First tip: The great thing about asthma is that if you learn to control it, asthma  won’t control you. Some kids ask us why they have to take the controller inhaler when their asthma doesn’t seem to be acting up. This is because using that controller every day is the best way to get a “handle” on asthma; it keeps swelling and mucous away.

Grief Relief: With that control, you shouldn’t have to get out your reliever inhaler as often. But when you do need it, don’t be embarrassed. After all, it really is a relief. And consider: almost 1 out of 10 kids have asthma; you aren’t alone!

Friends: Talk to close friends about your asthma and why you take medication. In your class, you may also be surprised to discover how many kids have medication for asthma or other health issues.

Puffer: If you do need your reliever inhaler, it will work best if you use a spacer. Why? More medicine will get down into your lungs. If you’re not comfortable with your current inhaler/puffer, speak to a parent about seeing an asthma educator and your doctor, and possibly switching to a different medication. There are dry powder inhalers available that work without a spacer. Remember, getting the medicine into your lungs helps you control the asthma with the goal of using less medication. Control means you are active and doing things you love – hanging out with friends, playing sports – or maybe a guitar.

*Certified Respiratory Educators and Certified Asthma Educators help patients gain control of asthma, and COPD. For more information about the educators, visit the Canadian Network for Respiratory Care (CNRC) at www.cnrchome.net. Ingrid Baerg, RN, CAE and Angela Alexander, RN, CAE work at the Asthma Education Clinic at B.C. Children’s Hospital.

FAAN Teen Summit kicked off on clinical trials. Dr. Hugh Sampson, the famous allergist and researcher from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, explained in a video how clinical trials for food allergy desensitization work and why they’ve so far proven very effective.

For those unaware, the continuing clinical trials are studies being done to see how individuals can be cured of food allergies. Currently, they use the process of a food challenge, in which someone eats a very minuscule amount of what they are allergic to, and then gradually eats more and more of the food until they can eat a full serving of what they’re allergic to. With severe food allergies, this desensitizing process can take between two and three years.

While some students expressed nervousness about trying such a trial, Kendall Hollinger, 14, said she would definitely go for it. “If I would be eligible, I would totally do it, even though it’s really, really scary. It would be great to grow out of an allergy,” said the student from California. “I would want to be the person who’s brave enough to go against everything they’ve gone against their whole life and grow out of an allergy.”

Friday night was a fun casino evening. And then on Saturday, it was down to food allergy business. The teens and the 99 parents in attendance split into two separate groups, then among the teens there were breakout sessions for: Middle School, High School & College, and Siblings.

Kendall, 14 on clinical trials: “I would totally do it,
even though it’s really, really scary.”

There was a famous face in the crowd at the High School & College session: Kenton Duty, the 16-year-old star of the Disney show “Shake it Up”. Yes, even the famous aren’t immune: he is allergic to cocoa (chocolate). Kenton says: “My favorite topic was the psychiatrist because it was interesting to hear the discoveries of how anxiety and reactions were influencing the teens. He wrapped it up well.”

The Teen Summit provided a Saturday Night Social for the teens only, featuring good and loud music – and dancing. On November 20, the last day of the summit, the teens and adults came together for a Q&A session. Questions were directed alternately to the teens and the adults, and various audience members offered answers.

Next: Peer Pressure

These are prime dating years for 16-year-old Lisa Gordon, an outgoing Grade 11 student from a northern suburb of Toronto. But long before Lisa gets to the first kiss, she has to ask a few questions that are not likely to be written into any romantic plot: Did you eat any peanuts today? Or shellfish? Or coconuts? What about pecans or walnuts? “If we haven’t talked about it, there’s no kiss,” says Lisa. “I wouldn’t want him not to know, and then something terrible happens.”

No longer can those first few fumbled kisses just happen by chance or circumstance. It is a new world for Lisa and other teenagers with food allergies who are entering the dating arena, and that world can be dangerous. A kiss, even a careful peck on the cheek, can cause an allergic reaction or even a potentially fatal anaphylactic attack.

It was long believed that allergic reactions from kissing were exceedingly rare. But then, in 2002, Dr. Rosemary Hallett and her colleagues at the University of California at Davis discovered that kissing was far more hazardous for people allergic to nuts and seeds than doctors had thought.

Hallett and her fellow researchers sent out a general questionnaire to 379 individuals with allergies to nuts and seeds, or parents of children with those allergies. Twenty people who completed the survey, or 5.3 per cent, volunteered reports of reactions after kissing.

When Hallett tracked down 17 of them, she found they all had symptoms of itching and swelling in the area kissed within a minute after the contact. Four of them had also started wheezing.

There was one child who nearly died. He was, Hallett wrote, “kissed on the cheek by his mother right after she tasted pea soup on the stove, and a large wheal immediately developed at the exact site of the kiss.” The child then flushed and started wheezing, and he was whisked to a hospital emergency department, where he was given a shot of epinephrine.

In the findings, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers noted that four people suffered reactions even though their partners had brushed their teeth. What’s more, Hallett suspected the percentage of people suffering post-kiss reactions might be far higher than 5 per cent, because the 20 people in the survey volunteered their information as opposed to being asked directly.

Her conclusion: “Since one-third of our subjects had reactions while dating, teenagers and young adults in particular need to be informed about this mode of exposure to allergens; patients of dating age who have severe food allergies may need extra encouragement to tell friends about it.”

Next: Learning to Speak Up About Allergies