Dr. Welsey Burks on Food Allergy

Thanks for the comment, Dr. Val!

Here's a link to Dr. Val's podcast with Dr. Wesley Burks, chief of the department of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University Medical Center. He is a leading expert on food allergy. You may be familiar with his name from last year's media coverage on Duke's desensitization studies on peanut allergy.

This Revolution Health interview include questions regarding elimination diets and whether on not children can outgrow food allergies.

Simple Process for Making Allergen-Free Peanuts?

Last year, I attended a lecture at the Danforth Plant Science Center where Dr. Eliot Herman explained that the proteins in peanuts that triggered reactions accounted for 80% of the peanut, making genetic modification as a treatment for peanut allergy very tricky. According to a Science Daily article yesterday, a researcher at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University has invented a way to make allergen-free peanuts, without degrading their taste or quality. Obviously, the release did not share the scientific basis for his invention but Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna's tests showed 100% inactivation of peanut allergens, with negative test results on human serums from severely allergic people. Ahmedna's work is funded through a United States Agency for International Development grant and he is working on applying his process to remove allergens from other foods.

Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Toxins and Food Allergy

Last summer, I blogged about our experience with a chiropractor whose treatment plan for Tanner focused on detoxification. He explained to us that his allergies were caused by toxins in his system that were overwhelming his immune system and throwing them off-balance. As I continue to do more research on possible causes, treatments and resources for food allergies, I'm finding that there is more substantiation for this point of view. Dr. Kenneth Bock, author of Healing the New Childhood Epidemics points to increased toxification as the primary factor in the increase of asthma, allergy, autism and ADHD. Of course, toxins are everywhere... in our water, air and food!

I could bore you with information on all the types of toxins that pervade our daily existence but in the interest of time and sanity, let's focus on food, shall we? As the overzealous label-readers that we are, I don't have to tell you what is in the food we are feeding our children. Dr. Bock says that "The average intake of essential nutrients – including vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids – has steadily declined since the 1980s, and the eating of unhealthy foods has increased. In particular, there has been an increase in the consumption of saturated fats, hydrogenated trans-fats, sugars, and refined carbohydrates." This is important because without the proper nutrients, the body cannot detoxify itself.

There are other medical studies that support the idea that diets with refined oil products contribute to allergic diseases, as do maternal diets with saturated fats.

So on the doctor's advice, we continue to feed our kids real food, which amazingly enough, is hard to do nowadays! Other than the box of Lucky Charms that somehow makes it into the pantry every time daddy goes to the grocery store, we stick with organic. With growing season at our door, we are excited about visiting the local farmers market for fresh fruits and veggies.