The humour writer who scoffed at food allergies as “a yuppie invention” has learned the hard way just how real they are. But let’s remind you first of the scorn Joel Stein heaped on parents of allergic children in a column in the Los Angeles Time. “Your kid doesn’t have an allergy to nuts. Your [...]

Peanut allergies are severe, often affecting children, and are increasing in prevalence. It’s no wonder researchers around the globe are looking at new, inventive ideas for how “cure” them, or at the very least, how to allow those with peanut allergies to tolerate at least a small amount of this legume’s protein. Allergic Living looks [...]

What’s in the pipeline for food allergy treatments. Idea: Peanut Allergy Vaccine What’s Involved: The treatment is based on immunotherapy – that is, by slowly introducing the immune system to something it is allergic to, the system will eventually learn to tolerate the allergen. The problem is, with food allergy, anaphylaxis can occur. To eliminate [...]

When a family member has a peanut allergy, reading is protection. Reading labels is a way of life when you or a member of your family has a peanut allergy. Before eating anything in a package, be sure to read the label carefully. Look for hidden sources of peanuts and alternate names for it. Also [...]

Peanut allergies are one of the most common food allergies in children and are on the rise. A major study in the United States recently found that cases of peanut allergy in children more than tripled in a decade, and that more than 3 million Americans now have a peanut or nut allergy. In Canada, [...]

Many Canadians suffering moderate to severe allergic reactions are not using epinephrine to treat the reaction, says Dr. Ann Clarke an allergist at McGill University Health Centre. Clarke and her colleagues surveyed close to 10,000 Canadians in the Surveying Canadians to Access the Prevalence of Common Food Allergies and Attitudes towards Food Labelling and Risk [...]

Researchers who are working to find a way to treat food allergies have their sights on the next target – desensitization through the skin. Dr. Hugh Sampson, head of the Consortium of Food Allergy Research in the United States, told Allergic Living magazine that U.S. researchers got the idea from French research, in which scientists [...]

Products from smaller food companies are more likely to contain allergens, whether or not they had an advisory statement, according to a study from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Researchers there looked at 400 products to see how the labelling for allergens held up. For example, almost 6 per cent of [...]

Oils generally come in two kinds: refined and unrefined. 1. Refined Oil: When a peanut or nut oil is refined, the chances of the proteins of that food being in the oil are low. While pure refined peanut oil does exist, it is always safer to avoid peanut oil completely since there is no definitive [...]

The only current treatment for this allergy is to avoid all traces of peanuts and peanut butter or other peanut-containing products. If your allergic child (or you) eats peanut with a known allergy, the drug epinephrine (adrenaline) will be needed to halt the reaction. But using the epinephrine auto-injector is an emergency situation only, it’s [...]