Aibu To not really understand why so many children have food allergies?

[daftpunk]

Babies are weaned later ......? I didn't know anyone allergic to nuts or milk when I was at school, can someone explain it?

ive never had any allergies, hay fever anything like that. always had dogs hamsters when young. i eat everything. totally non fussy.
my son had bad eczema when v young baby(exclus breast fed for 6mths)
and is allergic to eggs.... i would not wish this on anyone.
first time and of course only time i gave him scrambled eggs when weening....luckily he hardly ate any
but went red blotchy, whole face swollen up, very upset and trying to scratch, temperature.
its very very scarey.
hes since had test at docs confirming the allergy.
im a v laid back parent BUT this is worrying. when i picked him up from nursery recently his face was blotch and he was itching it and started to get upset
he was sat having tea with the other toddlers. they were all having scram egg. he was just having toast.
to my mind toddlers are messy eaters at the best of times. he should not be seated right next to a bowl of scrambled egg!!!! anyway. sry i went off on tangent there
but i agree to an extent....there seems to be lots of talk about allergies these days
but its scarey when you are confronted with a real one not just an intolerance.

incidentally tho the medical prof say my son may grow out of this,
they will keep re-testing every year to see

Carrie: why did it take you 9 months to make a decision about eating nuts in pregnancy?......even with the info you've given me I still don't understand.

It may be just me, but I can't really see the point of arguing about what may or may not be the cause of allergies when apparently even the most qualified of doctors and researchers admit that, in spite of their extensive data, they don't really know. It seems to me that all this guesswork and pointing the finger at other parents is rather counter-productive. Surely if a child turns out to be sensitive or allergic to a particular food, the answer is to avoid it. There is no need for competitiveness about how severe the allergic reaction is, or for accusing people of being over-protective for avoiding giving their dc's foods if they are 'only' sensitive to them rather than having a life-threatening allergy.

i think cutting a pile of things out in pregnancy and not introducing it to a child til they're a certain age is half the problem
i didnt avoid most of the foodstuff i was told to in pregnancy
but then im no medical expert

it's because we're all inbred

I married a person with allergies and I have allergies.

Therefore my children have allergies.

My father had allergies, his father had allergies and on it goes.

There have always been people with allergies it just probably wasn't as well diagnosed.

And then we all went and married each other and created lots of mini allergy sufferers

Mawbroon.. the first time my DS2 had penut butter he immediately started to wretch and was doing little choking noises. I did think 'oh no' but his reaction was just one of 'bluegh', he didnt like the taste and did the quite usual toddler over-reaction to it

I wasn't reckless in pregnancy, I didn't rush out and eat foods I'd never eaten before.....I always take advice, (I'm not a raw fish eater anyway).....I didn't stop eating nuts, or anything I normally eat.......but as someone said....there isn't a link between what is eaten in pregnancy and allergies anyway,....... sorry if I've got that wrong, following this from my phone....

I had terrible allergies as a child - I was in and out of hospital with eczema and asthma and was allergic to eggs, milk and peanuts amongst other things. This was 30-odd years ago, before allergies were fashionable. There were one or two other kids in school with similar problems, but we stood out.

I remain atopic and allergic to peanuts. My mother was forced to give me some formula in the maternity hospital a couple of days after I was born, and she says the eczema only showed up after the formula was given. Apparently when she had my brother a couple of years later, she picked him up and ran out of the hospital in her nightie to avoid the formula again. He remains free of any lurgies and allergies to this day. I've had "non dairy formula ONLY" inscribed on my notes in case the issue arises with DC.

As for the increase, I think it's a combination of increased diagnosis, a modicum of fashionability (there is a certain modishness to it for certain people) and a smidge of "who knows?"

Sooty I was late with infant ones and missed a lot of others. They have had some, about a third of the schedule. They have no allergies that I know of.

Daftpunk, you seem to be decrying parents who spend time researching a very important decision. I think that's very strange. I also think you must be the perfect patient! "Take the red pill, take the yellow pill etc.."

I don't know about being a perfect patient?... but I expect my doctor to know more about medicine than I do......because if he doesn't,.. I want his job.

Even some doctors agree that some patients know more about their ailments than you do.

What about parents? Don't you believe the parents who say "something happened?"

Did You decide to listen to the clown who linked autism to the mmr vaccine....? I wouldn't give him a job in a circus.... ..what about the parents who say something happened? Can answer that in two words .....blame culture.

Goodness.

Your tone is offensive and deliberately ignorant, as if you don't want to know.

I must admit I wouldn't pride myself on a snap decision about the health of my child.

Back to the OP: the first reports of MMR adverse events that reached the newspapers were of children suffering new immune disorders and allergies.

People were wiping the floor with his "research" years ago.....that's all I'm saying, sorry.

Yes.. I don't really think you know enough about it.

WARNING Long and rambling and of little interest.

It took me 9 months to decide because when I was pg with ds1 the advice from the mw was do not eat nuts if you or your dh has any allergies or asthma. My dh has mild asthma and hayfever. I don't eat nuts very much so I didn't have to make a decision as such. I just ate my normal diet but if I had eaten a lot of nuts I would have cut them out. In those days it was practically a no brainer. The official advice was don't do it and I didn't have to change my behaviour to comply with the advice.

Same story with dd. Ds1 was undiagnosed when I was pg with her. The official advice was unchanged. I didn't consider my dcs to be high risk as loads of people have the very mild allergic disease that my DH has and don't have a child with a nut allergy.

By the time I was pg with ds2 I knew that ds1 had a peanut allergy and dd didn't. I had avoided nut with both so I couldn't say that if I avoid nuts this time then ds2 would be fine. I also couldn't say that by eating nuts he would be fine. I knew that he had an increased risk of developing a nut allergy as siblings of allergic children have a 7% chance of developing a peanut allergy compared with 1% of the gen pop.

At the time there was talk about the Dept of Health changing the advice but they hadn't actually done it.

I spoke to the mw. She was horrified that I would consider eating nuts.

I spoke to the GP. He said he didn't know anything about it.

I spoke to ds1s peadiatrician (who is not an allergist, we don't have a peadiatric allergist in our PCT). He said he didn't know, he wasn't sure what he would do in the same position and I needed to make the decision myself.

I spoke to a peadiactric allergist at Guys and Thomas. He said it hadn't been proved either way. Then ds1 was born, suddenly and very ill which pushed thought of allergies out of my mind.

I had decided to eat peanuts during breastfeeding in an attempt to introduce him to small amounts of peanut but due to his other health problems I am not going to at the moment. As he is not weaned yet then I couldn't say that I won't change my mind about it.

It is an absolute PITA having a child with a food allergy, even when they are only allergic to one thing that is in hardly anything like my ds. People spend there whole lives researching it and they don't know the answers so I don't think I should be expected to. There is an excellent chance of ds1 either outgrowing his allergy or being desinsitised in the near future. If that happens then my life will be easier. If I make the wrong decision about ds2 then it means at least another 8 years of label reading, cross examinging eye rolling restaurant staff and apologetically explaining to party hosts on top of worrying about his safety and feeling mean when he can't eat the same food as his friends. If I make the right decision I am almost home free. That is why it is hard for me to make a decision.

I didn't know that there had ben a huge increase in food allergies. I don't know any children with them. We have had lots of children round for meals after school and none of them or their parents have said anything about allergies. Does anyone know what the percentage is who have it, and do they grow out of it?

Can you seriously - I mean seriously - fuck off with the blame culture shite!

I believe my son was damaged by the MMR because he had a violent and observable regression shortly after his MMR. The only question over his condition is why he regressed. As it stands no one alive has the foggiest notion - my belief that it is linked to the MMR is not so very outlandish.

But the suggestion that I have wrapped his symptoms up into something untrue because ofthe 'blame culture is facile and incrtedibly fucking arroagnt.

What exactly do I have to gain - who anm I blaming and to what end. Do you know one gpodamn thing about my personal circumstances. Are you under some delusion that I need money or do you just feel that I am psychologically weak ?

Twat.

Sorry , two words
Fucking twat

"I don't know about being a perfect patient?... but I expect my doctor to know more about medicine than I do......because if he doesn't,.. I want his job."

"Did You decide to listen to the clown who linked autism to the mmr vaccine....? I wouldn't give him a job in a circus.... ..what about the parents who say something happened? Can answer that in two words .....blame culture."

daftpunk - Wasn't that 'clown' a doctor, wasn't it in fact a whole team of clowns doctors? I think you don't understand how medicine works. Doctors often don't know more about a condition or issue than a patient. Doctors mostly learn procedures, to diagnose, to research and about pharmaceuticals in medical school and often use information gathered from patients to update their understandings of medical conditions. You very often are treated differently by different doctors when you present with the same symptoms, it really comes down to an individual's opinion about what might be going on. It is important that patients are knowledgeable about their own care/condition because that helps a doctor identify the best treatment. Just assuming they'll know better than you is a bit short-sighted.

I think you are being quite unnecessarily mean and belligerent too, considering your original post was asking for people to explain their opinions on the issue as you apparently didn't understand it.

Milly

Loads of allergies are outgrown before school age. The most presistent are treenuts (7% outgrow) peanuts(20% outgrow) and shellfish. Often people decide just to live with it rather than get retested because they used to be considered lifelong allergies and aren't as hard to avoid as milk and eggs.

milk allergy the most common and is usually outgrown. 85% of milk allergies are outgrown before school age.

Egg allergy isn't as common as milk (about 2% of dcs compared with 2.5%) and is less likely to be outgrown although often egg allergic people will be able to eat baked egg in cakes etc at school age but remain allergic to lightly cooked egg for much longer (if they outgrow it at all).

Curiosity: I shouldn't have brought the mmr debate into this.....apologies