Toggle navigation
Toggle navigation
Home
DCUM Forums
Nanny Forums
Events
About DCUM
Advertising
Search
Recent Topics
Hottest Topics
FAQs and Guidelines
Privacy Policy
Your current identity is: Anonymous
Login
Preview
Subject:
Forum Index
»
Health and Medicine
Reply to "Increase in peanut allergies??"
Subject:
Emoticons
More smilies
Text Color:
Default
Dark Red
Red
Orange
Brown
Yellow
Green
Olive
Cyan
Blue
Dark Blue
Violet
White
Black
Font:
Very Small
Small
Normal
Big
Giant
Close Marks
[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]- 2 kids - Clean diet during pregnancy, virtually all organic and included nuts - Fed organic foods until age 5; diet still mostly organic - Few processed foods - No screens (at all) until after age 2 - Pets in the house since birth, which is supposed to be protective. - SAHP who provided lots of outdoor time when they were little, including playing in nature and digging in the dirt. - Minimal antibiotics or other medications - [b]Fed peanuts and nuts once it was recommended (age 3).[/b] Both kids have food allergies. One ate nuts and peanuts until age 7, when she had sudden anaphylaxis and almost died. She now has severe anaphylactic allergies to peanuts and tree nuts, as well as suspected celiac (we went gluten free before doing the testing). The other has multiple, less severe food allergies. Tell me, what did we do wrong? How is this the parents' fault?[/quote] You didn't do anything wrong, and it's not your fault. The highlighted above used to be the recommendation to parents to avoid allergies, especially peanut allergies. It's not anymore. I posted about this upthread. Right around the time my DD was born, the medical community became aware of comparative studies on food allergies indicating that the prevailing wisdom at the time, which was to be very cautious about exposing young kids to known allergens, was probably wrong. And that especially for peanut and tree nut allergies, it is likely better for kids to be exposed young, and for even those kids who experience an allergic reaction to be treated with exposure to peanuts and tree nuts (starting in small controlled doses and building up) rather than in trying to create a peanut free cocoon. But they just figured this out a few years ago! If your kids were born today, your doctor would likely encourage you to expose your kids to nuts between 6mo and a year. My pediatrician actually gave me a hard time when I told her I hadn't given my baby peanuts yet (because I was afraid, because of what I'd previously heard about allergies). And she was right. It's not parents fault. We were given bad advice on the basis of an incorrect assumption made by the medical community. Go talk to a pediatrician about allergies now. They are seeing fewer peanut allergies in kids exposed to peanuts by age 1, and they are seeing success in reducing the severity of, or even eliminating, peanut allergies in young kids via exposure. I think one reason you see higher rates of peanut allergies in UMC and wealthy American kids is that they have very good access to medical care and have parents who are likely to follow the advice of their pediatrician to the t. So when pediatricians said "don't expose your kids to nuts!" everyone followed suit, daycares and preschools banned nuts, and an entire generation of well-off American kids didn't get a chance for their immune system to acclimate to peanuts. It's not about blaming parents, it's about correcting our assumptions. We made some bad assumptions. I'm sorry it impacted your kids. I definitely don't blame you for their allergies![/quote]
Options
Disable HTML in this message
Disable BB Code in this message
Disable smilies in this message
Review message
Search
Recent Topics
Hottest Topics