Are Parents Starving Their Children Over Allergy Fears?

Allergies are a major source of modern parental anxiety. And that’s very understandable. It's easy enough to think about the life-threatening illnesses like polio, TB and diphtheria that ravaged previous generations, and say that modern parents are worried about allergies because they don’t have anything more serious to hang their parental anxieties on. But if you know someone who's been hospitalized by an asthma attack, or who carries an Epipen because chillies, peanuts or almonds could kill them in minutes, it’s a different story. Allergies can be really scary stuff.

The trouble emerges when parents are convinced their kids have allergies and doctors aren’t so sure. All too often, parents go with their gut instead of getting another medical opinion, and the result is reliance on home testing kits that promise to “find out what’s wrong” (even if nothing is) and don’t have a solid scientific basis. In other words, frightened by medicine, parents buy snake oil.

That’s what happened with the anti-vaxx movement and it’s what’s happening now with allergies.

Allergy Home Testing Kits

Home testing kits are a booming business, especially in the UK where I’m from. And it's no surprise that they find what they’re looking for more often than doctors do: so do psychics, ghost hunters, homeopaths and so forth. Sometimes that’s because they present real findings in a false light. One example is the York test. Ths looks for elevated IgG antibodies in the blood, and that's fine: IgG might really be elevated. The problem arises when that’s interpreted to mean that person has an allergy, when the scientific evidence says something very different.

Sense About Science publishes a guide about allergies and home testing which points out that “the best medical evidence has shown elevated IgG levels do not suggest an allergy” since “results are frequently positive in individuals who do not have an allergy or a food intolerance.”

Another popular test is the Vega test which combines homeopathy with acupuncture by testing electrical conductivity across the skin while the person being tested holds the suspected food in their hand. That’s about as effective as it sounds, which is to say not at all. Finally hair follicle testing which is also popular comes in for especially definite condemnation from Sense About Science. “Hair is not involved in allergic reactions so testing hair samples cannot provide any useful information on allergic status,” the guide states, adding equally unequivocally that no one should be seduced into thinking there’s any connection between allergies and some kind of “energy blockage” curable by acupuncture.

Mistrust Of Doctors

One of the major causes of this outbreak of illogic is mistrust of doctors. That’s less frequently a result of personal experience with being let down by the medical profession, and more part of a general cultural shift toward seeing medical intervention and science as mechanical, cold and inimical to life, while “natural” or “traditional” treatments are safer, more benevolent and more effective. Where that comes from and what to do about it are beyond the scope of this article, but it can’t be ignored.

READ Food Allergies in Children - Causes and Allergens, Symptoms and Prevention

Another major issue is the hazy public understanding of the difference between an allergy and a food or substance intolerance. Food intolerances are fairly common. Symptoms can include bloating, gastrointestinal pain and distress, joint pain and rashes.Something to be avoided, certainly, but not life threatening. Allergies can kill in minutes. We're not talking about discomfort, we’re talking about adrenaline injections. There’s a big, big difference.

Home Testing, Allergy Kits and Hungry Kids

I’m not saying that food intolerances should not be investigated or dealt with. But they should be seen for what they are and they are categorically not allergies.

“I commonly see children who’ve been put on to unnecessarily restricted diets because their parents assume, in good faith, that they have allergies to multiple foods on the basis of ‘allergy tests’ which have no scientific basis," says Paul Seddon, consultant pediatric allergist and member of the Cochrane Centre, which assesses the scientific basis of medical treatments.

“This needs to stop, which can only happen if we debunk these 'tests’.”

Many people don't deal well with a diet that’s high in grains, for instance, but if you remove all the grains from a child's diet you need to put the calories back in somehow. If you stop a child from drinking milk other sources of calcium and other nutrients need to be on hand. This isn’t to minimise the effects of gluten intolerance, the far more common FODMAPS (“Fermentable Oligo-, Di-, Mono-saccharides And Polyols,” mainly short-chain carbohydrates) intolerance that it’s often mistaken for or milk reactions like casein or lactose intolerance., It's just that getting sensible dietary advice would include learning how to replace the nutrients in those foods. If you’re hearing emotionally inflammatory,yet vaguely defined words like “toxins,” “poisons” and a generalised screed against modern life from your sources of dietary advice it may be time to ask a professional.

But How Can Parents Get It So Wrong?

Tariq El-Shanawany, of the University Hospital of Wales, points out that we all tend to “hunt for a cause,” and that with incomplete information, no background and the whole internet to choose from it’s common to fall prey to confirmation bias: “ with easy access to lots of information on the internet and everything else, there's just a risk of confirmation bias, where you have got a suspicion and you can find lots of stuff to back up the suspicion rather than necessarily looking at the whole picture.”

READ The 'Food Allergy Epidemic': A Western Problem?

In other words: we're a little too good at seeing what we want to see. The real factors that can cause children to suffer from both allergies and intolerances can be complex and interconnected. Sometimes the cause is in the child's diet, but sometimes it's elsewhere, and it's not uncommon for there to be several things making a contribution. It's easier for parents to blame something simple, but we have to be more acreful and more patient than that, and work to figure out what's really going on. By all means, feed your kids less bread, but don't let anyone sell you on a quasi-mystical "foodoo" explanation for their problems — and make sure they're eating enough!

If you like what you've seen here, or you think I've got it all wrong, get hold ofme in the comments section!