I can hear you now: the benefits?

There are definite benefits to food allergies. We really noticed it lately, as our son’s allergic reactions have declined and we’ve been including more of previously forbidden foods in our diet.

The major problem is junk food. When our son was little, we were religiously abstinent from junk food with the exception of potato chips. Plain potato chips are generally gluten and dairy free. As long as we bought the right flavor and brand, Michael could eat them without mishap. This became our treat of choice.

Otherwise, we lived on an extremely healthy diet. Snacks were usually gluten free crackers with raw veggies or fruit. Sometimes we actually cooked up a bit of chicken and took that along in a small, lunch size cooler. Michael was long and lean and really healthy – other than his allergies. He generally ate much better and much wider variety than most of the kids on our street. (We developed the reputation however of being the one house where you didn’t want to have snack because cookies and packaged goodies were off the menu.)

Another benefit of food allergies was the fact that we made most our food at …

I continue to wonder what makes the body decide to become allergic rather than targeting only foreign invaders. There are many theories on why the body gets fooled into attacking harmless substances; a number of these focus on our continually declining exposure to the germs that past generations encountered.

Which brings me to an interesting story: about three years ago, my son got a pretty good case of chicken pox. It was completely unexpected: he’d been exposed at a large family gathering and I didn’t realize it. A week or two later, he woke up feeling poorly. By the next day, he had the characteristic red spots all over him. He even got them on the soles of his feet!

He was a good sport about it. As long as we kept him parked in front of the TV, watching his favorite shows, he didn’t scratch. At night, I put calamine lotion on him and he drifted off to sleep. His fever stayed pretty low, so I just let his body fight it out with the bug, and didn’t even give him children’s pain reliever.

He was through with the worst of it in about 2-3 days. He’s generally a healthy kid, …

Seems that the experts are always changing their minds on one thing or another, but this one piece of advice to parents remains consistent: breastfeeding actually helps your child to avoid allergies.

However, the experts can’t agree on other aspects of infant feeding. Recent allergy news indicates that there doesn’t seem to be solid evidence for a number of previously recommended practices, including avoiding certain foods while nursing, delaying introduction of solids beyond 6 months or using soy formula (rather than milk-based formulas).

I just can’t buy that the diet of the mother makes no difference to the nursing child.

While many doctors say that you can’t develop an allergy unless you have a direct exposure to a food, it’s clear that mothers all over the world know that breastfeeding babies will react to what their mothers have eaten. Food proteins in the mother’s blood stream can be passed through her milk to the child. For instance, I found with both my kids that I could not eat dairy while I was nursing. Interestingly, they didn’t show the obvious external signs of allergy like hives or eczema at that point, but would be unable to sleep, irritable and almost …

In today’s FDA news, I saw that the new Pollinex Quattro Ragweed vaccine has made it through Phase III trials.

For those not familiar with the process of having a new drug or vaccine approved, it means that this ragweed vaccine is on the doorstep of the FDA for the New Drug Application (NDA) Review. Once the review is done and the pharmaceutical company has answered all questions to the FDA’s satisfaction, the drug will likely be approved for patient use. In fact, most drugs that make it through a Phase III trial successfully will go to market.

While the FDA is the “watchdog” for consumers, and is tasked with ensuring that new drugs are safe, there have been mistakes. A most recent one is the Vioxx debacle, which may have caused as many as 139,000 heart attacks with thousands of patients dead. With this in mind, I was glad to see that the FDA had put a clinical hold on Pollinex Quattro Ragweed due to an adverse event in previous trials of the vaccine. After all, safety should be a primary concern.

In addition to safety, the FDA is also required to look at a drug’s effectiveness. …

Latex allergy creates a significant problem for folks trying to live in our modern world. Everything from the innocuous rubber bands used on produce at the supermarket to party balloons for your kid’s birthday, from gardening gloves to specialized mattresses, contain latex.

Latex allergy occurs most frequently in certain populations. Health care workers may develop it due to daily exposure. Up to 17% of them may be sensitized to one degree or another. Multiple surgeries are another risk factor. As a result, as many as 68% of children with spina bifida also develop latex allergy. Otherwise, it occurs in less than 1 per cent of the US general population.

Common latex products include gloves (for gardening or cleaning), balloons, condoms, diaphragms, adhesive bandages, pacifiers and baby bottle nipples, dental dams, blood pressure cuffs, stethoscope tubing, gutta perch or gutta balota (used to seal root canals), elastic (for clothing) and spandex.

Unfortunately, latex allergy does mean that common contraceptive devices may be off limits. As a result, it’s not so surprising that I’d receive a question from a reader on how to find an easily available alternative to latex condoms.

Trojan has come out with a polyurethane condom under the …