Allergy Enlightenment

I've been reading a very helpful book called Understanding and Managing Your Child's Food Allergies by Sicherer, and my son's food allergies are finally starting to make sense. Yes my son tested positive for allergies for a myriad of food (and environmental) triggers, but for some of these there are things I can do. Unfortunately, for the milk and peanut anaphalaxis type of responses there is nothing I can do but wait for the peanut vaccine and wait for my son to outgrow the milk allergy.

Many of the proteins found in the fruits and vegetables are similar to the pollens my son is allergic to. Fortunately these proteins denature easily. All I have to do is cook or add lemon juice to them and then they are safe. I noticed this phenomena before reading this book. When my son would bite into a banana, he would instantly spit it out and say that his mouth hurt, but if I cooked the banana in banana bread, he would want more. I wasn't entirely sure if cooking the banana or diluting the banana with other ingredients made it more tolerable. I still didn't like the idea of giving him anything that has made him hurt in any form, but now I feel a little more reassured that I am not somehow poisoning my son by giving him cooked banana. Yeah! Now we have cooked tomatos and cucumbers again in the form of ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and pickles due to this information!

The fish allergy is a little scary. My oldest brother mistakenly ate a fish nugget having been told it was a chicken nugget while at a party. He immediately reacted with symptoms of anaphalaxis. Luckily, he was at a party full of doctors and a friend was able to quickly administer an injection of epinephrine from an epipen. That being said... my son has an allergy to codfish, but tested negative for tuna and salmon. Supposedly eating canned tuna and salmon lessen the likelyhood of a reaction in fish-allergic people.

I now think shellfish are truly nasty. Apparently people allergic to shellfish are often allergic to cockroaches and dust mites. This is because they share a common ancestry. Gross! Naturally, my son is allergic to all of these. The dust mite allergy is about to cost me a bunch of money in treating my house for dust mites. The environment where I live is a natural breeding ground for dust mites.

Good news. Corn is not reacting. (Thank you God!) The huge scary positive result on his skin test was due to corn resembling a grass or weed that he is environmentally allergic to. Speaking of environmental allergies, I am beginning to think that there was a mistake that my son is allergic to dog. He wrestles with our puppy and there is no sign of any real allergy. Perhaps like the corn reaction crossed over to an environmental reaction the dog reaction crossed over to a food reaction. So as long as I don't feed my son the dog we are okay. :)

My son's milk reaction is scary. He ate a little turkey sausage not all that long ago that contained a milk part in it and immediately had a severe reaction with an asthma attack. It does not suprise me that 10% of children severely allergic to milk are also allergic to beef. A small number of milk proteins are naturally found in beef (and unnaturally found in turkey sausage). Is it mammalian milk and meat that my son has a problem with? Is that why pork showed up as an allergy? Is that another reason why dog showed up? :)

There is a reason my son did not test positive for an allergy to almonds although he tested positive for all the other tree nuts. Even though almonds are counted as tree nuts, they are really related to apples and pitted fruits. As long as his almonds have not been in contact with other tree nuts then they should be safe to eat! Hurray!

Here is some more food for thought. Food reactions are not limited to the medical definition of allergy which is a reaction by the IgE response. There can be IgG response and IgA responses which are also immune responses although not "allergies" by the medical definition, and there can pharmacologic reponses and other intolerances. So a trip to the allergist may not help you if you are reacting in a way other than the "medical definition of allergy". I feel sorry for the people that go to an allergist having allergic type syptoms due to a response that is not IgE. Most likely they will not get any help. We had the IgE responses going and it took us until the third allergist to get any good information.

Also note that the benzoate and paraben perservatives have been known to induce allergic-type of reactions to include anaphalaxis. It is possible that these perservatives can cause true IgE food reactions. I found this interesting and not suprising.

(I still need more information on the egg, wheat, and soy allergies. Hopefully I'll be enlightened soon.)