A decade ago, food allergy hadn’t reached the public’s radar. Terms such as “life-threatening”, “deadly” and “fatal” were used to get people to take food allergies seriously. But have we gone too far focussing on the “death” part of severe allergic reactions and scared a new generation of parents and their children? Inga Stünzner investigates.
For the last six years, Karen* has spent every waking moment protecting her daughter from an allergic reaction. This constant vigilance includes searching the ingredients list on every packet of food every single time for the words for milk, eggs, tree nuts, kiwi fruit and peas, and obsessively wiping down surfaces to remove traces of any possible allergen.
Her six-and-a-half-year-old daughter Ella constantly breaks out in a rash from “invisible” food on everyday objects that she touches.
“I found it very stressful when she got hives because I was watching to see if a worse reaction was coming and because I felt I’d failed to protect her from these allergens,” Karen says.
It was when a dog licked Ella’s face, resulting in hives, and she then became terrified of all canines that Karen realised things had to change.
“I started to realise that my fear had transferred to her. I was more anxious than I needed to be about her getting hives and she had learnt that from me.”
Karen is not alone.
One study from Great Britain found that children with peanut allergy report more fear of adverse health effects, feel more threatened by potential hazards, restrict their physical activity more, and are more worried about being away from home than children with diabetes.
Could it be that parents and the general public are being unduly frightened by the potential of death from an allergic reaction? And passing this anxiety on to their children.
Low-allergy gardens boring? That’s history! Thanks to increased international interest in what exactly it is about plants that can cause problems and the availability of helpful lists of what and what not to plant, you can now enjoy bright, beautiful gardens without itching, sneezing, or wheezing.
It all comes down to sex. Allergenic male plants dominate landscapes and gardens. They’re preferred by planners because they are low maintenance. They produce neither seeds nor fruits nor seedpods that have to be cleaned up, but unlike female plants, unfortunately male plants produce the pollen grains that are one of the main triggers of seasonal hay fever.
This is the message from Thomas Leo Ogren, expert on horticulture and allergies, in his book Allergy-Free Gardening.
“A pollen-producing male tree in our own yard will easily expose us to 10 times more pollen than would a similar tree growing just down the block,” Ogren says.
He points out that primary school landscapes are frequently highly allergenic because they have been landscaped with trees and shrubs that won’t produce any seeds, seedpods or fruit, which younger children might want to eat, and older children may want to toss at each other.
“What is over-looked is that these tidy choices are usually male cultivars (clones) and although they are ‘litter-free’, they are prodigious producers of allergenic pollen.”
But before you start pulling out and chopping down every male plant in your garden, your first step should be finding out what you are allergic to. Then do extensive research on the allergenicity of those plants.
“The real question is, how much of an allergy threat does this particular plant pose in the garden or landscape? There are hundreds of thousands of different kinds of plants with multitudes of different flowering systems. They are not simply all good or all bad.”
There are several factors that determine how much a given plant will affect someone predisposed to pollen allergy. These include the sex of the plant, the size, shape and colour of the flower, how the plant is pollinated (by wind or insects) and what the pollen itself is like.
What you need to do is read everything on the subject you can find. “Go on the internet and read articles, read books, learn as much as possible.”
There is no place better to start that Ogren’s book, Allergy-free gardening; the revolutionary guide to healthy landscaping.
In this book, Ogren includes an extensive list of plants from around the world, with a rating on a scale from one, which is least allergenic, to 10, which is most allergenic. He calls this the Ogren Plant-Allergy Scale (OPALS).
Hay fever is probably the least glamorous of the allergic diseases, but sadly, in this case lack of glamour does not equate with low prevalence. Recent studies from all over the world reveal that it’s high on the list of most common chronic diseases. Perhaps because it is so common, many sufferers either ignore it and suffer, or ignore it until it develops into something more complicated.
What are you rubbing into your skin?
Most of us probably reach for at least seven different cosmetic products a day without much thought: shampoos, conditioners, toners, moisturisers, deodorant, perfume, lipstick - and that’s just the start. And although each of these products is packed with chemicals and “natural” products that don’t always have to be identified on the label, these labelling requirements are about to change. But you will still need to be cautious, especially in regard to advertising claims such as “hypoallergenic”.
Three steps to manage eczema
Eczema can be an extremely difficult condition to keep under control, but thanks to the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, help is at hand. They have developed plans written in simple, easy-to-understand language that show you how to manage this condition.
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inside spring 2008 issue 126: