NATURAL TREATMENT FOR FOOD ALLERGIES:
If you struggle with food allergies, you’ve probably been dished up the standard advice: Avoid problem foods. This can be a challenge and often overwhelming. Shopping around food allergies adds extra time, frustration and expense to weekly meal prepping. It can also make social events and eating out difficult. For children it can be embarrassing and lead to social stigma of being the “allergy kid at the special table in the lunchroom”. Families are burdened with eating around allergies or time is spent cooking more than one meal. If this is your reality, there is hope in the advancement of oral drop therapy (sublingual immunotherapy).
Allergies Are on the Rise:
In spite of the rapid growth of food allergies in America (up 20 percent in the past 10 years), doctors have been puzzled by how to treat allergies to everything from wheat to peanuts. While the cause of this increase is unknown some research is revealing it may be related to increased use of antibiotics and anti bacterial cleaners. As an immune system is developing it is trained by being exposed to bacteria. When bacteria is killed by a cleaning process or antibiotic our immune system is not exposed as it should be and therefore not properly trained. It then gets exposed to benign items like food and over reacts. Most recently an article showed that even dishwashers have increased the incidence of allergies due to our dishes being “too clean”. Click here to read the article.
Symptoms:
Symptoms of food allergies can range from mild to severe digestive symptoms like “IBS” or irritable bowel syndrome. In addition to irritable bowel-type symptoms, food allergies can lead to itching in the mouth, swelling of the lips, palate, and throat (leading to difficulty swallowing and breathing), and skin problems such as hives and eczema. Some food reactions can be delayed up to several hours after the food is eaten which makes determining the bothersome food very difficult.
Testing:
Testing can be very helpful in identifying immediate or delayed food reactions. Immediate reactions are related to a specific immune marker known as the IgE. Delayed reactions are related to the immune marker known as the IgG. These can easily be identified with fingerstick (IgG), skin prick (IgE) or bloodwork (both IgE/IgG). Each are reliable methods to identify allergens but do require a physician to interpret the results. For more information about food allergy testing click here.
Treatment:
A treatment known as sublingual immunotherapy is changing how we treat allergies. The treatment involves taking extracts of the allergy-causing food, mixing it into a saline solution and administering it under the tongue where it is absorbed into the bloodstream. The treatment trains the immune system to accept previously intolerable foods through gradually increasing exposure—much the same way you can condition your ears to tolerate loud music by slowly raising the volume. For more information click here.
Research:
Sublingual immunotherapy has been used for over 25 years to treat environmental allergies (pollens, molds, pet dander, etc.), but an increasing body of research shows that it works reliably for food allergies, too. Recent studies at Duke University have helped push sublingual immunotherapy to the forefront by using it to tackle peanut allergies–one of the most common yet dangerous food allergies. In the Duke study, 11 children were given a liquid peanut solution for sublingual absorption. After a year of consistent treatment, those children who originally reacted severely to even a trace of peanut were able to eat about five or six peanuts without reaction.
Comprehensive Treatment:
At Desert Wellness Center sublingual therapy covers 59 different foods including milk, eggs, wheat, rice, soy, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. And since allergy drops have been shown to be safer than allergy shots, the drops can be taken in the comfort of home. The physicians at DWC are highly trained in sublingual immunotherapy and often combine with other natural treatments for improved quality of life. Additional treatments include nutritional counseling, digestive repairing nutrients, herbal remedies and homeopathy. Patients often are able to tolerate the previously offensive foods with less or no symptoms at all as soon as 2 months after starting treatment.
If you or a loved one is suffering with symptoms related to food allergies please contact us for more information.