allergies – Green Lifestyle Market

Sugar During Pregnancy Linked to Allergies

(Mercola) Allergies are your body’s reaction to a protein (allergen) and are a sign your immune system is working overtime. According to the Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America,¹ nasal allergies affect nearly 50 million people in the U.S., and that number is growing. As many as 30 percent of adults and 40 percent of children suffer from allergic diseases, including asthma.

These conditions are the fifth leading chronic disease in the U.S. and the third chronic disease in children under 18. In 2010, Americans with allergic rhinitis spent nearly $17.5 billion on health care related to the condition, lost more than 6 million work and school days and had nearly 16 million doctor visits.²

During the second encounter with an allergen, your body is ready to react, sending a powerful cocktail of histamine, leukotrienes and prostaglandins to protect your body. They trigger a cascade of symptoms associated with allergies, such as sneezing, sore throat, runny nose and itchy, watery eyes. Histamine may also cause your airways to constrict, triggering an asthma response or hives.

Pollen is one common allergen that triggers this reaction, but other protein molecules may as well, including mold spores, dust mites, pet dander, cockroaches, and cleaning and personal care products. The activation of this allergic response may be related to your dietary intake and your gut microbiome. Recent research has identified a higher risk of allergies and asthma in children born to mothers who ate high amounts of sugar during their pregnancy.³

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Sugar During Pregnancy Increases Your Child’s Risk of Allergies

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London evaluated survey data from nearly 9,000 mother-child pairs in the ongoing Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, tracking the health of families with children born between April 1, 1991, and December 31, 1992.⁴ Lead author Annabelle Bedard, Ph.D., commented on what triggered the researchers to evaluate the association between sugar and allergies:⁵

“The dramatic ‘epidemic’ of asthma and allergies in the West in the last 50 years is still largely unexplained — one potential culprit is a change in diet. Intake of free sugar and high fructose corn syrup has increased substantially over this period. We know that the prenatal period may be crucial for determining risk of asthma and allergies in childhood and recent trials have confirmed that maternal diet in pregnancy is important.”

Using self-reported estimates of sugar intake from questionnaires, the researchers calculated the amount of sugar the mothers ate during their pregnancy and compared this against the number of children diagnosed with allergies or asthma by age 7. Sixty-two percent of the children did not have allergic reactions, 22 percent had common allergies and 12 percent had asthma.

As a comparison, 10 percent of children in the U.S. were diagnosed with asthma in 2010, six years prior to this analysis.⁶ When the children were grouped into those with the lowest sugar intake during pregnancy (less than 34 grams or 7 teaspoons) and those with the greatest (over 82 grams or 16 teaspoons) the researchers discovered that children whose mothers ate the highest amounts had a 38 percent increased risk of allergies and a 73 percent higher risk of becoming allergic to two or more allergens.⁷

Related: Allergy Free in Five Days (foods, dander, dust, seasonal, etc.)

Women who ate high amounts of sugar were also twice as likely to have children who developed allergic asthma.⁸ Co-author Seif Shaheen, Ph.D., said:⁹

“We cannot say on the basis of these observations that high intake of sugar by mothers in pregnancy is definitely causing allergy and allergic asthma in their offspring. However, given the extremely high consumption of sugar in the West, we will certainly be investigating this hypothesis further with some urgency.”

Impact of Asthma on Your Community

Asthma is a chronic lung disease that inflames the lining of your lung tissue and narrows the airways. The inflammation in your lung tissue is sensitive to environmental stimuli, also called triggers, which differ from person to person.¹⁰ Allergy triggers include dust mites, cockroaches, mold, pet dander and pollen.¹¹

However, you may develop an asthma exacerbation from triggers other than allergic proteins. For instance, strong irritants, such as chemical sprays, perfumes and tobacco smoke or scented products may irritate your lung tissue and narrow your airways. Other triggers include cold weather, exercise, upper respiratory infections, food sensitivities and stress.

In the featured study, researchers found children whose mothers ate high amounts of sugar while pregnant developed asthma triggered by allergens and not by fragrances, cold weather, exercise, infections or food sensitivities. In the past 30 years, the incidence of asthma has increased worldwide. While the condition is generally accepted as costly, some countries do not consider it a health care priority.¹²

The total cost of treatment and lost work and school to society is difficult to estimate, due in part to different definitions and characterizations of the conditions and different assessments of the socioeconomic impact on society. Although variable from country to country, an average cost per patient in Europe is $1,900, while in the U.S. the cost hovers near $3,100.¹³

Vitamin D During Pregnancy Helps Reduce Asthma Risk

Low vitamin D levels in children who have asthma may increase the number of severe exacerbations they suffer, including the need for a trip to the hospital.¹⁴ A previous study, which followed over 1,000 children for nearly four years, found vitamin D insufficiency was linked to a 50 percent increased risk of a severe asthmatic attack necessitating a visit to the emergency room or hospitalization.

Related: Vitamin D and Sunlight

A more recent study¹⁵ published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology also links low vitamin D levels in pregnant women to a higher risk of asthma in their children.¹⁶ This study supports similar findings from Harvard Medical School,¹⁷ in which vitamin D intake in over 1,100 mothers from the Northeastern U.S. was assessed. Children from mothers whose intake was higher during pregnancy had a decreased risk of recurrent wheezing by age 3, whether the vitamin D was from diet or a supplement.

The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology study evaluated the effect of using an oral supplement of vitamin D-3 during the second and third trimester of pregnancy at nearly 4,000 IUs higher than the recommended daily intake of 400 IUs.¹⁸ After birth, researchers took a sample of the cord blood, testing the newborn’s innate immune system response known to provide the baby with long-term protection against environmental pathogens.

The samples from babies whose mothers had taken the higher supplemental dose of 4,400 IUs of vitamin D-3 responded with a healthier innate cytokine response and greater IL-17A production after T lymphocyte stimulation. The researchers believe this would likely lead to improved respiratory health as the child grows, since past research has linked a strong immune response with a reduction in asthma.

The lead researcher, Catherine Hawrylowicz, Ph.D., professor of immune regulation in allergic disease at King’s College London, commented on the importance of the results as it relates to both the health of future children and the importance of investigating further links between vitamin D and immunity:¹⁹

“The majority of all asthma cases are diagnosed in early childhood implying that the origin of the disease stems in fetal and early life. Studies to date that have investigated links between vitamin D and immunity in the baby have been observational.

For the first time, we have shown that higher vitamin D levels in pregnancy can effectively alter the immune response of the newborn baby, which could help to protect the child from developing asthma. Future studies should look at the long-term impact on the immunity of the infant.”

Impact of Sugar on Your Body

Sugar is 50 times more potent than total calories in explaining the rising rates of diabetes worldwide, explains Dr. Robert Lustig in this short video. While both glucose and fructose are sweet, they are two different molecules.

Research demonstrates not only the detrimental effect sugar has on your developing baby and their future health, but also on your own health. Despite the American Heart Association’s seal of approval on products that meet or exceed their own recommended daily limit on sugar, there is no nutritional reason to eat foods with added sugar.

In fact, the opposite is true. Diets high in net carbohydrates and added sweeteners may do far more than spike your blood glucose and insulin levels. Sugar will overload and damage your liver. High levels of sugar in your body will also trigger metabolic syndrome, a combination of weight gain, abdominal obesity, rising cholesterol levels and elevated triglycerides.

Eating a diet rich in net carbohydrates and excess sugars has also been linked to hypertension. As your insulin and leptin levels rise in response to sugars, your blood pressure also rises. Your body uses magnesium to fully relax your blood vessels, but your body is unable to store magnesium as you become resistant to insulin from a diet rich in sugar. When your body doesn’t have enough magnesium to relax your blood vessels, your blood pressure also rises.

Eating high amounts of sugar is also linked to brain-related health issues, such as depression, learning disorders, memory problems and food addiction. Sugars trigger the reward center in your brain, leading to cravings that may rival cocaine addiction in some individuals.²⁰ However, not all sugars have identical effects. For instance, fructose may activate your brain to increase your interest in food, while glucose triggers your brain’s satiation signal.

Your Gut Microbiome and Allergies

High sugar intake also affects the growth of bacteria in your gut. In an evaluation of data from market research firm Euromonitor, researchers found people in the U.S. ate more sugar per person than any other country evaluated.²¹ The average person in the U.S. consumes more than 126 grams of sugar each day, nearly twice the amount consumed by 54 monitored countries and twice the amount recommended by the World Health Organization.

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives & More

Researchers have demonstrated that diets rich in sugar will alter your gut microbiome,^22,²³ likely since your beneficial bacteria thrive on fiber and pathogenic bacteria thrive on sugar. Increasing the amount of sugar to the diet of mice transplanted with human fecal material demonstrated the gut microbiome would change dramatically within 24 hours of adding sugar to their diet.²⁴

Scientists have found infants who go on to develop allergies start with early-life abnormalities in their gut microbiome and microbial function.²⁵ While research continues to find links between healthy gut microbiota and a reduction in allergic response in adults and children, the evidence to date suggests that your gut microbiome is a significant target in the prevention and management of allergic asthma.²⁶

In a recent scientific review, scientists found an association between immune-regulated epigenetic imprinting from mother to child during pregnancy that may support the immune system of the growing child after birth.²⁷

However, if your gut microbiome is altered from high intake of sugar and net carbohydrates, this may alter your body’s ability to support the growing immune system of your child. In yet another study, doctors were able to associate altered intestinal microbiota with the development of asthma and allergies in children, suggesting the mother’s immune system may also play a role.²⁸

Break Free From Sugar

Research supports making a break from processed foods and added sugars in your diet to optimize your health and the health of your children. While sugar is an additive that can be challenging to reduce or eliminate from your diet, the benefits to your overall health, energy level and brain function may become rapidly evident, helping to motivate your efforts.

If you currently eat a lot of sugar, there’s a good chance you’re struggling with sugar addiction. If so, I highly recommend trying an energy psychology technique called Turbo Tapping. It has helped many “soda addicts” kick their sweet habit, and it should work for any type of sweet craving you may have.

As you begin eliminating sugar from your diet, be sure to avoid most processed foods, as added sugar can be found in nearly 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names.²⁹ If you’re already fighting diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure or are overweight, you would be wise to limit your total fructose and sugar intake to 15 grams per day until your condition has normalized.

For all others, I recommend limiting your total fructose to 25 grams or less per day. As you move toward limiting your sugar intake, here are several tips to help reduce cravings and help you on your journey to good health:

Exercise: Anyone who exercises intensely on a regular basis will know a significant amount of cardiovascular exercise is one of the best “cures” for food cravings. It always amazes me how my appetite, especially for sweets, dramatically decreases after a good workout. I believe the mechanism is related to the dramatic reduction in insulin levels that occurs after exercise.

Organic, black coffee: Coffee is a potent opioid receptor antagonist, and contains compounds such as cafestol — found plentifully in both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee — which can bind to your opioid receptors, occupy them and essentially block your addiction to other opioid-releasing food.^30,³¹ This may profoundly reduce the addictive power of other substances, such as sugar.

Sour taste: Simply tasting something sour, such as cultured vegetables, helps reduce sweet cravings, too. This is doubly beneficial, as fermented vegetables also promote gut health. You can also try adding lemon or lime juice to your water.

Related: Galactagogues Foods, Herbs, and other Ways to Increase Breast Milk Production

Food Allergy versus Food Sensitivity: What You Need to Know

(DrFrankLipman – Roybn O’Brien) It’s Food Allergy Awareness Week this week. In the early years of this work, when we first began speaking about food allergies, people used to look at you like you were making it up. How could a child be allergic to food? And since when? As kids, we ate PB&Js and had cartons of milk for lunch at school. They weren’t loaded weapons on a lunchroom table. What’s changed? And why has it changed so fast?

According to UCLA Health System, “The occurrence of allergic disease is skyrocketing, and some estimates are that as many as one-in-five Americans have an allergic condition.”

You don’t have to tell that to parents.

Today, a food allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room once every three minutes. One in ten children struggle with asthma, and one in four are affected by allergies. The incidence of allergy has increased significantly over the past two decades, and allergy to peanuts more than doubled from 1997 to 2002. The National Association of Nurses now says 19% of school age children have a food allergy.

In the last twenty years, there has been a 400% increase in the rates of allergies in children and a 300% increase in the rates of asthma, with at least a 56% increase in the number of asthma-related deaths.

Approximately 30 million children – more than 1/3 of our kids – are affected by one of the four new childhood epidemics – allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, earning our children the title of “Generation Rx” and these condition the title “the 4As.”

This is not something we can just accept nor can we afford to ignore.

And it’s not just affecting children.

The official statistic holds that allergies affect millions of Americans, including about 6-8 percent of children below the age of three. That information comes courtesy of U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Lester M. Crawford, J., D.V.M., Ph.D., speaking before the Consumer Federation of America on April 22, 2002. It is over ten years old.

Since then, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report in 2008 that said that there has been a 265% increase in the rate of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions.

Since when did a PB&J and a carton of milk become so dangerous?

This Begs Explanation

An allergy is basically an overreaction by your immune system to a protein that it perceives as a threat—for example, the proteins in particular types of food, the dust mite protein, or pollen. For people without allergies, these proteins are harmless. But if you’ve got an allergy, your immune system sees these proteins as dangerous invaders.

To drive the invader out, your immune system mobilizes all its resources: mucous, to flush out the intruder; vomiting, to force it out; diarrhea, to expel it quickly. Such conditions may make you feel sick, but they’re actually evidence of your body’s attempts to get well.

A key aspect of the immune response is known as inflammation, characterized by one or more of four classic symptoms: redness, heat, swelling, and pain. Inflammation doesn’t occur only in allergic reactions; it flares up whenever your body feels threatened, in response to a bruise, cut, bacteria, or virus as well as to otherwise harmless pollen, dust, or food. Scientists now believe that much of our immune system is found in our digestive tracts, where many of these inflammatory reactions occur in the form of stomachaches, cramping, nausea, bloating, and vomiting.

Ironically, the immune system’s inflammatory reaction—meant to heal and protect the body—often causes more problems than the initial “invader” in the cases when allergic reactions become life-threatening.

Common Symptoms of Food Allergy: Immediate Reactions

rash or hives
nausea
stomach pain
diarrhea
itchy skin
eczema
shortness of breath
chest pain
swelling of the airways to the lungs
anaphylaxis

Food Allergies and Food Sensitivity: Our Immune System Overreacts Again

At first glance, the distinction between “allergies” and “sensitivity” may seem like a meaningless word game. But understanding the relationship between these two conditions is crucial to grasping the true nature of the allergy epidemic—and to seeing how even the supposedly healthy foods in our kitchens may be harmful to our health.

As we’ve seen, allergies are an overreaction of our immune system, a kind of exaggerated response to a perceived danger. When a child comes in contact with these proteins (peanut, egg, wheat, etc.) her immune system “recognizes” the protein as dangerous, just as it would have seen the danger in the bacterium that causes pneumonia or the virus that causes mumps. In response, her immune system creates special “fighter” proteins called antibodies designed to identify and neutralize the “invader.”

These fighter proteins are known as immunoglobulin E, or IgE for short. When they’re released into the bloodstream, their purpose is to “seek and destroy” the invader, which they do by creating one or more of the classic food allergy symptoms, such as the hives, or the diarrhea with which other children respond, or, in more extreme cases, the anaphylactic shock that can kill a child within minutes.

The classic IgE response occurs within minutes or even seconds, because IgE proteins are some of the most aggressive antibodies we know. That immediate IgE response is the defining characteristic of an allergic reaction.

Food sensitivities start out in a similar way. If a “sensitive” child is exposed to a protein that his system perceives as a threat, he’ll manufacture another type of fighter protein, known as Immunglobulin G, or IgG. Although IgE and IgG antibodies play similar roles, they produce somewhat different—though often overlapping—symptoms.

A crucial difference between the two, though, is their reaction time. The less aggressive IgG antibodies typically produce a delayed response that might not appear for hours or even days after the child has consumed the offending food.

So even though food sensitivities and food allergies both produce painful, inflammatory, and potentially dangerous responses, this delayed reaction time has led many doctors to give food sensitivities second-class status. Partly that’s because they don’t present an immediate and obvious threat to children’s lives: only the IgE proteins trigger anaphylactic shock, for example, and in that sense, only the IgE proteins can kill (though the IgG reaction can have serious long-term consequences). Unfortunately, some doctors tend to downplay the importance of nutrition, frequently dismissing the idea that such symptoms as earache, eczema, crankiness, brain fog, and sleep problems might be related to a child’s diet.

However, an article in The Lancet, Britain’s most respected medical journal, casts another light on the subject. The article referred to doctors who use elimination diets—diets that begin with a very limited, “safe” array of food choices and then add potentially problematic foods back into the diet, one by one.

The reason to do an elimination diet is to identify which foods in your diet might be triggering symptoms like skin rashes, fatigue, or stomach ache. Often, some foods affect us without our realizing it and we live with the symptoms, taking medicine to alleviate the suffering. But if you eliminate these foods from your diet, you may find that your symptoms disappear. What becomes even more interesting is that when you reintroduce the offending food, you may suddenly suffer drastic symptoms which make it clear that the food was indeed triggering one or more problems. An elimination diet can sometimes reveal with dramatic speed that a particular food you’ve always believed was harmless is actually causing such chronic symptoms as headache, digestive problems, and even more serious complaints. Masked by your daily diet and by the slowness of the food-sensitivity reaction, the offending food does its dirty work without ever realizing that it is the culprit behind your—or your child’s—disorders.

When you take a break from eating that problem food, however, and then add it back into your diet, you see how powerful its effects are and how responsible it may be for a seemingly unrelated problem. Foods that you thought were safe for you turn out to be highly problematic, indicating the presence of a previous undiagnosed food sensitivity. As a result, the authors of the Lancetarticle conclude that the prevalence of food sensitivity (referred to in the article as “food intolerance”) has been seriously underestimated.

Certainly, food allergies are far more dramatic. Whenever you read about a kid who died within minutes of eating at a fast-food joint or after breathing in the peanut dust from a friend’s candy wrapper, that’s an “IgE-mediated” food allergy. They’re fast, they can be deadly, and need the attention they deserve.

But we should be looking at delayed reactions, too, the “IgG-mediated” responses to food sensitivities. And some doctors do look seriously at both. Most conventional doctors, though, tend to focus on IgE immediate reactions. There are lots of reasons why they should view the two types of reactions as part of a larger, single problem.

First, both reactions have the same ultimate cause: the immune system’s overreaction to apparently harmless food. According to internationally acclaimed author and physician Kenneth Bock, M.D., there’s also quite a bit of overlap between IgE and IgG symptoms. Both can contribute to inflammatory responses in multiple body systems.

True, the delayed IgG reactions are less likely to cause hives and are more likely to produce a host of apparently vague symptoms, such as headache, brain fog, sleep problems, joint pain, fatigue, and muscle aches. But both the immediate and the delayed responses are immune system problems triggered by a supposedly “harmless” food.

Conventional doctors’ tendency to separate “IgE-mediated” food allergies and “IgG-mediated” food sensitivities into two separate problems has the effect of minimizing the allergy epidemic. Remember, IgE allergies, IgG sensitivities, and asthma—three similar ways that our immune systems can overreact—are all on the rise. It makes sense to find a doctor who is willing to address all three as symptoms of a greater underlying issue.

Common Symptoms of Food Sensitivity: Delayed Reactions

fatigue
gastrointestinal problems, including bloating and gas
itchy skin and skin rashes like eczema
brain fog
irritability, behavioral issues
muscle or joint aches
headache
sleeplessness and sleep disorders
chronic rhinitis (runny nose), congestion, and post-nasal drip

Four Take-Aways:

1. Even if your kids can’t talk, their skin speaks volumes! Did you know that the skin is a person’s largest organ? Even when your child is too young to tell you how he feels or too used to her symptoms to identify them (when kids hurt all the time, they don’t know they hurt!), you can often read your child’s condition in his or her skin.

Does your child have eczema? Does he get rashes around the mouth, especially after he eats a certain food or swallows a certain beverage? Rashes around the knees, elbows, or armpits? Does he have “allergic shiners”—that is, dark circles under the eyes?

These are all inflammatory reactions, signs that the body is trying to rid itself of what it perceives as “toxic invader.” In your child’s case, that “toxic invader” might be an apparently harmless food, to which your kid is either allergic or “sensitive.” Keeping that invader away from your kid may bring relief from symptoms—and it may clear up other problems, such as brain fog, crankiness, sleep problems, inattention, acne, and mood swings.

2. The toilet bowl has a lot to tell you. Your kids’ bowel movements, not to be too delicate here, also speak volumes. Runny poops are a sign that a person isn’t properly digesting his food. And indeed, as we got the allergens out of some children’s diets, poops tend to firm up.

3. Chronic ear infections are often a sign of dairy allergies. In some cases, milk may have ill effects like eczema, upset stomachs or chronic ear infections for children who are allergic or sensitive to it.

4. Find a doctor who is willing to work with you, test for both IgE and IgG allergies and sensitivities and to address the important role that elimination diets can play in managing allergic symptoms like eczema, ear infections and chronic mucous.

AllergyKids turned eight this weekend over Mother’s Day. In these first eight years, we’ve met too many parents who have lost children to an allergic reaction. We’ve spent so much time with a dad who lost his 13 year old daughter to a food allergic reaction eight years ago. He was one of the first emails we ever received at the AllergyKids Foundation.

His daughter had eaten what they considered a “safe food.” Something she had eaten dozens of times before. For some inexplicable reason that day, it proved deadly.

We can not afford to lose our children, they are our country’s greatest resource.