Beware of the exclusion from the study before you start ramping up your allergic child's peanut consumption:
"This indicates that peanut consumption may not be possible in some children who meet the LEAP eligibility criteria. In addition, the LEAP study design excluded 9.1% of the infants who were screened (76 of 834) because large wheals (greater than 4 mm in diameter) developed after the skin-prick test21 that were probably associated with peanut allergy; the safety and effectiveness of early peanut consumption in that population remain unknown."
UK here. After we had a kid, they told us 'no peanuts and no honey' I was like, hm, whatever. I eat peanut butter and honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that with me. Turns out being a normal person doing normal things is now good advice.
My parents used to dip my dummy in whiskey when I was teething. Not sure where the medical community stands on this one.
While allergies definitely seem to be about immune system training, there have been similar studies [1] about kids who eat dirt are less likely to have allergies in general, honey is different.
Honey is not an allergic issue, it's about the bodies ability to fend off botulism when the baby is less than a year. Their bodies are just not capable of dealing with that. Similar to kidney and liver development being require before giving kids ibprofrin or tylonol.
The kids eating dirt having fewer allegies is known as the Hygiene Hypothesis. Owning a dog also reduces allegies. Growing up with nerd friends, I remember my friends who lived in pristine sterile homes had the worst allergies, which became self-perpetuating as they had to stay in sterile environments to keep from aggravating their allegies.
I grew to dislike alcohol/wine because my parents were constantly badgering me to have some of their homemade wine/grappa growing up. I certainly saw the opposite in the US where kids grow up kept strictly away from it, and then binge when they break free. As a result I'm probably going to offer it to my kid.
I think you are on the right track. This is nothing scientific but from personal observation, in Mediterranean countries (where there is much less stigma with alcohol, it's consumed in family environments and kids usually try it) there is less alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. In countries where the laws and societal customs restrict alcohol more, people have much more of a tendency to go overboard when they do drink.
For example, in Spain kids typically grow up buying drinks in shops, drinking them outside (the so-called "botellón") and partying until 5 or 6 AM from when they are like 15 or 16 (sometimes even at 13). It's considered to be a problem but most of the time nothing really serious happens, as they grow up knowing how to control themselves after they have drank too much and been taken home by their friends once or twice. When there are news about people jumping off balconies or doing similarly stupid things due to being dangerously drunk, they are almost inevitably British youngsters on holiday who aren't used to drinking in their country due to heavy taxation and restrictions, so their drinking goes completely out of hand when they suddenly get the chance to do what they never could before.
Not saying that kids getting drunk at 13 is OK, but the other extreme is definitely bad too. Encouraging kids to have their first contact with alcohol in a family environment rather than in a wild partying trip to Ibiza is definitely a good idea in my book.
I didn't drink until my early 20s, probably in part because when I was a kid my mum would mix white wine with orange juice as her preferred drink. If I found a glass of orange juice sitting in the kitchen, chances were it'd been 'poisoned' with wine. It wasn't until I tried bourbon and coke a lot later that I realised alcohol can taste good.
My grandmother was a smoker, and the story goes: she sat my mom and aunt down when they were in 8th/9th grade respectively, in the living room, and made them light up and smoke a cigarette each. To the end.
It was a sickening, mildy traumatic experience and as a result neither of them ever smoked again.
I'm unsure whether introducing other vices this way would have similar outcomes, but there's a lot to be said for simply removing the allure of secrecy and taboo.
Careful with that if you raise your child in the US. Providing alcohol to a minor is a misdemeanor criminal offense in most states, even if you do it in your own home.
I think you nail it. The general, beyond peanuts, advice is stop helicoptering over your kids, let them get dirty, let them interact with people, let them eat things. Exposure early is not a bad thing.
All this new advise of "don't do this, don't do that"... At least paying attention to the media, etc. has resulted in a rise in issues like peanut allergies which were not an issue 30+ years ago.
"I eat peanut butter and honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that with me. "
These are two very, very different things.
On the one hand, over-caution with common allergens (like PB) is annoying and heavy-handed and probably contributes to the problem because failing to expose children to these common allergens just serves to increase their sensitivity. I think you had a good instinct there and it mirrors my own behavior with regard to my children and what they eat, etc.
So far so good.
But babies (0-18 months) cannot be given honey. It has nothing to do with allergies. Honey contains C. botulinum which, depending on the age and strength of the child, can lead to infant botulism[1].
On the topic of food allergies, there is a treatment called oral immunotherapy that supposedly can cure peanut and other allergies in both children and adults.
Essentially they introduce increasingly larger doses of the allergen until your body develops a tolerance to it (essentially what the OP claims, but as you're no longer a baby, it takes a lot longer).
The only caveat is that you are required to continue to eat the allergen for the rest of your life, to maintain your tolerance.
Stanford is currently enrolling in its peanut OIT study for adults. If you have a peanut allergy and have always dreamed of eating a PB&J without worry, now's your chance!
It's past the study phase. My friend's daughter just "graduated" from her treatment a short while ago. They went to Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) at Rocky Mountain Allergy in Layton, Utah. She used to be on the "smell a peanut and you might die" side of the spectrum. Yes, she has to eat a handful of peanut M&M's every day for the rest of her life to keep from regressing.
When you're out and about, try putting her M&Ms in a prescription bottle, and see how random strangers react to her popping a few at a time from the bottle.
"Best of all, they're covered by our medical plan!"
Surprisingly for me, bee pollen has pretty much halted my (at times severe) hayfever. Initially I took 1 per few days and had an 'internal hayfever' type reaction then soon enough my nose and eyes stopped reacting.
The local pollen cures are bunkum, imo, just teaching your body to deal with pollen in general does the trick. A large dose off any pollen, as found in bee pollen, seems to work wonders when taken regularly in spring. Ymmv, but I've struggled for a long time until recently.
There is sub-lingual immunotherapy available for hayfever. I don't know how much it boosts the immunity to allergens. I'm currently on year 3 of a 5 year course.
Hopefully it works -- does not seem to have had a huge effect so far.
Anecdotal evidence aside, i would not unconsider it that quickly. My research before starting this indicated that effect varies from case to case. However, this was definitively not woo-woo.
Have a read up on the use of hookworms as a suppressant for hayfever and other immune system overreactions.
It seems like there's more work to be done there, and lots of potentially exaggerated stories of big pharma trying to shut research down, but the hypothesis has always sounded sensible to me, and what little formal research I've heard of has been extremely positive.
Very interesting and I think many have suspected as much for quite some time. Our culture of late has tended to place kids in a metaphorical bubble preventing them from many things which current research now seems to confirm may be harmful long term in the development of healthy immune protection.
In addition, based on this study, I wonder if it is worthwhile studying whether there is a "point of no return" in terms of protecting anyone from severe allergies. For instance, if you haven't been exposed to a severe potential-allergen prior to the age of 5, does it become exponentially more difficult to develop any kind of immunity that lasts long term?
I was diagnosed with milk and peanut allergies as a kid (prick tests). My grandmother wasn't having any of that. She shoveled them into me. I just now had a glass of milk without issue. Neither has any effect. It may be anecdotal and specific to me, but it is safe to say that many kids are over-diagnosed when it comes to allergies.
I'm still slightly allergic to cats. Doc got that correct. But I've had cats in my house, sleeping on my bed, for decades without hospitalization.
I was allergic to cow milk, and anything remotely containing it. Eczema. Notice the 'was'. Baby suits with hands binded unable to scratch because eczema is an urge to scratch and itch. Arms wrapped in bandages from at the exact hospital cited in the article. Wrapped and re-wrapped every day.
Until I was 8. And then, it just stopped. So today I enjoy milk and cheese, especially cheese.
Being diagnosed is fine, it is a precaution. Actually suffering those symptoms is different. Please don't be do flippant.
My son has a peanut allergy, and whenever he eats them, he immediately starts coughing, empties his stomache by vomiting, and has difficulty breathing. Then an epi pen is administered, and we visit the hospital. Shall I 'shovel them down him' as you say? No thanks, I'll pass, and just keep peanuts out of the house.
> No thanks, I'll pass, and just keep peanuts out of the house.
Well duh!
If you have a serious allergy, you avoid peanuts like the plague. But if it's minor... say a slight rash being the only symptom... then perhaps it's worth giving the child peanuts, starting with a very tiny amount, and then increasing gradually. Keep an epi-pen around at all times just in case, and if there's a serious attack... drop the attempt altogether and surrender to the fact that your childs quality of life will be less-than-optimal forever more.
You can add to the list a whole host of other things where exposure will increase immune systems and decrease allergies. Once an article appeared that said exposure to farm animals also decreases allergies and increases the strength of the immune system.
some daycares did install air filtration systems and got a whole lot more asthma cases. We didn't have the cash to do that for ours in the 90's and it turned out all the better.
I wouldn't trust USAtoday nor any source that isn't the actual published research[1].
"CONCLUSION: In this cohort of infants with likely milk or egg allergy, maternal ingestion of peanut during pregnancy was strongly associated with a high level of peanut sensitization."[1]
> In this cohort of infants with likely milk or egg allergy
Even accurate conclusions for such a cohort might be very different -- including even inverted in direction of effect -- from what is true of the broader population.
"This indicates that peanut consumption may not be possible in some children who meet the LEAP eligibility criteria. In addition, the LEAP study design excluded 9.1% of the infants who were screened (76 of 834) because large wheals (greater than 4 mm in diameter) developed after the skin-prick test21 that were probably associated with peanut allergy; the safety and effectiveness of early peanut consumption in that population remain unknown."