fact, need the exposure to continue to tolerate it,” he adds.

“Food Scientist Develops Process for Allergen-Free Peanuts, According to Lab.” The difficult part about dealing with food allergies and children is sometimes explaining to the child why he or she cannot eat something that may be so tasty.

A number of parents note that their children show positive results for having peanut allergies, so they wish to shelter them from this potentially toxic food. Doug Speight of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University reports that his work has shown 100% inactivation of peanut allergens in whole-roasted kernels and the processed peanuts showed no reaction in human serum tests from the extremely allergic.

“We are extremely pleased that we were able to find such a simple solution to a vexing problem that has enormous economic and public health ramifications, both for peanut sensitive individuals, and the food industry as a whole,” reports Ahmedna, whose product is currently being developed.

To read more Dealing With Food Allergies And Children

America has gotten a bit obsessed with the idea of food allergies in children over the past few decades.

The Centers for Disease Control announced that food allergies and incidents of food intolerance have spiked 18% in the last decade, yet many scientists believe their traditional methods for detecting a child’s food allergy, like blood tests and prick skin tests, are unreliable.

The best method for some patients is to spend the time, money and effort on gradually overcoming a food allergy through a process of gradual tolerance.

The prevailing theory is that food allergies in children can be overcome with a gradual Food Challenge test. There are three types of Food Challenges used today. During an Open Food Challenge, both the patient and the medical staff are aware that the patient is eating the suspected allergy-trigger.

A child in an open egg allergy test may be given small (but increasing) doses of scrambled eggs every 15-30 minutes until a whole egg is ingested to test his threshold. In a Single-Blind Placebo-Controlled Food Challenge, the medical staff is aware what the patient is being fed, but the patient is not.

This type of test is helpful when a patient expresses extreme anxiety about ingesting the food. A child may be given a small amount of egg concealed in pudding, for instance, until a whole egg can be ingested.

A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Food Challenge occurs when neither child nor medical staff (aside from one doctor not directly involved) knows what the patient is being fed. This ensures that there are no emotional biases or stress-related reactions.

“The Food Challenge is what we call the gold standard for diagnosing food allergy,” said Dr. David Fleischer of the National Jewish Hospital. “It is the best test for determining whether someone has a food allergy.

The problem is that a lot of people think they have food allergies; there are a lot of people that have reactions to food out there, but not every reaction is a food allergy,” he added.

It is important to get rid of food allergies in children, if possible, so these kids can enjoy healthy and normal nutritional development. Currently, there is no other treatment for food allergy sufferers other than abstinence or trying to ingest small doses in a controlled setting.

To read more Food Allergies In Children Can Be Overcome With A Food Challenge Test

There are 32,000 children with food allergies in Utah alone. Pat Flynn, the principal at Trailside Elementary in Park City, just recently imposed a school-wide ban on nuts for their 500 students. “It comes down to the safety of the kids,” Flynn explains, “and I don’t care if it’s one or eight.”

So far, several other districts are proposing similar policies and the Utah Food Allergy Network is looking for some sort of uniformity across the state. “Some kids could die within minutes,” adds network director Michelle Fogg.

Since 2008, kids with severe allergic reactions have been allowed to carry epinephrine injections with them. While you can’t count on a school ban to protect your child, you will need to consider various lifestyle changes and coping mechanisms to help your family through these changes.

Sometimes children with food allergies begin to feel depressed or ostracized when other kids tease them for being unable to eat certain foods. It’s important that you sit down with your child and talk about these feelings.

A good way to get into a discussion is to read one of the books written about food allergies. Nicole Smith is the author of several helpful children’s food allergy books, such as Allie the Allergic Elephant: A Children’s Story of Peanut Allergies; Cody the Allergic Cow: A Children’s Story of Milk Allergies; and Chad the Allergic Chipmunk: A Children’s Story of Nut Allergies.

For other wonderful books to go over with your child, please visit www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/books-child.html. By reading these books, children will learn how to avoid dangerous situations and stay safe just like their favorite characters in these memorable stories.

A good place to learn more about helping children with food allergies cope is www.allergicchild.com. This website is focused on helping kids who have food allergies to live the healthiest and most normal lives possible.

Parents can sign up for free monthly newsletters with expert columns and may also read e-books; How to Send your Food Allergic Child to School; How to Help Your Child Succeed with Food Allergy and Behavior Manifestations: Giftedness, Autism & Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; How Do I Keep My Food Allergic Child Safe; and Traveling and Eating Out with Food Allergies.

Allergy information is important in the early stages of your child’s diagnosis, but it is through support networks that you will learn to endure.

To read more Finding Information About Children With Food Allergies Online