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Do You Overreact To A Child Food Allergy?
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a child food allergy is more common than they had thought. In fact, in kids under 18, 12% tested positive for a milk allergy, 9% for a peanut allergy, 7% for an egg allergy and 5% for a shrimp allergy. Of course, these numbers may admittedly be over-inflated because their 2005-2006 sampling only showed that the kids tested positive for the presence of immunoglobulin E antibodies, which doesn’t necessarily mean they will have allergies. Additionally, these numbers also include those with digestive disorders (which is different than the immune system response of an allergy). Experts suspect that one-tenth of the children who test positive for the IgE antibodies will have a reaction.
What about food allergies in babies? When four week old Grayson Grebe got eczema on his cheeks, his mother began to worry. Two months later, he was diagnosed with every food allergy in the book, including wheat, dairy, egg, bean, oat, rice, barley, chicken, pork, corn and peanut. His mother stopped eating these foods, but her baby’s condition did not improve. By 10 months, the doctors had cut out fruits and vegetables and put Grayson on a special hypo-allergenic formula. His eczema was so severe he needed to wear special mittens, long-sleeved shirts and long pants to prevent him from scratching. Once treated at the National Jewish Health center that specializes in allergies and respiratory diseases, doctors gave Grayson food challenges — gradually exposing him to small doses of the foods he was supposedly allergic to. “We came home with 12 foods he could eat,” Amy Grebe recalls. “It’s made so much difference in our lives.”
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.
More often than not, a child food allergy is little more than an overreaction. “I see it all the time. A family goes in for one thing and comes back with a laundry list of foods they are supposedly allergic to,” says Jodi Stokes, who runs a support group for allergic families in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I tell them to go to a board-certified allergist who knows how to interpret these tests.” Robert Wood, the director of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at John Hopkins, believes that blood tests for kids with food allergies are being possibly overused and definitely misinterpreted. “A lot of these kids truly have food allergies, just not to all the foods that they are being told they have allergies to,” he explains. It’s easy to dismiss allergies on foods kids have been eating for years.
Jeremy Larson is a foremost expert in acid reflux home remedies. His work has been extensively published in various online publications in this area. For more information on the treatment for acid reflux, visit RemedyForAcidReflux.com.