Until you or someone you love has to deal with a food allergy - a real one, not merely a dislike - it’s hard to understand what it’s like. Fortunately, I’ve never been as allergic as some of the kids in this article, but that doesn’t mean mine aren’t a problem and that they aren’t serious (I’ve landed in the ER twice in my life because of food reactions).
From the New York Times Magazine we have an article on clinical trials to not only desensitize children to one allergen but to several simultaneously. I’m hoping that within my lifetime we get a standard food allergy treatment and I can leave mine in the dust. Having gone through the environmental desensitization I have some idea of the limitations of this sort of thing, and the inconvenience, but I’d willingly endure a few years of this for a lifetime free of fearing food.
Fascinating. I’d heard of the one-allergen treatment for peanut allergies, basically the same as what’s described here. My son is peanut-allergic but not in the same league as the kids in the article.
I had allergy shots all through my childhood, up until puberty (i.e. 1956 through 1961 or so), which were supposed to desensitize me to a lot of allergens; I was allergic to a lot of things, both foods and environmental.
I didn’t know there was any issue with desensitizing more than one at a time.
If course, I didn’t notice that the shots did a whole lot of good. A lot of my allergies disappeared when I reached puberty, but I always assumed that was due to the changes in my body more than the shots. I’ve put up with food allergies for my entire life, with a few scary accidents, although as I grow older the severity of these allergies seems to be fading.
Roddy
I’ve never heard of shots doing much for food allergies, actually, though they would hopefully help the other allergies. Certainly the shots I took off and on for many years seemed to help with the violent, richter-7 sneezing (which has now, after 18+ years, returned with a vengeance :mad:).
I’d heard of the peanut treatment in the past couple of years. I’m guessing that the multi-allergen regimen is riskier because, well, you’re throwing a lot of different might-kill-you things at the person at once and it’s a huge load.
I really wonder what affect our overly hygienic environment has on children. A possible treatment is fantastic, but what can we do to prevent these allergies from developing in the first place?
Really, I grew up in the bad old days when kids could roam freely and get dirty and while the mushrooms are really the only deadly allergy I have, the projectile vomiting from clams and oysters isn’t pleasant, and the runs from coconut/palm/tropical products isn’t fun the rest of my allergies are pretty minor [mainly itchy eyes and skin, runny noses.] My ‘minor allergies’ are to various types of household and industrial dust, bunny, horse, goat, cat and dog furs/danders, and some assorted plant pollens [very specifically forsythia and pine tree, and whatever the damned grass is around here] which are all very common allergies in the US. Hellfire, I am not allergic to the most common allergy of them all - poison ivy.
