How did this happen?

As I stated previously, I knew nothing of the food allergy world.  After Brooke was diagnosed with life threatening food allergies, I really wanted to know why she was allergic.  There were several hypotheses at the time.  The hygiene hypothesis was the biggest and most convincing theory in place.  We are a clean culture.  We wash our hands at the slightest hint of dirt, we sanitize everything from our skin to our counters and everything in between.  As for the hygiene hypothesis, I was guilty as charged.  Another hypothesis was that children delivered via C-section were more likely to develop allergies.  Guilty.  Both of those hypotheses centered around the theory that children’s immune systems were not developing properly, due to an extraordinarily clean environment.  Any child who bypasses the birthing canal also bypasses the bacteria they would have normally encountered through birth.  Yet another theory, was that mothers who ate copious amounts of peanut containing foods during the pregnancy, would increase the chances of food allergy in the child.  Guilty.  I had also heard that immunizations might play a part in a child’s underdeveloped immune system.  My daughter had received all of her immunizations as recommended by the CDC.  Guilty. 

 

The more I looked into all of these hypothesis, the more it broke my heart.  Had I done this to my child?  Was I the one who had caused her immune system to overreact to a food?  I spent a great number of years feeling guilty… but in the end, the truth is that no one really understands what causes food allergies.  Since then, some of these hypotheses have been dispelled and new ones have taken their place.  There are always new theories, some of which apply to us, and some of them don’t.  Now there are new hypotheses such as; if your family has smokers, their intake of toxins can mutate the genes of future off spring causing allergies, and if you start your child on refined first foods like rice flakes and oatmeal, that can cause allergies…. And so on and so forth.  The reality is that millions of women have C-sections every day, and billions of families have some family member that smokes, everyone sanitizes, everyone starts their children on rice and oatmeal, and millions of women eat peanuts during their pregnancy… yet only some of us have children who go on to develop life threatening food allergies, and no one is sure of the real reason why.  I had to stop feeling guilty and learn to live in the food allergy world, and most importantly I had to help my daughter survive in it.