by Tina Altum

Created on: March 04, 2009

As a first time mom, I was one of those people that followed the pediatrician's instructions to the letter. When my son was about six months old, his doctor told us that because of the dramatic increase in peanut allergies in children, the recommendation was to keep him away from peanuts until he was at least two or three years old if at all possible. She said that the popular school of thought was that early exposure equaled increased chance of allergy. Neither my husband nor I had food allergies, and there were no food allergies in our families, so we thought we had nothing to worry about.

When my son was 18 months old, we attended a family reunion in Ft. Worth, Texas. It was a pot luck event, and someone had brought peanut butter cookies. One of my relatives gave my son a peanut butter cookie and within an hour he was having a violent reaction. We spent the night in the hospital while intravenous drugs were being pumped into him to stop the life-threatening symptoms of the reaction.
He swelled all over his body, was covered with hives, and his skin was purple in color.

After he was released from the hospital, we had to continue giving him anti-histamines and steroids to keep the symptoms from returning, which they often do after a serious reaction. My husband and I were confused as to how this happened to him and were terrified that it could happen again with a fatal result. We began to seek out answers.

Our first step involved going to see an allergist. He verified through a skin test that what our son reacted to was peanuts. We were given a prescription for an EpiPen (to be used if a serious reaction involved difficulty breathing) and steroids to keep with us at all times. We were also given information on label-reading and some online resources to consult. It was helpful, but we needed to know more.

What causes food allergies? With all of the technology we have in the world today, there isn't a definitive answer to this question. There are many theories, such as early exposure to the allergen when the immune system is not yet fully formed. Others include something called the "Hygiene Hypothesis". It simply states that the cause of many ailments in the world today could very well be the lack of exposure to germs and bacteria due to the "clean" lifestyle of many well-developed countries. That lack of exposure decreases the body's ability to build standard immune responses. Without it, the body tends to react to otherwise harmless substances.

How do we know when

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