Food allergies can affect anyone. Here are a few actors and athletes who have achieved great success despite living with a food allergy. Peanut Tennis player Serena Williams NHL player Tom Poti, defenceman for the Washington Capitals Singer Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand Freestyle aerials champion Steve Omischl Tree Nut Singer Clay Aiken NHL player Tom [...]

Allergies to peanut are one of the most common and severe types of food allergies. When someone with a peanut allergy ingests peanuts, even a trace amount, that person is at risk of a severe allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis. An anaphylactic reaction includes more than one of the body’s systems, such as the respiratory tract, [...]

On a normal day, Olivia Piluso is a typical teenager – albeit a very busy one. She takes part in gymnastics, dance, swimming and walks the neighbourhood dogs. But on a recent winter’s day, this peanut-allergic girl felt like much more than an average teen. “I felt like a celebrity,” she says. That day, Olivia [...]

From Allergic Living magazine, Spring 2005. IN LABS in universities and hospitals across North America and Europe, these are exciting and competitive times in allergy research. There are strong prospects for a vaccine that would significantly increase a peanut-allergic individual’s tolerance to the dread legume. And, while farther off into the future, scientists are speaking [...]

Yet-to-be released research on Montreal schoolchildren shows the incidence of peanut allergy has increased – to almost 2 per cent of pupils. This makes it the highest such prevalence ever measured. The findings are early results of the second phase in a study of peanut allergy incidence in pupils in kindergarten up to Grade 3 [...]

The Olympic Games in Vancouver are freestyle skiier Steve Omischl’s big chance to snag Olympic Gold – and on the Canadian’s home turf. Omischl is a four-time world champ, but Olympic victory is the one honour that’s so far eluded him. Allergic Living has followed the aerialist, who has peanut allergy and asthma, with interest. [...]

Nine-year-old Isabella Uknis can do something her parents were told was impossible: she can eat half a peanut every day. Since she had an anaphylactic reaction to a peanut butter cracker at the age of 2, Isabella has been avoiding peanut. But that all changed when her mother, Kathy, saw a report on “Good Morning [...]

Following is a joint position statement issued by the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Recent studies of oral food desensitization suggest exciting possibilities for the 1.2 million Canadians with severe food allergies. Canadian families, particularly those families with young children living with food allergies, are understandably hopeful of medical advancements that could reduce [...]

News that researchers at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University have developed a process to make an allergen-free peanut was met with a flurry of excitement in the media, followed by considerable skepticism in the allergic community. While the agricultural researcher involved, Mohamed Ahmedna, sees much potential in his findings, even he cautions there [...]

We’ve all seen dogs at the airport, sniffing luggage furiously for drugs. Sharon Perry, owner of the Southern Star Ranch in Florence, Texas, had been teaching pooches like that narcotics, arson and termite detection for years when she was approached by the mother of a peanut-allergic child in 2005 about the possibility of training a [...]