When I was a kid, I don’t remember anyone I knew having a food allergy. Maybe it was just that I was a kid and not paying attention, but studies are showing that childhood allergies are on the rise.
In the 10 years between 1997 and 2007, food allergies were up approximately 18 percent. In 2007 alone, 3 million children reportedly suffered from a food or digestive allergy to such items as nuts, wheat, eggs, or milk.
Dr. Susan Rudders and her research team studied emergency room visits due to allergic reactions at Children’s Hospital Boston from 2001 until 2006. The study, which involved 1,255 children, showed that visits had more than doubled and had worsened – many more children were experiencing anaphylaxis.
And the study results in Boston are echoed in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where doctors are reporting a rise in childhood allergies. Chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, Dr. James M. Rubin, thinks the rise may be because of “better detection on part of parents, pediatricians, and primary care physicians.”
Still, other doctors wonder if children should be exposed to things like nuts and shellfish at earlier ages to prevent allergies. In 2008, a study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology showed that Jewish Israeli children studied were less likely than Jewish British children to develop allergies to peanuts. The study pointed out the face that 69 percent of the Israeli children had been exposed to peanuts by the age of nine months, whereas only 10 percent of the British Children had.
Still other doctors think it may be our Western diet that makes our children more susceptible to allergies. A study at the University of Florence in Italy suggested that meat and junk food may make children more prone to allergies. This suggestion was base on studies of African children, who ate diets primarily of grains, beans, nuts, and vegetables and Italian children who ate more meat, sugar, and fat. The African children also had less of a problem with allergies as well as obesity.
But there’s even more. Some are suggesting it isn’t just our diet, but our way of life. In what is called the “hygiene hypothesis,” some think that a child who grows up in an environment that is too clean prevents him or her from exposure to immune system-building bacteria, which might protect them from allergies as well.
Do you have a child that suffers from allergies?