Food Allergy Symptoms Can Be Very Mild

I was flipping through my copy of a book on nutrition for children written by Joel Fuhrman (Disease-Proof Your Child), and I came across this:

 

"A large number of children have marginal intolerance to wheat and other gluten-rich flours. Many kids have subtle allergies to cow's milk that perpetuate their nasal congestion."

 

My experience with my husband has shown me that this is not just an issue with kids. So today's Tip Of The Day is to just be aware that reactions to foods can be subtle as well as severe. 

 

This is from foodallergy.org:

 

"Although an individual could be allergic to any food, such as fruits, vegetables, and meats, there are eight foods that account for 90% of all food-allergic reactions. These are: milk, egg, peanut, tree nut, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat."

 

Just because you are not having an extreme reaction, does not mean there is not some effect. I want to really start a conversation about this. We often hear about the extreme stories of peanut allergies, but I know from personal experience that these commons allergens have a very broad set of effects on people.

I even had someone suggest to me that I have an allergy to MSG, which I did not realize until someone responsed to a blog post I had done. Please let me know your experiences and you can also post them here in a PEERtrainer community discussion about food allergies, and mild food allergies.

Comments

[Jack Needles]

There is actually a book about this subject called 'The False Fat diet' and it is a program to help you figure out which foods cause you to bloat up and add extra weight due to food intolerance or allergy

[barb]

found the following statistics on various websites -

AUSTRALIA: Australia has one of the highest allergic incidence rates in the developed world.
CANADA: Between 3% and 4% of Canadian adults, and nearly 6 % of children suffer from food allergies
GERMANY: The prevalence in children is 3 percent to 6 percent, but can be up to 30 percent in high-risk groups, such as children with eczema.
ITALY: An estimated 6 to 8% of the Italian population has food allergies.
JAPAN: about 7% of population had some form of food allergy.
MALAYSIA: about 30% of young children are likely to develop allergic disorders in the first five years of life.
SWEDEN: one out of 15 children with reported adverse reactions to food.
US: One in every 17 children under the age of 3 has food allergy.

And really serious food reactions are not all that rare - “A study in Arch Intern Med 2001 Jan 8;161(1):15-2, Anaphylaxis in the United States: an investigation into its epidemiology, concluded with “The occurrence of anaphylaxis in the US is not as rare as is generally believed. On the basis of our figures, the problem of anaphylaxis may, in fact, affect 1.21% (1.9 million) to 15.04% (40.9 million) of the US population.” PMID 11146694″

So is this epidemic of food allergies mostly among young children caused by being too clean (hygiene theory - food allergies are unknown in undeveloped countries) in the last 5 years or something else?

1960 - children received on average one or two vaccines
1980 - children received 8-9 vaccines
1990 - children were routinely given 10 vaccines
2000 - Children now receive 33 vaccinations before they enter school
2007 - Children are now to receive 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age six and 53-56 doses of 15 or 16 vaccines by age 12.

Vaccines contain an adjuvant that increases the body’s immune response to the protein in the vaccine. Something that the public and most physicians don’t realize is that the adjuvant can also contain a mixture of vegetable and animal oils that have a trace of food protein in them. This is a protected trade secret and does not have to appear on the package insert. The ingredients of many adjuvants can only be found by reading patents. What are these oils? Soy, sesame, peanut, wheat germ, corn, shellfish, fish, etc.

Can a trace amount of food protein in a vaccine cause food allergy? Yes. This has been known since 1839, when the French physiologist Francois Magendie injected animals to create a food allergy to egg whites.

The food industry has to label food that may contain trace amounts of peanuts or nuts but the pharmaceutical industry is exempt. Shouldn’t your doctor know if he is injecting a peanut-allergic patient with peanut oil?