It seems that people are becoming more allergic to foods with every passing year. The West especially has seen a steady increase in the number of children who are allergic to different foods in recent decades, with 40% of American children now having some kind of food allergy.
In the United Kingdom and Australia, 7% and 9% of children respectively have food allergies. Peanut allergies in the UK have increased by five times while Australia has the highest confirmed food allergy rate.
Scientists believe that the key to reducing peanut allergy rates in children is to give four- to six-month-old babies tiny amounts of peanut butter. Research published in the “Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology” has revealed that taking advantage of this opportunity during the weaning process can reduce the number of allergy cases by a whopping 77%. According to the researchers, the government’s weaning recommendation, which warns against introducing babies to solid foods before six months, has to change.
This recommendation is based on warnings from experts who say that peanuts and nuts present a significant choking risk to children under the age of five.
Peanut allergies as a whole occur when the body’s immune system mistakes a harmless substance such as milk for a dangerous threat. This results in an unnecessary immune response that can be so severe it puts the patient’s life in danger.
In the United States, food allergies cause 90,000 ER visits and take around 1,500 lives each year. To reduce negative health outcomes from allergies, the consensus has been to keep children away from allergy-triggering foods such as peanuts and milk until they are three years old. But recent evidence has shown that introducing babies to foods that can cause allergies while their immune systems are still growing would be more effective at reducing allergy rates. Giving babies peanut butter early in their lives can help their still-developing immune systems distinguish between friend and enemy.
Additionally, this approach makes it so the body first interacts with peanuts in the stomach where the immune system will likely see it as food rather than the skin where they may be mistaken for a threat. Countries such as Israel where it is common to introduce peanut snacks to younger babies tend to have lower rates of peanut allergy.
The recent study studied the best time to begin introducing peanut butter to babies and found that four to six months is the most effective. Researchers also found that when babies were introduced to peanut-based foods at one year old, the number of allergy cases only went down by 33%. They recommend that parents begin with small amounts of vegetables or fruits before finally giving their babies three teaspoons of peanut butter every week.
A number of companies such as Aditxt Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTX) are developing therapeutics to manage allergies and give sufferers a chance at a better quality of life.
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