This Friday, millions of Americans will be celebrating the Fourth of July with outdoor picnics and fireworks. Along with these activities, however, comes exposure to various outdoor allergens. Insect allergies, including to mosquitoes and bees and yellow jackets, can keep some people indoors and prevent them enjoying an outdoor event. Allergies to smoke from barbeques and fireworks and worsen allergies and asthma. Food allergies, caused by hidden ingredients in a potluck, can result in an unplanned visit to the emergency room.

But, with a little planning for allergen avoidance, everyone can have a fun and safe Fourth of July holiday.

Read more:

• Barbeque Smoke Allergy
• Mosquito Allergy
• Stinging Insect Allergy
• Food Allergies

Three more days to get your posts in for the next Living with Food Allergies blog carnival! Do you have food allergy writing to share? Have you got a recipe on your blog that would be helpful for others living with restricted diets? Submit them here for Thursday’s edition.

• Whether your child has wheat allergies or celiac disease, if he’s school-age or getting there you may be interested in the American Celiac Disease Alliance’s survey gauging interest in gluten-free school lunches. My colleague Nancy Lapid has all the details at her celiac disease website. The survey is open until July 2.
• The latest edition of the Living with Food Allergies blog carnival is up at Leslea Harmon’s terrific Allergy News Blog. Get your biweekly fix of recipes and commentary! I’ll be hosting the next edition on June 26th, so if you have food allergy writing to share, you can submit it here.
• Finally, when you’re an adult with a chronic health condition, how can you cope when you’re suddenly responsible for a loved one — whether an aging parent or a severely ill child — who needs your care? Jenni Prokopy’s When a ChronicBabe Becomes a Caregiver is must-reading for anyone with severe food allergies or celiac disease who finds herself suddenly in this position, and parents newly dealing with a child’s food allergy diagnosis will find a lot here to help them cope too.

The most common types of allergies are hay fever, also known as seasonal allergies, food allergies, asthma, conjunctivitis, hives, eczema, dermatitis and sinusitis. Often food allergies occur in young children and are frequently outgrown. Cases of insect sting allergies such as bee, hornet, wasp, yellow jacket and fire ant, are also prevalent allergies. Still, some people have allergies to drugs like penicillin. Read more about allergies in magazines like Parenting Magazine, Woman’s World Magazine and O, Oprah Magazine.

The most severe type of allergic reaction is anaphylaxis, also known as anaphylactic shock. Sharp drop in blood pressure and difficulty breathing are the main characteristics. This reaction can be fatal if not treated with an epinephrine shot. Read more about allergic reactions in health magazines.

Most allergic reactions are not as severe as anaphylaxis. While allergies themselves cannot be prevented, there are many different ways to prevent allergy reactions or symptoms. One way to effectively prevent allergy symptoms is to take appropriate over-the-counter medications that control symptoms like sneezing, headache and itchy eyes. There are a myriad of different kinds of over-the-counter allergy medications so consult your doctor or read about your symptoms in magazines like Consumer Reports Magazine, Prevention magazine and other health magazines.

Another effective way is to keep your house free from dust, animal dander and mold. Vacuum your car often so as not to bring pollens inside your house. It is also a good idea to take showers at the end of the day to wash off pollens from hair and body. To find more tips on keeping your house allergy friendly read housekeeping magazines like Real Simple magazine, Martha Stewart Living magazine and Better Homes and Gardens.

There are many different ways to manage the ones you cannot prevent. The first most effective way to manage your allergies to be aware of your allergens and to know what time of year they affect you. If your symptoms disrupt your day-to-day activities on a regular basis, it is a good idea to visit an allergist, a doctor that specializes in the treatment of allergies, who may decide to perform a skin test to determine allergens. A good source of information on allergies is health magazines like Prevention.

If you still have difficulty managing your allergy symptoms you may want to consider allergen immunotherapy, also known as allergy shots. After your doctor identifies the allergens that trigger your symptoms, involves injecting increasing amounts of those allergens so that your body becomes immune to them. Allergy shots have proven to be an effective way to relief of allergy symptoms.

I’m about to out myself as a huge geek, but here goes: when I was a kid, I used to drive my mother crazy by reading a book called Take Care of Yourself (basically a low-tech

The most fascinating part of the book to me wasn’t the nifty flowcharts about when to go to the emergency room or apply home treatment (although as long as I’m in a full-throttle geek-outing, I may as well mention that I do love a good flowchart), but some of the weird tidbits about different diseases that seemed to make no sense. Things like impetigo being connected to kidney disease, or the literal translations of Latin names for conditions.

I always thought the weirdest and most interesting parts of the book, though, were some of the tidbits about who developed diseases. Some conditions, even though they’re not connected to gender-specific parts of the body, are much more (or much less) frequent in men; others are common in children or rare before adolescence.

As it turns out, food allergies are among the conditions with a clear gender split — one that changes over time. Boys are diagnosed with food allergies more frequently, but only until adolescence. Thereafter, women develop food allergies at a much higher rate. There isn’t, at this time, a clear answer as to why, but researchers have speculated that there may be a connection with estrogen receptors on mast cells (which are involved in allergic reactions), or that some of the changes that occur in the body during and after pregnancy may play a role.

Women also predominate by a two-to-one in diagnosed cases of celiac disease, meaning that if you know an adult with a food allergy or major food restriction, there’s a very good chance it’s a woman.

Which can be troublesome for men and adolescent boys who do have food allergies. There’s no reason at this time to believe that boys and men who have food allergies are at any lower risk whatsoever. But there are reasons to believe that, as a population, they may cope differently than women with food allergies, especially as teenagers:

Adolescent girls with asthma or diabetes were prepared to inform others and treat themselves in public. Boys tended to play down their illness particularly in public.

(From “Differences Between Men and Women: ‘Sexy’ Research on Food Allergy.”) Add to this the fact that simple demographics mean that when people think of an adult with food allergies, many of them probably imagine a woman just based on simple demographics. Does that mean it’s harder for men with food allergies to be taken seriously in restaurants, workplaces, other situations where they may be relying on others to respect their dietary needs? That’s a thornier question and one I’m not remotely sure about the answer to. Any thoughts?

• Risk Factors for Food Allergies
• First Steps for Adult Food Allergies

_Sources:

Jensen-Jarolim, E. and Untersmayr, E. “Gender-Medicine Aspects in Allergology.” Allergy. May 2008. 63(5): 610-15. 9 June 2008.

Food Allergy Flashcards for Kids

I recently had a chance to review the Food Allergy Flashcards from beyondapeanut.com.

These flashcards teach children (and their families) about hidden dangers associated with peanut and tree nut allergies. The cards teach kids about the importance of label reading, cross-contamination, and emergency medications.

Great for parents and teachers, the flashcards feature colorful illustrations to help children learn about dangerous foods and scenarios.

Allergist Dr. Robert Harvey highly recommends the flashcards for parents: “Peanut allergy can be a dangerous and even life threatening condition. Children of caring and careful parents continue to experience inadvertent peanut exposure. ‘Beyond a Peanut’ [cards] are a well thought out, user friendly series of flash cards that assist parents and their children in navigating the daunting waters of peanut avoidance.”

Restaurants can be especially dangerous for children and adults with food allergies. If someone in your family has a food allergy, check out our Food Allergy Restaurant Cards.

• This week’s Newsweek features an essay called “A Plea For My Daughter” by a mom who unexpectedly discovered her daughter’s severe peanut and tree nut allergies during a workup for asthma. It’s a well-written piece, and her worries about how classmates’ parents will respond when her daughter starts school will no doubt strike a chord with other moms and dads.
• Check out the latest Living with Food Allergies Blog Carnival!
• Finally, one section of a minor league ballpark being made peanut-free for a few games wouldn’t seem to be too much of an imposition on truth, justice, and the American way of life, would it? Apparently not everyone agrees. What do you think is behind outright hostility towards accommodations of this sort — the type that don’t even prevent folks who want, for instance, peanuts at a ballpark from buying or bringing them? (Rational Jenn has some ideas…)

Everyone’s been feeling a pinch at the grocery store — according to the USDA, prices for common foods have been rising steadily and are projected to rise as much as five percent by the end of the year. This is the highest such increase in the Consumer Price Index for food since 1990.

And if you’re reading this, there’s every chance that you’re feeling the pinch a little more than your friends and neighbors. That’s because no matter what sort of allergies you have, odds are very good that, for at least one staple food, you can’t just shop by price at your local Mega Mart. Whether it’s egg-free bread, lactose-free milk, or nut-free or gluten-free cereal, you may find yourself paying double (or even more!) what you’d pay for an analogous product.

There are ways to save money on a restricted diet, but they do require planning. Luckily, many of the principles of savvy shopping are the same no matter what your dietary needs. Here are some resources that may help you eat safely — and healthfully! — within a stretched budget.

• Frugal Living and Food Allergies
• Grocery Shopping with Food Allergies
• About.com Low-Fat Cooking: Healthy Eating on a Budget
• About.com Frugal Living: Top Seven Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget
• About.com Weight Loss: Losing Weight on a Budget

Next Monday, May 11, marks the beginning of the 11th Annual Food Allergy Awareness Week. Awareness is kind of a tricky beast; virtually everyone would, when asked if they’d heard of food allergies, say yes. But at the same time, most people are (understandably) not clear on the potential effects of an allergic reaction and what it takes to stay on top of maintaining a diet completely free of any food, whether it’s something ubiquitous or something not-so-common, until someone very close to them is diagnosed with an allergy. Well-intentioned people are sometimes hurt when someone with an allergy won’t taste their home-baked foods (”I’m sure everything I used to make this is safe, really!”) or when a parent won’t blithely leave an allergic child in their care for a special outing (”I’ll be sure not to feed her any peanuts at the ballpark, really!”).

This is not to say that these sorts of precautions aren’t worth it; quite the contrary. It’s simply to point out that, at least to my mind, the gap in public awareness is largely in the area of understanding day-to-day management of allergies. And if that gap were filled — if most people understood the intricacies of keeping away from allergens, and if most people realized that an imperceptibly tiny amount of food can cause a life-threatening reaction in a susceptible person — it might make some aspects of living with food allergies easier. At the very least, it might help eliminate some of the more common social pressures (”Just let him try a little; a little won’t hurt, really!”) and reduce resistance to better accommodations in schools and other public places.

The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network has a Food Allergy Awareness Week resource guide with everything from a calendar of simple daily activities to templates for presentations about allergies. I’d also like to suggest a couple of ideas: one very simple, and one that may take a little more chutzpah.

The simple idea: do you have a friend or acquaintance who’s interested in cooking? Especially if you’re allergic to something that’s in a lot of common ingredients, it might be illuminating to invite a friend over to share in meal preparation and eating with you. All sorts of questions often flow from these kinds of gatherings, and it’s a friendly, fun way to pull back the curtain a bit and share information.

Another idea for those with a lot of chutzpah is to challenge people in your life to live “how the other half lives” for a week, or even a few days. If you have a blog, this might be an interesting thought experiment. The filmmakers of King Corn took this approach with their Corn-Free Challenge and quickly learned from the corn allergy community just how pervasive corn is in the American diet. And in turn, they raised awareness about just how difficult most people would find it to live without corn for even a short period of time. (You can read more about the challenge and find a link to a list of ingredients that contain corn here.)

I’ve seen variations of this challenge by Type 1 diabetics and by others who are living with chronic conditions. And I always find people’s reactions fascinating — there’s so often an element of “Wow, I could never do that” and a new respect for the lifestyle they’ve tried out. As the old saying goes, “before you judge someone, walk a mile in his shoes” — or, in this case, spend a few days in his pantry.

Read your fill at the sixteenth installment of the Living with Food Allergies blog carnival. I particularly enjoyed the thought-provoking Peabutter Dilemma post at Casein Point, but you’ll find lots of good reading no matter your particular food allergy interests.

And if you’ve got your own food allergy writing to share, you can submit it to the next edition of the Carnival, scheduled for Food Allergy Awareness Week at Check My Tag Community.