Nov 19, 2007

Rising allergies trend mystifying - How is that?

With how we have changed our children's diets, immune systems by chemical influence in the last two decades how are experts possibly "mystified"?
 
Most "experts" I know who have practiced in toxicology, nutrition and ecology ARE NOT baffled or  a all "mystified" by increases in certain cancer or allergies.
In fact, the correlations in diet and environmental exposure are as alarming as they are preventable.   
 
 
From Article:
"Rising allergies trend mystifying"
An explosion in numbers of Australian children with serious food allergies has bewildered experts and parents,
 
Similar trends have been observed in the UK and US, but experts are at a loss to explain what is causing it.
WHEN all Natalie Fine could see of her hospitalized six-month-old baby, Lucas, was a small pair of eyes peering out from head-to-toe bandaging, she couldn't help wondering what she had done wrong.
 
She certainly didn't imagine soy-based formula -- recommended by her pediatrician after problems with a dairy-based formula -- could be the cause of his severe eczema, infected and requiring IV antibiotics.

"When I was told he had a soy allergy I felt terrible -- as if I had been poisoning him with the formula," says Fine. Lucas was also found to have a severe allergy to egg white, and his mother was warned that if he came in contact with egg he could have an anaphylactic reaction -- the most severe manifestation of allergy which can cause swelling of the throat, difficulty breathing, a fall in blood pressure and, in some cases, death.
 
Given the long list of foods that contain either egg white or soy, Fine was hesitant to give her son any food at first. "He lived on rice cereal and banana for quite a while," she says. Fine has since become more adventurous, but has become adept at reading the small print on food packaging, scanning for any mention of egg and soy.
 
Fine's family is just one of many experiencing first-hand the effects of the dramatic rise in the numbers of children developing food allergies.
 
But the biggest rise in food allergies is being seen not in adults but in children under five, as shown by data published in the October issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (2007;120:878-84). The study found a 5 1/2-fold increase in the rate of hospital admissions between 1994 and 2005 for food-related anaphylaxis in the under-fives -- a much greater rise than in any other age group. Shortages of allergy specialists also mean it can take months for parents to get an appointment.
"There is some evidence that children who grew up on farms have lower rates of allergy -- particularly if they were exposed to farm animals and drank unpasteurised cow's milk," Tang says. "And we know kids with allergy problems have lower numbers of good bacteria like bifidobacteria and lactobacilli, and higher numbers of pathogenic bacteria, those that can cause disease, in their gut flora than healthy children."
 
At birth, babies' gastrointestinal systems are sterile, but bacteria soon make themselves at home. "For children with allergy problems the imbalance in good versus harmful bacteria occurs within the first weeks or months of life," says Tang.

Studies where probiotics (good bacteria) have been taken by mothers in the last weeks of pregnancy, and then by their babies in the first months of life, have shown a reduction in allergy symptoms for up to eight years of age. Tang is currently conducting a study to see whether giving a probiotic to the mother in the last four weeks of pregnancy is sufficient to gain the benefit.