For parents, a child food allergy is unsettling news. How can they protect their child from all contact with a particular food? Where will they find food allergy recipes? What if other kids tease and make fun of their condition? Parents have always struggled to help their children with food allergies that make life much more difficult, but researchers are slowly developing the opinion that small exposure to the allergens will gradually build tolerance in most kids. Children with shellfish or peanut allergies may always suffer, but a number of kids can outgrow their sensitivity to certain foods.
It was once presumed that the only way to treat a child food allergy was to keep from any contact with that food for the rest of one’s life. For people who test positive for allergies to dairy, milk, chicken, pork, oats, barley, rice, eggs, beans and wheat, this prognosis can seem like a death sentence. Yet a new approach is being implemented in several allergy clinics throughout America. A number of patients respond to a food challenge, which incrementally raises the patient’s dosage of the allergen until tolerance is reached.
Anaphylactic shock is one danger of this sort of child food allergy test. In rare cases, a child with a severe allergy may suffer low blood pressure, stop breathing, turn slightly blue, lose consciousness and suffer multiple organ failure. Even if a child has only suffered a mild reaction in the past, there is still a possibility the next reaction may be more severe. Unfortunately, there are no tests to determine whether a reaction to peanuts will be a mild tingle in the mouth, a moderate case of hives or anaphylactic shock. On the other hand, being in a clinical setting is much safer than discovering an allergy out in the real world, where medical equipment isn’t ready to administer treatment for food allergy emergencies.
The key aspect of diagnosing a child food allergy is to check the child’s dietary history. “What did he eat? What sort of reaction did he have?” the doctor will ask. Next, the doctor may propose a skin-prick test or blood test for extra verification. “When you come to me and say, ‘My child ate a peanut butter sandwich and in 15 minutes, his lips turned blue, he threw up and he got hives,’ that’s enough to tell me the child has a peanut allergy,” says Dr. Hugh Sampson of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “The more average history is that they were eating a meal and he had this horrendous reaction and they think it’s peanuts. It’s essential to perform a blood or skin test to make sure.”
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.”
If you’re wondering about the different types of food allergies, visit our site on Food Allergies in Children for the facts you need.
