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.
Yes. My thoughts exactly! Although I do want to know what caused it for my future grandchildren, I just want to help my son live a LONG, HAPPY life. Dr. Nadeau in her research at Stanford says that OIT changes a child at a DNA level and once that allergy is gone, she believes future offspring will not get it. Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteSuch interesting research!
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