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Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

bbc.com

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Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#101
post #20

If you do this, be prepared with benadryl and be ready to handle the situation if your kid does have an allergy. Speaking from experience, here. Wife is an ER doc and it was still a scary situation. (He's fine, but still has the allergy 7 years later)

I've heard a recommendation to do this in an ER parking lot for this reason.

Do you give them a heads up first or just say yolo and hope everyone survives?

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#102
post #16

This is not new news, but nonetheless important to replicate and keep studying. I think the first often-cited study about this was in 2008 [1]. There are several more, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015 [2]. Basically, the original study looked at Jewish kids in Israel versus the UK and saw that peanut allergies were about 10x lower in Israel, even though Jews of European background (Ashkena…

If you can't find Bamba but you have European or Balkan shop nearby you can try buying Smoki [1], it's the same thing.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=smoki&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiE...

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#103
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my late 30s I developed a legume allergy (including peanuts). Not knowing much about child peanut allergies (we gave all of our kids peanut butter from an early age), I’ve had to adjust my own life to avoiding peanuts, soy, and so many delicious beans. My symptoms are just gastro related, so it’s probably not the same as childhood peanut allergies, though.

Do you get a flu shot every year?

I used to, but haven’t been regular about it for several years. Is there a link between it and adult onset allergies?

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#104

> Food allergies are the result of our immune system mistaking something harmless for a severe threat. If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it has seen, it will probably flag it. > There had been long-standing advice to avoid foods that can trigger allergies during early childhood. At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old. This advice was never based…

> At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old.

> This advice was never based on science.

I'm like 99% sure this was to avoid babies/young kids choking on peanut

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#105

> Food allergies are the result of our immune system mistaking something harmless for a severe threat. If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it has seen, it will probably flag it. > There had been long-standing advice to avoid foods that can trigger allergies during early childhood. At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old. This advice was never based…

>Train how you live as soon as possible. There are dangerous caveats to this advice! For example, don't feed infants fish or shellfish more than this allergy test. They contain one of the highest levels of mercury in the entire food web. Best to wait until the they've grown.

Most seafood is actually very low in mercury, only a few species that are high in the food chain (e.g. shark) are high in mercury due to bio-magnification.

Moreover, it has been observed that traditional fishing cultures that have a high mercury intake have zero symptoms of mercury toxicity. The leading hypothesis of this is that the high selenium content in these same fish is protective against mercury exposure[1]. Consider also the observation that cultures with high fish intake have good health outcomes, and that omega-3 supplementation fails to recover those benefits. This makes me feel that eating a lot of fish is likely much healthier than avoiding it, and avoiding it is probably leading to nutrition deficiency, including possibly selenium, which is a much bigger risk than the potential for mercury toxicity.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01618...

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#106

> Food allergies are the result of our immune system mistaking something harmless for a severe threat. If you IDS has never seen X and X is unlike anything it has seen, it will probably flag it. > There had been long-standing advice to avoid foods that can trigger allergies during early childhood. At one point, families were once told to avoid peanut until their child was three years old. This advice was never based…

> This advice was never based on science. No, it was based on common sense. If X causes problems, not doing X is generally a good idea. It turns out that in this particular scenario, common sense was wrong. But allergies weren't understood by science, so all we had to go on was common sense.

And that we should use the real scientific method instead of "common sense" disguised as science.

I have three children, and they had three different pediatricians when they were babies. The three pediatricians had a different incompatible list of food the children must eat when they had between 6 and 12 month old. And if you go to the web, there is even more disinformation and snake oil.

It was funny to compare the list of food of the pediatricians of my children with the list of foods of the pediatricians of the children of my friends. Also, sometime people get too attached to this recommendations and make a big mess if the children of a friend does not follow the rules of their own children.

(I think the only food in the intersection was honey, because it's too difficult to pasteurize. It make sense, but I'm not sure how thoughtfully it was tested.)

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#107
post #16

This is not new news, but nonetheless important to replicate and keep studying. I think the first often-cited study about this was in 2008 [1]. There are several more, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015 [2]. Basically, the original study looked at Jewish kids in Israel versus the UK and saw that peanut allergies were about 10x lower in Israel, even though Jews of European background (Ashkena…

Bamba is also delicious. The fat content from the peanut butter gives it a good body, like a cheese puff. If you decide to get some for your kid, get some extra for yourself.

TJ's also sold some that were dipped in dark chocolate. They are the unholy hybrid of vanishing caloric density and a peanut butter cup.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#108
post #83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many many people put their kids into daycare at 3 months of age since that’s all they get for maternity leave.

In the US 25% of mothers are back at work within 2 weeks of childbirth ( https://www.vox.com/2015/8/21/9188343/maternity-leave-united... ). FMLA requires jobs to let mothers take time but does not require they be paid, and most folks are living paycheck to paycheck and need the money.

It's 25% of the all mothers or 25% of the mothers that were working before the birth?

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#109
This is a weird one to me. I had these allergies confirmed medically before I was 1. Almost died from reactions to the smell of foods I later had to avoid. Skin was irritated by cotton, such that I was hard to get to sleep.

That said, I have outgrown pretty much all allergies. And super grateful that my kids are free of any. Super curious to see new learning on this.

Re: Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says

#110
I still can’t get over that the official guidelines for years were the opposite of this, and it seems to have led to a tremendous increase in severe peanut allergy. I get that public health organizations have to make recommendations in the face of uncertainty. But to get it so wrong, with severe consequences — was there a postmortem or investigation of how that happened? How are people to trust public health guidelines when that stuff happens without explanation?
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