Can You Prevent Food Allergies?
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a foolproof way to prevent food allergies in children? Especially in children who are especially at risk by dint of genetics because a parent or sibling has already been diagnosed with a severe food allergy?
Talk of a "food allergy vaccine" remains just that --- talk. In the meantime, parents hoping to shield infant children from developing food allergies later in life have to navigate through often conflicting medical studies, especially concerning breastfeeding. Determining whether to nurse, how long to nurse, when to introduce solid foods, and what kind of diet to eat during nursing can be fraught with peril for parents. And for parents who choose not to breastfeed, or who can't breastfeed for whatever reason, the idea that choices made during the infant period could have prevented life-threatening allergies can be emotionally laden (to say the very least).
Some recommendations have been constant for years for both children at high risk of food allergies and children with no particular risk factors, like weaning children to new foods one at a time and making sure foods are tolerated well before introducing additional ones.
While recent months have seen a flurry of studies regarding early life feeding choices and how they may relate to later development of food allergies and allergic conditions like asthma and eczema, major medical groups like the ACAAI and AAP have, thus far, not made major changes in recommendations. Eminent allergist Scott Sicherer noted that "families with an atopic child . . . need not feel guilty that they caused the allergy by following or not following the advice of various expert panels" in a paper in the October 2007 Journal of Pediatrics. There is, at this time, no single practice that has been shown to prevent allergies in any particular child. Best practices from major medical groups are simply what has been demonstrated, in a majority of studies, to have some effect in a large population group. And as always, your pediatrician and allergist are your best sources for recommendations for your family and your child.
Comments
There is, at this time, no single practice that has been shown to prevent allergies in any particular child. Best practices from major medical groups are simply what has been demonstrated, in a majority of studies, to have some effect in a large population group.
Yes. Wow, I’m so glad to see this written so clearly and by an expert. This is part of what makes dealing with food allergies so confusing, especially for friends and family. There is such a confluence of factors that may or may not affect whether someone has a food allergy, and medical science hasn’t figured out the answers yet. While this is frustrating, it’s somewhat comforting, too, to know that we are all in this together, doing the best we can.
Thank you!
And it’s wonderful, to my mind, that there *is* so much research going on in this area — it seems like every few weeks there’s another major announcement.