Taking a new look at allergy research

01/27/2012 By Leave a Comment

As those of you who get the FoodsMatter newsletter, or who regularly frequent the information sites, Foodsmatter.com and Coeliacsmatter.com, will know, every couple of weeks we upload between 10 and 20 reports of new research studies on allergy/intolerance and on the many other conditions which relate to them. (You can find links to all the recent reports on the home pages of both sites, on this page and an archive of reports here.) Usually we do our own report on the research findings but sometimes, if it is very simple, or if it is either very complex or only peripherally relevant to our core interests, we just give a link to the original report or comment.

We depend, for this constant flow of information, on the tireless labours of John Scott who combs the web on a daily (indeed, hourly) basis for enlightenment in his own spheres of interest which, very fortunately for us, are also ours! He sends us a list of links from which we choose the ones which seem most relevant and most interesting – and then write them up.

However, rather like the number of good freefrom foods on the market, the amount of relevant and interesting research now being done on allergy/sensitivity, not to mention all the other related areas, is just growing and growing – to the point that we are drowning in reports! Labour though we do, we just cannot keep up –  yet we do not want site visitors and newsletter subscribers to miss out. So, at John’s suggestion, we are instituting a new system.

We will continue to carry new research reports on the sites which you will be able to access via the newsletter, the home pages and the ‘new research’ page. These will include both our own reports and direct links to source material. However, John is now going to utilise new pages (‘threads’) in the FoodsMatter forums to list a far wider range of reports than we will be uploading to the sites. This does not mean that site visitors are going to get short-changed – merely that, from the new forum platform, we will be able to offer offer you links to a far wider range of topics than we have ever been able to do on the sites.

Moreover, the new format will allow John to highlight not only recent bits or interesting or useful research, but recent news, something that we have always struggled to cover on the sites which are, basically, organised into either full articles or research reports. Thus, in the ‘general allergy’ forum you will find links to recent  allergy research  and to recent allergy news. Likewise in the other forums covering:
• Food allergy and intolerance
• Coeliac disease and gluten intolerance
• Digestive conditions (IBS, IBD etc)
• Candida and sugar/sweeteners
• Eczema, acne, psoriasis and rosacea
• Electromagnetic sensitivity
• Environmental issues including MCS and ME/CFS
• Autism and behavioural conditions
• Headache and migraine
• Mental health
• Asthma and respiratory conditions
• Infant and child health and the management of allergy at school
• Alternative and complementary therapies
• Micronutrition and super foods

Each entry will have a title (which will be a link to the source material), a date so that you know how topical the report actually is, and a one or two-line ‘thumbnail’ sketch to give you some idea what the research or news item is about. All you need to do is click on the link which will then open the report in a new window – so you are easily able to return to where you started to find the next interesting new item!

We are delighted with the new arrangement but would really like to hear some feedback from those who use it. Nothing is ever so good that it cannot be better!

Oh yes – and for those wishing to promote their products, we will also be offering, once the webmaster has created the space, a small amount of advertising space at the top of each forum. Let me know if you are interested and I will keep you posted on progress – and prices!

Filed Under: Allergies, Alternative/Complementary Health, Conventional Medicine, Electrosensitivity, Environmental Issues, FreeFrom Food Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Food allergies in children over-diagnosed’

09/30/2011 By Leave a Comment

Oh dear, here we go again… The old chestnut. ‘Over 40% of the population believe they have food allergies but in fact less than 5% do so the other 35% are unnecessarily restricting their diets and may be making themselves ill by not eating sufficient nutrients. This is especially dangerous where children are concerned’…. The return to school has spawned another round of press releases and articles rehearsing the same story which we have heard again and again.

As with the milk saga about which I was inveighing in my last post – it is all down to semantics. What a health professional understands by an ‘allergy’ is an immune system reaction to a food (or inhaled or contact allergen) – a reaction which can be extremely serious, even fatal, and that requires total avoidance of the allergen but which is a relatively rare condition. Despite the growth in peanut allergy over the last ten years, it is still unlikely that much more than 5% of the population suffer from this condition.

What very many more people suffer from is a temporary or longer term ‘food intolerance’ when a specific food or group of foods disagrees with them and makes them feel ill. This may be an ideopathic condition (no one knows what it causing it), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (more or less the same thing…), coeliac disease (an autoimmune condition in which you react to gluten), the after effects of a bout of gastroenteritis or any one of a thousand other conditions which affect the digestion – but it is not a ‘classic’, immune-mediated allergy.

The problem is that the man in the street does not understand the medical definition of allergy. As far as he or she is concerned, an ‘allergy’ is (as it was in its original definition) ‘an inappropriate response to a substance – ingested (such as a food), inhaled (such as pollen) or touched (such as latex) – which does not cause a reaction in the rest of the population’. So, he or she thinks and talks about his or her ‘intolerance’ as an ‘allergy’, thus getting up the nose of the medical profession who test them for an immune-system related allergy and find that they do not have one, so send them away no better than they arrived.

The need here is for better understanding by the medical profession of food intolerance, and of the confusion in the minds of those who suffer from it. But that is a big ask, not only because food intolerance is not currently acknowledged or covered in medical school but because it is an enormous and enormously complex subject of which very few practitioners understand the ramifications.

For more on the subject with specific reference to wheat allergy see my article on the Foods Matter site sparked by the media frenzy about wheat allergy about 18 months ago.

 

Filed Under: Allergies Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,