Milk is often touted as “the perfect food.” One distraught lactose-intolerant patient amended that claim by stating, “Milk is the perfect food . . . for cows.” Around the world, cow’s milk is the most common cause of food allergy, especially in children, because they drink the most milk at an age when (more…)
Food reactions can involve the airway anywhere from the tip of the nose to the bottom of the lungs, resulting in any or all the following symptoms:
· Nasal congestion or runny nose.
· Swelling of the throat or airway, as described (more…)
Food allergy may present with a wide array of signs and symptoms. (The term present is doctor lingo for how a condition shows up in your body.) Food reactions typically involve the following three major (more…)
Families frequently ask my colleagues and me to estimate the risk that their next child will develop food allergy. These are typically families who already have at least one child with food allergy, so the odds may already be tipped against them. Although we’re reasonably good at predicting (more…)
When you consider all the new developments in foods, medications, and other substances introduced into our lives over the past 30 years, you can easily become suspicious of numerous items that may have (more…)
When you’re growing up, adults, whom you assume know what’s good for you tell you to practice proper hygiene. By the time you’re six years old, the phrases “Wash your hands,” “Brush your teeth,” (more…)
If you grew up in the ’60s or ’70s, you may never have heard the term “food allergy.” Your classmates and playmates probably were able to eat whatever they wanted free from the fear of a reaction. Perhaps your entire school had only one or two kids with food allergies if (more…)
When a food makes you sick, you may be inclined to blame it on a food allergy, but foods can make you ill for other reasons — the most common of which is that you have an intolerance of the food. With food intolerance, symptoms occur because your body has trouble digesting (more…)
When AIDS first captured the headlines, mobs of the irrational and uninformed gave their fears free reign. They imagined the worst possible scenarios — their children catching AIDS by sharing a desk with a fellow student who had AIDS, the possibility of passing AIDS through a handshake or a hug, mosquitoes (more…)
Once you’ve experienced an allergic reaction, the first question is often “How bad will the next one be?”
The rule of thumb for predicting the severity of your next reaction is that the higher your sensitivity and the more allergen you ingest above and beyond your threshold the worse the reaction. In other words, if you (more…)