Ds's friend is allergic to all fruit?

[Frontier]

Really? I've offered them strawberries. If he's really allergic, I'll offer something else (have already offered alternative fruit). Uf it's just that he doesn't fancy what's on offer he can go without!

Mum has never mentioned it but he is 14!

[springdrinks]

DH is pleased by this thread! He has OAS for all fruits (except either cooked or frozen) and fruit type veg, eg tomato, avocado, cucumber and pepper. He can eat lettuce, cold carrot etc. MIL didn't believe him until his lips doubled in size after eating an apple.

[GloriousGloria]

My DS is allergic to lots of fruits and strawberries bring out the worst reaction.

He is 13 he isn't hankering for a biscuit instead he is allergic.

Perhaps offer him some crackers maybe Xx

[kiritekanawa]

myusernameis - gut flora certainly isn't the only explanation at all. Do you have an atopic family history (i.e. lots of people who have had hayfever and asthma etc going back generations)? There's undoubtedly fairly clear genetic susceptibility to allergy.

However stuff like gut flora and historical contingency may explain a lot of the variance that isn't accounted for by straight genetics - i.e. why some people end up allergic to a lot of stuff and others in the same family don't.

So, I'm a C section and my sister isn't. We have the same atopic family history, but I also moved hemispheres as a young adult, and got horrendous hayfever. So now I'm allergic to all sorts of stuff, and she isn't. Two small risk factors that change how our mature immune systems work.

The diet of your grandparents could certainly affect your immune system, and indirectly your gut flora.

Various studies show that nutritional status and metabolic status of mothers affect baby's immunological, metabolic and cardiovascular health in later life, e.g. the outcomes of the Dutch famine at the end of WW2. So if your parents have poor nutritional status, smoking-related cardiovascular disease and pre-diabetes, and have a baby, and if that baby then has pre-diabetes and chronic inflammation when she in turn has a child, then yes, indirectly but by fairly direct mechanisms, the health of your grandparents affects you. It's also passed down the male line - study of swedish farmers going back centuries showed that grandfathers who go through a famine have grandsons who had higher relative risk of death .

Similarly, indirectly you get your grandparents' gut flora, not just culturally by having aspects of the same diet, but you get your gut flora from your mother during normal delivery, or if you're born by c-section you get your gut flora mostly from your mother's skin (which is why being born by C-section you have abnormal gut flora, and - assuming the link with immunity - C section is a risk factor for irritable bowel type diseases, and allergy).

Also there's "normal" food (a lot of which is quite surprisingly highly processed) and "McDonalds" levels of processed - I think that "normal" food is probably processed enough to really mess with gut flora.

I grew up eating very healthily, with parents who cared a lot about nutrition, no salt, not much fat, etc - but we still ate white pasta and shop bread, and looking back it was a very low-fibre diet compared to what it could have been, even though it was a high-fibre diet compared to nearly everyone we knew.

[myusernameis]

kiritekanawa that's interesting about the gut flora. Personally I don't fit the bill with my diet and I have loads of allergies but I suppose allergies have been around for longer than sliced bread so it makes sense not everyone with allergies would have the same diet. Or could the diet of my grandparents affect my gut flora?

[PPaka]

Kid today told me he was allergic to gingerbread biscuits. "Really, that's interesting" I said
"Yes, cos once I had them and I sneezed loads!!"

[LemonSquares]

OAS - is very interesting.

In my 20's I had that reaction to uncooked banana - family thought I was mad - though I have hay fever since teens and have in 30's developed asthma.

Didn't touch them for a few years and then it was fed by a DC and found I was fine again.

DH is is same field as someone who is very allergic to all dairy - and people don't take it seriously as the poor chap frequently ends up rushed to hospital - though even there he hasn't always been safe as they given him medication coated in some diary derivative.

So I'd always assume the allergy is real - though I do know some people who claim reactions when they really aren't but why take a risk.

[wheresthelight]

My dd has a severe reaction to citric acid in fruit and minor one to the fructose. pineapple makes her look like she has been in a major car crash (she is 1)

[kiritekanawa]

Myusernameis - not dissing your point about pesticides, air pollution etc, but i think the people who focus only on those are missing a big, biologically relevant part of the story: your intestinal microbial ecology.

As well as air pollution and pesticides, the other thing that's really common now is people eating a lot of highly processed food, often without much fibre. This is something that has been an obvious change in the last 1-2 generations, whereas really high levels of air pollution and pesticides have been around for longer, more like 3 generations for pesticides and about 6 for air pollution in some cities. Obviously different biological mechanisms take different lengths of time, but processed food is on the right timescale to correlate with the huge rise in allergy.

There's been some cool research recently (only recently been possible, due to changes in how people sequence genes) showing that gut flora in people who eat unprocessed, high-fibre diets are very, very different from gut flora in people who eat the white-bread white-rice white-pasta packet-sauce processed-meat shop-cake western diet.

Now whether this is down to high-fibre or other aspects of the diet, we know that gut flora have a huge knock-on effect on general health. So if you change what food you eat, you may well mess with your gut flora, and what they're doing and how you're reacting to it.

Some recent research has shown that you can eliminate peanut allergy in mice by changing their gut flora.

There's also recent research showing that you can significantly reduce asthma, in mice, by feeding them high-fibre diets.

So there may well be a strong relationship between gut flora and allergy...

[FridayJones]

Wow, someone else has the chlorophyll/green food/can't mow lawns thing.
Thought it was just me.
Full on blasting asthma attack if I go within smelling distance of a lawn being mowed. Not remotely amusing. Used to love the smell of fresh mowed lawn before I got allergies (pesticides exposure) too, and playing in the cuttings.

[myusernameis]

I'm also allergic to a lot of fruits and some veg and tend to avoid all fruit because it isn't worth the hassle. Some fruits I react really badly to, I've reacted to peaches, plums and nectarines when my dp has eaten them in the same room as me. Yet doctors refuse to believe I get anything more than localised itching.

Haven't watched that allergy programme yet but will be interested to find out. My own theory is that it is to do with pesticides etc and intensive farming... I don't know maybe air pollution also has a part to play. Allergies are certainly so common now.

[Newbiecrafter]

My understanding is that if you,ve had an anaphylactic reaction once, you should be prescribed one.

[Newbiecrafter]

Thanks kiri.

Can I ask, what's the difference between cloudy and non cloudy juice? I have noticed my dd sometimes coughs for a bit when she has apple juice, which is pretty much once a day. I have carried on with it as I,m worried if I stop, she'll develop an allergy to it.

It's odd because we were told to continue giving the foods she can eat on a regular basis, otherwise she could develop an allergy to them. But the opposite is also true. She was eating jackets at school for lunch most days and now she can't eat them without getting diarrhoea. It is so so frustrating!

Thanks for the advice. Xxx

[kiritekanawa]

Glace - is that that your allergist consultant won't prescribe one, or your GP? If the latter, see a different GP...

However, it's worth knowing that I've lived in countries where I haven't had access to epipens (because nobody gets prescribed them and they cost hundreds of dollars and go out of date in a few months), for the last 4 years, and I haven't needed one. And TBH all my anaphylactic reactions have been on a timescale where an epipen from an ambulance crew or even in A&E would have been soon enough.

However if I go anywhere that I don't have easy access to an ambulance, I do sort out an epipen, despite the frankly ridiculous cost.

[GlaceDragonflies]

Yes re potatoes, my DS gets appalling stomach cramps after eating them. Once is OK, any more than once a week and he's ill for 3 days

[GlaceDragonflies]

When I get hay fever only one eye gets watery and itchy (always the same one) so I don't believe the stuff about it only being an allergic reaction if both eyes react.
As for the epipen, if they won't prescribe one then we're stuck aren't we?

[kiritekanawa]

Just a point to those who are told don't worry about anaphylaxis. I went from swollen lips and tongue and red watery eye, for a few years (was repeatedly told by an immunologist friend twat that it couldn't be an allergic reaction if it was only one eye getting red ), into anaphylaxis happening repeatedly over a few months. No obvious trigger except that it was hayfever season.

So please do take seriously the idea that this is potentially fatal, carry an epipen, and know what to avoid.

BTW Newbiecrafter apple juice from concentrate should be fine. But not cloudy apple juice if she's showing signs of allergy to apples, pears, stone fruit. The cross reactions are a bit unpredictable, but they tend to go in clumps, so all blossom fruit (apples, peaches, cherries etc) go together; soy, kiwi and latex go together - but apples and soy is less common.

[kiritekanawa]

another OAS one here - this is absolutely real and the list of things you're allergic to can grow and grow to really embarrassing proportions. I've had anaphylactic reactions to stone fruits, but am allergic to almost everything in fruit, nuts, vegetables, dairy, soy - except bananas and oranges (both of which I hate). This is real, and tends to be worse in hayfever season, and it can also be unpredictable - for example, while I am allergic to latex, I can eat kiwifruit (which crossreacts with latex) up to a certain level of ripeness, and beyond that level, my mouth will swell up. Capsicum is an issue with really fresh capsicum, but the somewhat old ones I encounter in certain supermarkets are ok.

I'm reluctant to just give up basically all fruit and veg, so I persist in eating things that don't always cause reactions.

The kid will probably know what he's allergic to - ask him. And if you want to offer a snack that's not biscuits, something like toast would work. But probably not carrot sticks without asking first... I'm allergic to those too!

[Newbiecrafter]

Potatoes are one of the night shades too. They do funny things to me too. I can eat them sometimes and be fine. Other times they give me terrible stomach issues.
Xxx

[GlaceDragonflies]

Thanks Newbie, it was garlic and chilli pilau rice and a curry with lentils, potatoes and chick peas so plenty of scope there for it,to be any of those things. No aubergine though but almost,certainly cumin. I use that a lot myself when cooking though.
It could have been the potatoes as they are only thing that I rarely eat as my ds has an allergy to them, he had allergy testing not long ago and reacted to them on the test.

[Surfsup1]

I know someone who is allergic to ALL uncooked fruit and veg. Cooked is fine.

[capant]

I know an adult who is allergic to all fruit except bananas. It is something in fruit, can't remember what. She loves fruit, but it makes her face swell up and she gets a really bad rash. So yes, thsi can be a real allergy.

[Solo]

My Dd can't eat raw apples as she breaks out in eczema. Thankfully, it is only that though.

[ProcessYellowC]

PS I was going to warn fellow Birch-related OAS sufferers to watch out for soya milk but then didn't want to be alarmist - but another google confirms to look out for it. I learned the hard way because although with fruit I knew after a mouthful or two that it was triggering my allergy so I could stop eating, it is surprisingly easy to get a truckload of chocolate soya milk down your gullet in a short space of time ... before realizing that it is setting off an allergic reaction.

general oas link

[unrealhousewife]

I know someone with an allergy to fruit but it was triggered by pesticides.

[ProcessYellowC]

Another OAS - I know it's bad to but I'm self-diagnosed and all the symptoms marry up perfectly.

Again, like someone else it developed just after I gave birth. When I went to see the GP she just said it could be indigestion (nope, I knew indigestion from pregnancy). Interestingly when I first googled my symptoms around 5 years ago I found OAS buried away in a couple of academic articles, now it is all over the net! My very lay-person understanding is that for hayfever sufferers, some of the proteins in the fruit have a similar structure to the pollen that your body has always thought is trying to kill you, and as you get older your immune system gets confused between pollen/fruit proteins and so it gets all militant over these fruit proteins too.

OP sorry I think your thread has been part-hijacked by an OAS support group! So what happened in the end with your DS' friend? Did his mum confirm it?