Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I'm Cured

Several years ago I was diagnosed with a peanut allergy, but I continued to eat peanuts, and only occasionally did I experience even a mild reaction. And even that hasn't happened in many years of eating Snickers and peanut M&Ms.
I have told Mrs. Poop and Poppy that I think I cured myself by slowly introducing small amounts to my system and they said I was nuts (pun intended). Basically that's what allergy shots do, give you a small dose of the allergen so your system can deal with it.
Maybe I am not as crazy as you thought. A new article in the Wall Street Journal says a new study contradicts everything we've been told about when to introduce peanuts to children. In fact, the study says, delaying exposure to peanuts may actually lead to those kids developing peanut allergies.

"The new study...found that 17.2% of the children who avoided peanuts until age 5 ended up with a peanut allergy compared with 3.2% of those who regularly ate peanuts..."

I strongly recommend reading the entire article to understand the study's methodology and how 14% of kids who initially showed no reaction to peanuts on the prick test (no that's not a JLeary test, different kind of prick) developed a peanut allergy when all they did was avoid eating peanuts.

Note: I am not a doctor and even if I were I wouldn't recommend force-feeding your infant a jar of peanut butter because in rare cases it could result in death by anaphylaxis.

No comments: