How To Desensitize Your Child To A Food Allergy

The news is suddenly full of new recommendations on how to keep your baby allergy free. But what if it is too late to prevent allergies in your household? What if you’ve already seen your little one break out in hives, swell into a bawling bruised tomato or some other scary reaction? Have the great advances in allergy understanding just come too late for you and your kid? No. Especially if your child is still relatively young.  The newest treatment, under study by experts at Northwestern University in Chicago, involves educating the immune system on the safety of, say, peanuts, by attaching peanut proteins to white blood cells. This interaction safely helps the immune system learn to accept peanuts in the same way we might cordially befriend the friend of our best friend. So far, the research has only been done in mice, but the researchers are hopeful the technique will soon transfer to humans. Various versions of oral immunotherapy are already being used, with the immune system becoming “re-educated” when the patient eats and digests the offending substance in tiny amounts that are gradually increased. I did this for my daughter to desensitize her to a severe egg allergy. On doctor’s orders (don’t go it alone), I made a cake for 5-month old Clara with just one egg and gave her 1/20 of it every day. After several months of this, I put two eggs in a cake and then three. By the time she was 2, she no longer had painful facial swelling after ea...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news