Are you putting your adopted child at risk for developing asthma? A study of 3000 healthy children over a six-year period suggests that many parents are. Is your home is close to a busy road? Yes, then you have increased your child’s chance of developing asthma, hay fever, eczema, or other allergies by 50 percent. The study results indicate that those children living at least 1,000 meters away from a busy road were much healthier. What is the definition of a busy road? At least 10,000 vehicles a day drive on the road was the definition used by this study. Pollution has been linked... more

Does your child have bouts of wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath? Have you talked to your child’s doctor about these symptoms? Could your child have asthma? While these are some of the symptoms of asthma, your doctor may want to perform other tests to confirm the diagnosis. One of the tests that your doctor may recommend is a lung function or breathing test. This may be able to rule out other causes of these same symptoms. Sometimes doctors try prescribing asthma medication for your child to see if it reduces or eliminates the symptoms. If the medication works... more

A few weeks ago, I took my eight-year-old child to the doctor for croup. The doctor noticed that he was also wheezing. Our son had infantile asthma when we adopted him and occasionally has still has episodes of wheezing. We have a nebulizer at home for treatments and I used to take it with us if he was having a day of difficult breathing. I asked the doctor if my adopted child was old enough for an asthma inhaler. I explained my concern about not having an emergency treatment with us during hockey or soccer games. The doctor assured me that he was old enough and agreed... more

I scheduled an appointment with our DAN! doctor a few days ago, to discuss the whole h pylori findings and what needed to be done now that we were on the heavy duty antibiotics. Of course, I’d already added more probiotics to her regime. The doctor recommended a slightly different, more powerful probiotic, but he was more concerned that we do things to help her leaky gut heal and hopefully prevent a recurrence of h pylori or other problems.

So he recommended two things. First he recommended that we start on digestive enzymes to be taken everytime she... more

No kidding, this is a real allergy also known as cold hives or urticaria. The people who suffer from this allergy have a sudden reaction when they go out into the cold weather. When their skin is exposed to cold temperatures, histamine and other chemicals are released into the skin. Similar to other allergic reactions, the sufferers experience redness of the skin, itching, swelling, and hives. The symptoms frequently worsen as the skin is being warmed again. Honestly, if I had an adopted child tell... more

What I know about histamine dates back nearly four decades. My younger sister developed her first signs of having asthma right after my mother stopped breastfeeding her. Soon, she learned that my sister was allergic (deathly allergic) to peanuts. She was also allergic to all types of other foods – eggs, chicken, legumes…and more.

In the 1960s there just wasn’t that much research out there on food allergies or the connection to asthma. And my mom didn’t have the internet. She had to rely on what local doctors told her ( in a Midwest farm town). But, like... more

Last week’s Parade Magazine has an article entitled “What You Can Do About Food Allergies.” Parade.com hasn’t got it posted in archives yet, but it was an interesting overview of how food allergies are really on the rise. The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) estimates that 2.2 million school-aged children and one in 17 children under the age of 3 have a food allergy. One study showed a doubling of peanut allergies (one in 250 kids in 1997 to one in 125 kids... more

Julia, my blog-mate, wrote last week about how allergies can mimic other disorders. She and I chatted briefly about the different types of antibodies and the type of testing LuLu had undergone to determine her food sensitivities. Julia reminded me I had never blogged about this.

Antibodies are made of proteins called immunoglobulins. There are five classes of immunoglobulins: IgG, IgA, IgM, IgD and IgE. Most of the antibodies in your blood... more

Children and adults can suffer from food allergies and they tend to be under diagnosed by physicians. An allergy is an unexpected reaction to something and can show up by an unexpected change in your skin, your intestines, your respiratory passages, and/or your brain in behavior changes.

The tricky part is that food allergies can show up immediately or days later making them difficult to recognize. Food allergies can cause the following conditions: fatigue, migraine headaches,... more

This may be off topic (not if your child’s special needs is seasonal allergies), but here in the Garden of Eden things are as they are every spring…gorgeous. The azaleas are in full bloom, along with the dogwoods, and the cherry trees. The daffodils have faded, but the lilies and the irises are due any day now.

And…there’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…and the sidewalk, and my car, and the mailbox, and the trash can (see picture). This yellow/green dust is tree pollen. This phenomenon is a Southern one at it’s finest. And this year... more