Managing Childhood Food Allergies – Make Your Kitchen Work for You

 

Written by Jenny Catton

 

Discovering that your child has a food allergy is never easy. And if they have multiple allergies or a severe allergy to certain ingredients, it will probably mean making lots of changes to how you arrange your kitchen. You will want to consider everything from how you store food and prepare meals to how you plan family mealtimes. But once you get into a routine, dealing with an allergy doesn’t have to be stressful.

 

Common food allergies include allergies to dairy, gluten, eggs, nuts, fish and soy. It might not be practical to remove these from your kitchen entirely – particularly if you have other children at home. However, there are a number of simple things you can do in the kitchen to make managing food allergies easier.

 

A common concernfor parents ishow to avoid cross-contamination between different food types. This might sound like a challenge but with a little planning and clever organisation, you can protect your child from allergens whilst maintaining normal mealtimes and eating habits for the whole family.

 

Here are seven ways you can use your kitchen to help manage food allergies:

 

Clear the Clutter
Reduce the clutter on your worktops to an absolute minimum. This way you’ll be able to clearly see what ingredients and utensils you are using, making it easier to avoid cross-contamination. Less clutter also means less hidden spaces for food crumbs to lurk.

 

Create an Allergy-friendly Cupboard
Designate a cupboard, fridge shelf or storage space specifically for the person with the allergies. Here you can store everyday ingredients plus utensils, crockery and cutlery that is just for them.

 

Introduce Zones at the Dining Table
Ensure the allergy sufferer always sits at the same space at the dining table. This means even if you serve a meal before everyone has arrived at the table, you’ll know each person is going to get the right plate. It also makes cleaning the table at the end of a meal easier as you can clean their area first to avoid cross-contamination from dishcloths.

 

Keep Cleaning Products to Hand
Keep your cleaning products on your counter top so that they are easy to reach if you need them while preparing or serving a meal.

 

Know Where Emergency Medication Is
People often store allergy medication in handbags or bathrooms but it might be better to store it in the kitchen or dining room as this is usually where an allergic reaction is most likely to occur.

 

Use your Freezer
It can be frustrating for children to see their siblings arrive home with unexpected treats that they are not allowed to share so keep a stash of suitable treats in your freezer which you can quickly take out and defrost so that they don’t need to miss out.

 

Pin Up the Rules
If a food allergy has recently been diagnosed, it may take a while to adjust to a new routine. Use a noticeboard in your kitchen to keep a visible list of what is – and what’s not, allowed.

 

Remember, every individual is different so always ask your doctor or health professional for specific advice when organising your kitchen and dining routines.

 

For more information about food allergies, visit: www.allergyuk.org

 

Categories: allergies, avoid cross, Cleaning Products, cross contamination, dining table, Food, food allergies, food allergy, kitchen

Could Asthma Medications Put an End to Your Food Allergies?

One food allergy is enough of a health concern, but when you’re allergic or sensitive to multiple foods, it can really impact on your wellbeing. However, according to new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, taking an asthma drug can desensitise you to several foods at the same time, so meal times don’t have to be such a struggle.

 

Nutritional wellness expert Erin Digitale, PhD, details, ‘The findings come on the heels of a recent study by the same team showing that people with multiple food allergies can be desensitized to several foods at once. The two studies, both phase-1 safety trials, provide the first scientific evidence that a promising new method for treating people for multiple food allergies works. Patients who took the asthma drug omalizumab became desensitized to multiple food allergens at a median of 18 weeks; those who did not take the drug became desensitized at a median of 85 weeks.’

 

The studies, the results of which were published in the journal Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, both used a desensitisation method known as oral immunotherapy. Under a doctor’s supervision in a hospital setting, allergic patients build up tolerance to a food by ingesting it in tiny, gradually increasing doses. Digitale explains, ‘Over time, the body stops reacting, and the patient is able to eat the food safely. Several researchers have shown that this therapy works on a single food allergen, but it had not been tested on multiple food allergens. The Stanford team tried the new technique because nearly four million Americans are allergic to more than one food.’

 

Study senior author Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, associate professor of paediatrics at the medical school and an immunologist at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, recalls, ‘Parents came up to me and said things like, “It’s great that you’re desensitising children to their peanut or milk allergies, but my daughter is allergic to wheat, cashews, eggs and almonds. What can you do about that?”. Digitale notes, ‘Being desensitised to several foods, one at a time, could prospectively take decades. Yet Stanford researchers succeeded in safely desensitising patients to several food allergens at once and were able to speed up desensitisation by supplementing oral immunotherapy with injections of omalizumab (brand name Xolair).’

 

Digitale outlines, ‘In the earlier study, in which patients were not given omalizumab, 25 children and adults with multiple allergies ate tiny doses of their allergens — as many as five — as highly purified food powders each day. The total dose was evenly divided between the allergens so that each subject got the same total quantity of food protein, regardless of the number of foods they were being desensitized to…The food dose was gradually increased until subjects could eat four grams of each food protein, or up to 20 grams of the allergenic food proteins in total, without experiencing a reaction. This occurred at a median of 85 weeks after food doses began.’

 

Digitale continues, ‘In the second and most recent study, 25 children and adults with multiple food allergies underwent a similar protocol — but with an additional step. Eight weeks before being introduced to food allergens, the patients began receiving injections of omalizumab. This drug reduces activity of the body’s IgE molecules, the antibodies involved in allergic responses, and had been shown in a previous Stanford study to speed the success of oral immunotherapy for children with milk allergies. Patients getting omalizumab tolerated larger initial doses of allergens than those in the non-omalizumab study, and desensitisation progressed faster…This occurred at a median of 18 weeks after the food doses began.’

Categories: asthma drug, asthma medications, food allergens, food allergies, food doses, food protein, lucile packard, multiple food, nbsp digitale, oral immunotherapy, Research

Is Extreme Hygiene to Blame for Increase in Child Allergies?

These days it seems as though every other kid is allergic to something, which can make family wellness complicated. Even if your own child’s wellbeing isn’t affected by allergies, chances are that he or she will bring home a friend who is, and so you still have to deal with the problem. And the situation is only getting worse according to a recent study from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which found that allergies are on the rise. One in 20 children have food allergies today, which is a 50% increase from the 90s, while the number of children with skin allergies or eczema has risen by 69% to a whopping one in eight.

 

The odds are that you know a young child who has a food or skin allergy, which is why it’s now common practice for childcare settings and schools to ban potential allergens like tree nuts from all children’s lunches, in order to protect the wellness of these affected children. However, it’s difficult to determine whether these allergies have actually increased, or whether we’ve simply become more aware of what to look for, and so are just reporting more allergies in kids than we used to. Even the CDC study was based on parents’ self-reports of allergies in their children, and didn’t clarify whether or not the allergies were diagnosed by medical professionals, so some cases may have been misdiagnosed by hypersensitive parents.

 

Nonetheless, wellness experts seem to agree that recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in instances of both food allergies and hereditary atopic disorders such as eczema and asthma. This is at least evident in so-called developed countries, and herein lies a potential clue: we’re experiencing more allergies in the West because our culture is too good at controlling or eliminating exposure to microbes. As microbes are central to training our immune system to deal with allergens, excessive hygiene may be the cause of increased child allergies.

 

However, researchers like SF Bloomfield of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warn against too simplistic a reading of this so called “hygiene hypothesis,” as broader, societal change is a more likely culprit. In their paper “Too clean, or not too clean,” Bloomfield et al argue, ‘The increase in allergic disorders does not correlate with the decrease in infection with pathogenic organisms, nor can it be explained by changes in domestic hygiene. A consensus is beginning to develop round the view that more fundamental changes in lifestyle have led to decreased exposure to certain microbial or other species, such as helminths, that are important for the development of immunoregulatory mechanisms.’

 

The researchers continue, ‘Although this review concludes that the relationship of the hypothesis to hygiene practice is not proven, it lends strong support to initiatives seeking to improve hygiene practice. It would however be helpful if the hypothesis were renamed, e.g. as the “microbial exposure” hypothesis, or “microbial deprivation” hypothesis, as proposed for instance by [Bengt] Bjorksten [professor emeritus at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden]. Avoiding the term “hygiene” would help focus attention on determining the true impact of microbes on atopic diseases, while minimising risks of discouraging good hygiene practice.’

 

This broader, societal reading of the “hygiene hypothesis” is seemingly backed up by studies, as, for example, kids are less likely to develop asthma if they grow up on farms. Moreover, if your child lives in a city, he or she is more likely to have a food allergy than kids who reside in the country. This is possibly because of increased exposure to air pollution in cities, and so we can see that it’s not as simple as blaming good hygiene.

Categories: allergies, broader societal, Child, child allergies, food allergies, hygiene, hygiene hypothesis, hygiene practice, hypothesis, Research

Wheat and See: How To Tell If You Have a Wheat Allergy

Wheat intolerance seems to be an ever-increasing wellness threat these days, but this is mainly because people are becoming more aware of it. The more pressing health concern is wheat allergy, which is one of the more common food allergies in children. The problem with this allergy is that wheat can be found in many foods, including things you’d never think of (like beer and ketchup) and so avoiding wheat – which is the primary treatment for wheat allergy – can be a pain. So how can you tell if you or your child has a wheat allergy?

 

People often get confused between wheat allergy and celiac disease, but there is a difference between the conditions. When your wellbeing is affected by a wheat allergy, it means your body has generated an allergy-causing antibody to the proteins found in wheat. If you have celiac disease, on the other hand, it means that one particular protein in wheat — gluten — causes an abnormal immune system reaction in your small intestines. Often, you can tell that you or your child has a wheat allergy is symptoms occur within a few minutes to a few hours after eating something containing wheat. So what should you watch out for?

 

• Swelling, itching or irritation in your mouth or throat


• Hives, itchy rash or swelling in your skin


• Nasal congestion


• Itchy, watery eyes


• Difficulty breathing


• Cramps, nausea or vomiting


• Diarrhoea


• Anaphylaxis

 

This latter symptom – anaphylaxis – is worth looking at in more detail as it can threaten your life. As well as the other, above-mentioned symptoms of wheat allergy, anaphylaxis may cause:

 

• Swelling or tightness in your throat


• Chest pain or tightness


• Severe difficulty breathing


• Trouble swallowing


• Pale, blue skin colour


• Dizziness or fainting


• Fast heartbeat

 

Unfortunately, wheat proteins — and gluten in particular — may be used in a number of prepared foods and sometimes in cosmetics, so identifying the foods that will set you off can be challenging. Wheat foods may include:

 

• Breads, cakes, muffins and biscuits


• Breakfast cereals


• Pasta and couscous


• Farina


• Semolina


• Spelt


• Crackers


• Beer


• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein


• Soy sauce and condiments, such as ketchup


• Meat products, such as hot dogs or cold cuts


• Dairy products, such as ice cream


• Natural flavourings


• Gelatinised starch and modified food starch


• Vegetable gum


• Liquorice, jelly beans and boiled sweets


• Foods containing other grains, such as barley, oat and rye

 

The good news is that a wheat allergy may not be something you have to live with forever. Depending on when the wheat allergy first appears, you may, in fact, outgrow it. If your child develops a wheat allergy during infancy or the early toddler years, the odds are that he or she has other food allergies too. This can be a nightmare as parents, as you’re the ones cooking the dinner, but fortunately children usually outgrow wheat allergy between the ages of three and five. Wheat allergy isn’t as common in adolescents and adults.

 

If you suspect that you or your child is allergic to wheat or another food, it’s important to see your doctor as soon as you can. There are a number of conditions that can cause signs or symptoms associated with wheat allergy, so it’s vital that you get an accurate diagnosis so that you know what you’re dealing with. If it does indeed turn out to be a wheat allergy, and you know you’re prone to having an anaphylactic reaction to wheat or another allergy-causing substance, you need to carry two injectable doses of a drug called epinephrine (adrenaline) with you at all times. Emergency care is essential, even if you have just used an epinephrine shot, as the second dose is a backup in case emergency services aren’t immediately available.

Categories: allergy, allergy causing, anaphylaxis, celiac disease, Child Wellness, difficulty breathing, food allergies, nbsp, nbsp swelling, Wheat, Wheat Allergy

Wheat and See: How To Tell If You Have a Wheat Allergy

Wheat intolerance seems to be an ever-increasing wellness threat these days, but this is mainly because people are becoming more aware of it. The more pressing health concern is wheat allergy, which is one of the more common food allergies in children. The problem with this allergy is that wheat can be found in many foods, including things you’d never think of (like beer and ketchup) and so avoiding wheat – which is the primary treatment for wheat allergy – can be a pain. So how can you tell if you or your child has a wheat allergy?

 

People often get confused between wheat allergy and celiac disease, but there is a difference between the conditions. When your wellbeing is affected by a wheat allergy, it means your body has generated an allergy-causing antibody to the proteins found in wheat. If you have celiac disease, on the other hand, it means that one particular protein in wheat — gluten — causes an abnormal immune system reaction in your small intestines. Often, you can tell that you or your child has a wheat allergy is symptoms occur within a few minutes to a few hours after eating something containing wheat. So what should you watch out for?

 

• Swelling, itching or irritation in your mouth or throat


• Hives, itchy rash or swelling in your skin


• Nasal congestion


• Itchy, watery eyes


• Difficulty breathing


• Cramps, nausea or vomiting


• Diarrhoea


• Anaphylaxis

 

This latter symptom – anaphylaxis – is worth looking at in more detail as it can threaten your life. As well as the other, above-mentioned symptoms of wheat allergy, anaphylaxis may cause:

 

• Swelling or tightness in your throat


• Chest pain or tightness


• Severe difficulty breathing


• Trouble swallowing


• Pale, blue skin colour


• Dizziness or fainting


• Fast heartbeat

 

Unfortunately, wheat proteins — and gluten in particular — may be used in a number of prepared foods and sometimes in cosmetics, so identifying the foods that will set you off can be challenging. Wheat foods may include:

 

• Breads, cakes, muffins and biscuits


• Breakfast cereals


• Pasta and couscous


• Farina


• Semolina


• Spelt


• Crackers


• Beer


• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein


• Soy sauce and condiments, such as ketchup


• Meat products, such as hot dogs or cold cuts


• Dairy products, such as ice cream


• Natural flavourings


• Gelatinised starch and modified food starch


• Vegetable gum


• Liquorice, jelly beans and boiled sweets


• Foods containing other grains, such as barley, oat and rye

 

The good news is that a wheat allergy may not be something you have to live with forever. Depending on when the wheat allergy first appears, you may, in fact, outgrow it. If your child develops a wheat allergy during infancy or the early toddler years, the odds are that he or she has other food allergies too. This can be a nightmare as parents, as you’re the ones cooking the dinner, but fortunately children usually outgrow wheat allergy between the ages of three and five. Wheat allergy isn’t as common in adolescents and adults.

 

If you suspect that you or your child is allergic to wheat or another food, it’s important to see your doctor as soon as you can. There are a number of conditions that can cause signs or symptoms associated with wheat allergy, so it’s vital that you get an accurate diagnosis so that you know what you’re dealing with. If it does indeed turn out to be a wheat allergy, and you know you’re prone to having an anaphylactic reaction to wheat or another allergy-causing substance, you need to carry two injectable doses of a drug called epinephrine (adrenaline) with you at all times. Emergency care is essential, even if you have just used an epinephrine shot, as the second dose is a backup in case emergency services aren’t immediately available.

Categories: allergy, allergy causing, anaphylaxis, celiac disease, Child Wellness, difficulty breathing, food allergies, nbsp, nbsp swelling, Wheat, Wheat Allergy

Is Your Child Being Bullied Because of a Food Allergy?

While food allergies are already a health concern for children, if your child does suffer with allergies their wellbeing may be under threat in other ways; bullying. This is according to a new study, published in the journal Paediatrics, which found that many children with food allergies may be bullied at school – sometimes with potentially dangerous threats to their physical health.

 

As a result of the study, which focused on 251 families at a New York City allergy clinic, the researchers found that about one-third of kids said they’d been bullied specifically because of their food allergy. More often than not, the bullying took place at school in the form of teasing. However, there were many cases in which bullies threatened their victims with the food to which they were allergic – waving it in front of them, throwing it at them or saying they would sneak it into their other food. Dr. Jay Lieberman, an assistant professor of paediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Centre, in Memphis, who was not involved in the study, explained, ‘With food allergies, that kind of bullying does carry a theoretical physical risk.’

 

If a child with a food allergy eats the offensive food, their wellness can be affected by hives, swollen lips, stomach pain and even potentially life-threatening reactions in which the child can’t breathe and their blood pressure plummets. Fortunately, these severe reactions are rare, says lead researcher Dr. Eyal Shemesh, an associate professor of paediatrics and psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City, as parents of food-allergic kids are usually vigilant about avoiding the culprit foods. She explains, ‘What really affects these children’s lives is everything that surrounds the allergy – the food avoidance, the anxiety,’ and the bullying.

 

If other children have to avoid bringing peanut butter to school, for example, they may resent the child who’s allergic. Even in small amounts, peanuts can cause a serious allergic reaction, even through simple skin contact with a peanut. Therefore, both Shemesh and Lieberman note the importance of parents, schools and doctors being aware that food allergies can make kids a target for bullying. When the researchers asked the children about their quality of life – including their emotional wellbeing and how they were getting along at school – children who were bullied reported a lower quality of life than their food-allergic peers who were not targeted.

 

The interesting distinction was that, among the kids who were bullied, those who’d told their parents reported a better quality of life. As to why that was, the researchers remain unclear. Shemesh comments, ‘I don’t know if the parents did something about the bullying. I just know they knew about it.’ Whether the parents called the school or otherwise helped their child, or the kids just felt better after talking with their parents, Shemesh recommends that parents ask their children if other kids have ever bothered them about their food allergy. He also advises educating all children on how serious food allergies are.

 

Dr. Mark Schuster, chief of general paediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, agrees that education about food allergies – for kids and adults – could help. ‘When it comes to food allergy, people often roll their eyes,’ Schuster says. ‘They think that kids are just trying to avoid a food they don’t like. And they may not understand that food allergies can be serious.’ He adds that parents of the children with food allergies also need to be aware of the signs of bullying, such as your child not wanting to go to school, appearing down, and complaining of chronic stomach aches or headaches.

Categories: allergies, bullying, Children, Food, food allergic, food allergies, food allergy, Kids, Parents, Research, york city

Asthma: Changing Diet Can Offer Symptoms Relief

Being diagnosed with a chronic condition such as asthma can be life-changing for many people. As well as learning how to manage the disease, sufferers also have to examine their lifestyle to figure out if changes could benefit their health in the long term.

Diet is often the first thing to be reconsidered – what we eat can have a profound effect on our health. And the symptoms of a condition such as asthma, which is an inflammation of the airways leading to and from the lungs, can often be triggered or exacerbated by certain food products.

Eliminating the possibility of food allergies can be of tremendous benefit to asthma sufferers. You may already be aware of a reaction from some foods, often trigger the symptoms of an attack – food preservatives are particularly known for their effect on asthma sufferers. Common products linked with allergies include dairy, soy, wheat, peanuts and shellfish.

Talk to your doctor about your concerns if you believe you have a food allergy or an intolerance to certain items. Skin tests can be done quickly to establish what products you may be allergic to. You can also try eliminating suspect products from your diet one by one to check if they are responsible for bringing on asthma symptoms.

Histamine, a chemical occurring naturally in certain foods, is also released in the body as part of an allergic reaction – this is what will cause the typing symptoms of allergy such as itching, sneezing, wheezing and swelling. But histamine intolerance is also common and when present, can exacerbate the symptoms of asthma. Foods high in histamine include cheese, mushrooms, tinned vegetables, pickled foods, champagne, wine and beer.

To check if you have a histamine intolerance, get a list of food and drinks high in histamine and again eliminate them one by one from your diet.

As asthma is an inflammatory condition, it helps to include foods that are natural anti-inflammatories in your diet and cut out those known to aggravate inflammation. “Good” foods include those rich in omega 3 fatty acids, whole grains and fruit and vegetables. “Bad” foods include those containing saturated and trans fat and ones high in omega 6 fatty acids.

Asthma: Changing Diet Can Offer Symptoms Relief

Categories: Asthma, asthma sufferers, fatty acids, food allergies, foods, foods include, histamine, histamine intolerance, include, Symptoms