The End of Food Allergy

Sharing my learnings from the book, The End of Food Allergy by Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD & Sloan Barnett

The End of Food Allergy by Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD & Sloan Barnett

New York Times bestselling author Sloan Barnett, the mother of two children with food allergies, provides a lay perspective that helps make Dr. Nadeau’s research accessible for everyone. Together, they walk readers through every aspect of food allergy, including how to find the right treatment and how to manage the ongoing fear of allergens that haunts so many sufferers, to give us a clear, supportive plan to combat a major national and global health issue.

• If you suffer from allergies, do not make any changes to your diet without consulting your doctor
• allergist Gideon Lack developed a revolutionary hypothesis about food allergies
  • early exposure to peanuts help children to be less likely to develop peanut allergies
• food allergies are a global problem, afflicting both children & adults at alarming growing rates
• no single theory fully explains why people suffer from food allergies & many factors are at play
• allergic reactions to a certain type of food happen when the body’s immune system mistakes that food’s proteins for dangerous foreign substances
• the resulting inflammation, muscle contractions & enzyme production lead to 1 or more allergic reactions (itchy skin, hives, shortness of breath, vomiting or bad low blood pressure)
• the prevalence of peanut allergies can’t be explained by genetics or other medical condituons
• the dual-allergen exposure theory suggests that our skin might be one of the main conduits of developing food allergies
• Gideon Lack hypothesized that eating food containing allergens could help babies avoid food allergies & vice versa
• the LEAP (learning early about peanut allergy) study confirmed Lack’s hypothesis that early exposure makes children less likely to develop peanut allegies
• introducing babies to allergenic food seems to be a generally good idea, but if you’re a parent of a child at risk of food allergies, don’t just feed them allergenic food. Talk to a doctor first
• oral immunotherapy (OIT) can reverse already-existing food allergies. It begins by asking the patient to eat a tiny amount of food he’s allergic to then the amount gets slowly increased over a long period of time. Goal is to desensitize the orient to the allergen
• OIT is becoming less demanding, dangerous & time consuming