A Meat Producer Sheds Light: “It Isn’t Just About Food”

Over the last few years, we have had the honor of meeting some remarkable people doing extraordinary things. And more often than not, social media has enabled a lot of these connections.

Rod Morrison is no exception. He is the CEO of a meat company and his constant efforts to educate consumers about the safety of meat are inspiring.

So when we recently asked him if he’d be interested in writing about his work for AllergyKids, he asked what he should write about, and we said: What inspired you?

Rod Morrison’s answer is below:

You asked, What inspires you? Well it happened while I was mindfully trying to ask myself what does inspire me. My cell phone rang and I picked it up, on the other end was a good friend that I had just visited with the day before.

He said, “I forgot to ask you yesterday if you had heard.”

“Heard what?” I said, about Glen. “No, what?”

“Damn, I was hoping you had” he said.

It was then that I realized I was about to hear some bad news.

The words that came next were not in the least what was flashing through my head, car wreck, divorce, sold the farm. No, worse than that. He had not been feeling well for the last few months and had just received word that he had cancer of the pancreas and the liver, a death sentence.

Now at this point I could go into all the life events that Glen and I have experience together but most of what we did would only lead to more questions and wonderment. Let’s just say we have been to hell and back on several occasions. Glen is, to this day a conventional farmer and a damn good one. Glen never left the farm. Even given the chance he would not have changed his position in life of being a conventional farmer. And for that effort, Glen has just received the time line that every person with cancer must ask, how long do I have? What he was told was 3 months to 5 years. I know Glen well enough that he will take this time line and live life to the fullest because that who he is. And as I’m setting hear putting words to paper I am for certain that both of us are asking the same question. Why did he continue down the road of conventional agriculture? His yearly use of chemicals and fertilizers that have never been tested for their affects on human tissues is certainly weighing on his mind as it does on mine.

One event that both Glen and I had experienced was the effects of malathion. Malathion is a pesticide that is widely used in agriculture, residential landscaping, public recreation areas, and in public health pest control programs such as mosquito eradication. In the US, it is the most commonly used organophosphate insecticide. This was back in the 70’s Glen had an infestation of alfalfa weevil in a large field so he had it sprayed be a local crop duster. Five hours after the application Glen and I went to look at the field.

What we both saw convinced the both of us that we would never use malathion ever again. Hundred of dead birds that had been feeding on the weevil were scattered on the ground outside of the field. Glen and I were both sick because neither of us were made aware of the environmental impacts of this pesticide let alone the human impacts over time. For me to write that I find inspiration in the slow demise of a long time personal friend sound heartless or mean, what I really feel is anger about the loss which then I turn into the inspiration to keep moving in an organic direction.

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN?

Change in the area of how and what we eat can be overwhelming. It requires time (reading, talking, and seeking reliable resources to understand a fairly complex system that we thought we could trust, a system of food production and marketing that is deeply imbedded in our culture). And what you discover on this journey is initially difficult to face. And if you do take control of your food consumption behavior, you will have to pay more for your food. Neither of these changes (time and money) are attractive. I will be frank, it isn’t easy. But is it worth it? Yes.

As I write this, it is early Spring. Farmers are on their tractors preparing ground for another growing season. Yesterday we had a light rain and I note an overnight hint of green in the winter-brown grass, trees are budding and geese are honking the overhead highways back north. Everything is hope and promise. And I connect all that hope and promise to the land, to the sun, to the waters that presently reside in the snow-covered mountains.

But I also know that soon I will see enormous plastic containers of synthetic chemicals and toxins stitching their way across fields. Small planes will spray these fields with poisonous concoctions. The big seed companies will begin shipping tons of genetically engineered seeds that insure a “perfect” looking vegetable–but at what cost? Suddenly convenience and cheap prices seem like twin sins. I don’t use that word lightly, but it seems to fit.

So, my hope is finding another way. And how, in the end, can you argue with food choices that not only help you become more healthy, but that give you more control and even offer you the opportunity to get to know your farmer? I have met more incredible people with the most fascinating stories . . . my life is richer, perhaps not financially, but richer, nonetheless.

Change is difficult. But once you start, you can’t go back. I just urge people to take that first step. Perhaps reading this is that first step.

Or perhaps you’ll discover what I discovered: it isn’t just about food, it’s also about relationships. When people buy my meat, I feel we are all sitting at the same table. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy talking at the table.

To learn more about Rod Morrison, his work and the process of meat production, please visit www.rockymtncuts.com

Dirty Dairy: What You Need to Know About Milk

Written by Robyn O’Brien

The journal Pediatrics that 15% of American girls are expected to begin puberty by the age of 7 (with the number closer to 25% for African American girls), perhaps it’s time for a little history lesson about the introduction of artificial growth hormones into the American milk supply in 1994.

For the past 16+ years, much of our nation’s milk has come from cows injected with a genetically engineered growth hormone. If you didn’t know that, you’re not alone. Since it was never labeled, most of us had no idea that this hormone was introduced into our dairy in 1994. The hormone has two interchangeable names: recombinant bovine somatropine (rBST) and recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH).

RBGH has dominated the milk market almost since the FDA approved it in 1993. It was the first genetically engineered product ever brought to market. And the Associated Press (AP), the New York Times and the rest of the media have called it “controversial” (the AP headline actually referred to it as “a bumper crop of controversy”).

So what is rBGH anyway? Although the product is made in a lab, it’s designed to mimic a hormone that’s naturally produced in a cow’s pituitary glands. It’s injected into cows every two weeks to boost their hormonal activity, causing them to produce an additional 10 to 15 percent more milk, or about one extra gallon each day. And within the first four years of its introduction in 1994, about one-third of the nation’s cows were in herds being treated with this growth hormone.

If all you knew about rBGH and this hormone was that it increased milk production, you might think it was a good thing. Why shouldn’t we use every means at our disposal to boost the supply of such a nutritious food?

Well, besides increasing milk production, rBGH apparently does a few other things, too.

First of all, the product seems to be hazardous to the cows. The package itself warns of such bovine problems as “increases in cystic ovaries and disorders of the uterus,” “decreases in gestation length and birthweight of calves,” and “increased risk of clinical mastitis.” Mastitis is a painful type of udder infection that causes cows to pump out bacteria and pus along with milk, requiring treatment with antibiotics and other meds that can end up in the milk.

When I first read this, I had to stop and walk away from the computer for a few minutes. How many bottles and sippy cups had I filled with this milk? Why hadn’t I known about rBGH when I was pouring countless bowls of cereal for my children? I shuddered at the thought that along with the milk, I had also been giving them doses of growth hormone and antibiotics, not to mention potentially exposing them to cow bacteria and udder pus. How had I not known about this Dirty Dairy?

Want some antiobiotics with that growth hormone?

On top of that, and is often cited in the press (most recently by Laurie David), 80% of antibiotics are now used on our livestock here in the U.S. And overexposure to antibiotics tends to kill off the friendly bacteria in our intestines—bacteria that we need for our digestion and immune system. Many doctors believe that too many antibiotics at too early an age is part of the reason that kids are more likely to be allergic: their immune systems aren’t being given the “microbial environment” that they require. Wonder how many “extra” antibiotics our kids are getting in their milk, cheese, and yogurt? Maybe it’s not just about those hand sanitizers.

And then on top of that, allergies are the body’s response to proteins that it considers “toxic invaders,” and that genetically engineered proteins may spark new allergies. According to CNN and a recent study published in the Journal of Allergy and Immunology, milk allergy is now the most common food allergy in the U.S., having risen to the number-one position in the last 10 years. It’s even starting to affect the sale of milk in schools. Might rBGH be a factor in that increase? We wouldn’t have a clue. No human studies were conducted.

But let’s get back to the cows, because rBGH can hurt them in several more ways. The label also warns of possible increase in digestive disorders, including diarrhea; increased numbers of lacerations on the cows’ hocks (shins); and a higher rate of subclinical mastitis.

Bad enough when dairy cows get visibly sick, because then they’re treated with antibiotics that end up in our milk. But what about the cows who are getting sick at a subclinical level—a level so subtle that farmers don’t notice it? Think of the bacteria and pus pouring out of those inflamed udders—infections that aren’t even being treated! How does drinking that milk affect us, our kids, and our babies in the womb?

Those are just the problems acknowledged on the rBGH product label. Another concern is that the extra hormones drain the cows’ bones of calcium, so that they tend to become lame. The Canadian federal health agency actually found that “the risk of clinical lameness was increased approximately 50 percent” in cows that were given rBGH. Partly as a result, Canada has banned the product, concluding that it “presents a sufficient and unacceptable threat to the safety of dairy cows.”

rBGH is banned in other developed countries but not in the U.S.

Canada isn’t the only country to bar rBGH. The genetically altered hormone has also been banned in the European Union, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition, the U.N. agency that sets food safety standards, Codex Alimentarius, has refused to approve rGBH not just once but twice.

Farmers themselves have noticed problems with the product. In addition to the expense of the drug itself, rBGH results in higher feed bills, higher vet bills due to increased antibiotic use, and more cows removed from the herd due to illness or low productivity. One study found that 25 to 40 percent of dairy farmers who tried rBGH soon gave it up because it wasn’t profitable enough to justify the damage to their cows. Other farmers have said that they see how hard the product is on cows, and they don’t want to subject their animals to such treatment.

Okay, so that’s why rBGH hurts cows. But I’m way more concerned about us and our kids. How does having a genetically altered hormone in our milk supply affect us?

Health concerns include possible link to cancer

As early as 1998, an article in the Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, reported that women with even relatively small increases of a hormone known as Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1) were up to seven times more likely to develop premenopausal breast cancer.

And guess what? According to a January 1996 report in the International Journal of Health Services, rBGH milk has up to 10 times the IGF-1 levels of natural milk. More recent studies have put the figure even higher, at something like 20-fold.

Now stop and think about that for a minute, while correlation is not causation, breast cancer used to be something that women got later in life. Premenopausal breast cancer was so rare that when young women presented their physicians with breast cancer symptoms, the doctors often failed to diagnose it, simply because it was so unlikely that an “older women’s disease” would be found among young women.

But according to the Young Survival Coalition, one in 229 women between the ages of 30 and 39 will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the next ten years. Why are all these young women now getting breast cancer? And what about the effects of IGF-1-laden milk on older women, who are already at greater risk for breast cancer?

In case you think that the rising cancer rates have something to do with genetics, stop and think again. According to the Breast Cancer Fund, 1 in 8 women now have breast cancer. But only 10 percent of those cases can be linked to genetics. In other words, 90 percent of breast cancers being diagnosed today are being triggered by factors in our environment.

How did this happen?

Now if you’re like me, your next question probably is, So, if we know all of this, how did this hormone find its way into our dairy products? How did our government agencies, responsible for ensuring the safety of our food, allow the use of this growth hormone and the sale of IGF-1-laden milk? Why was rBGH not used in Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but used so freely right here in our own United States?

Well, the year before the FDA approved the first genetically engineered protein, it said, “Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety.” But at the same time, the corporate communication’s director of the company introducing rBGH said, ” We should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job.”

You read that right. It’s kind of a “Who’s on first?” routine. Didn’t we learn anything from the tobacco industry?

So with the jury still out on this one, no long-term human trials ever conducted, a self-regulated industry whose “interest is in selling as much of it as possible,” the increasing rates of antibiotics used on our livestock (not to mention the increasing rates of early puberty and cancer), and the stunning fact that this synthetic growth hormone was never approved for use in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all 27 countries in Europe, maybe it’s time we start to exercise a little bit of precaution here in the U.S., too.

How to Opt-Out of rBGH

Thankfully, we can opt out of this experiment and look for milk labeled “organic” or “rBGH-free”— since by law, these types of milk are not allowed to contain rBGH, a genetically engineered product that was never allowed into the milk, cheese, ice creams and other dairy products in other developed countries. And you can find this milk in Wal-Mart, Costco & Sam’s.

And while correlation is not causation, with the American Cancer Society telling us that 1 in 2 American men and 1 in 3 American women are expected to get cancer in their lifetimes and the Centers for Disease Control reporting that cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15, a precautionary move like this one just might be what the doctors ordered (at least that’s what they did in all 27 countries in Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Japan).

Written by Robyn O’Brien with excerpts from The Unhealthy Truth

How to Read Meat Labels

Written by Michelle Stern, author of What’s Cooking with Kids

First thing’s first – let’s not confuse Natural with Organic.

We’d hope that naturally produced foods were organic, but officially that is not so. We talked about natural products with chicken above. But what does Organic Food Production mean?

The USDA defines the national organic program as one that “is managed in accordance with the Act and regulations in this part to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.”

Organic meat is meat that is raised according to the National Organic Standards which means that:

• All ingredients must be 100% organically produced. No chemicals were used, unless the animal needs to be treated. That animal must, by law, be sold to the conventional food market and never be labeled as organic.
• 100% organic feed is required (the food was produced with no herbicides, pesticides, or petroleum based fertilizers)
• No added growth hormones are allowed
• No genetically modified feeds are allowed
• No animal by-products of any form allowed in feed
• No antibiotics are allowed. If antibiotics are used to treat a sick animal, then that animal is marketed through conventional channels and is not sold as organic.
• Restrictions on pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers
• No genetic engineering methods, ionizing radiation or sewage sludge for fertilization
• No synthetic chemicals, artificial preservatives or harmful additives such as sodium nitrite allowed in processing
• Annual inspection of producers and processors required for maintaining certification
• Third party assessment required

While some people may shy away from buying organic because of a “crunchy or hippy” stigma, there are a few key points to remember: When chemicals are used in farming to control insects and weeds, they leach into the soil, air, water and into the farmers growing the food. Organic farming protects growers, food consumers, and the physical environment from any such chemicals. This provides an immediate benefit and a long-term one. And it is clear from our obese nation that people are not typically thinking long-term…and we should.

Organic foods tend to cost more than conventional foods because they meet stricter guidelines and undergo testing and evaluation. They tend to be more labor intensive, because farmers do not take chemical shortcuts. But the overall cost reflects healthier animals, plants, farmers, and most likely consumers. If the long-term costs of health care and environmental clean-up were factored into “cheap” factory meats, it is likely that they would actually cost more than their organic counterparts.

The big picture:

1. Know who grows your food, or at least find a vendor at your local farmer’s market who can tell you about how their animals were raised and what they ate.
2. If you can’t know your producer, the next best choice is to look for these labels: Certified Organic AND 100% Pasture Fed and Finished

Michelle Stern is the owner of What’s Cooking with Kids, a certified green mobile cooking school for children, and author of The Whole Family Cookbook – Celebrating the Goodness of Locally Grown Foods. To learn more about meat labels and What’s Cooking With Kids please visit, Michelle’s site.

US Version of Kraft Mac and Cheese versus UK Version

Written by Robyn O’Brien

As we are quickly learning, other countries have chosen not to allow things like artificial growth hormones, food dyes derived from petrochemicals and genetically engineered ingredients into their food supplies – particularly in the foods fed to children.

And in response to this demand, especially the European Union’s labeling regulations on genetically modified food, many American food manufacturers now create two versions of their product, one for the US and a “cleaner” version for the moms, dads and kids in the 27 countries in Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the U.K.

So how different could those two versions be, you ask? After all, “food is food”, right?

Well, let’s take a look at one of our staples, macaroni and cheese:

U.S. Version of Kraft Mac & Cheese:

ENRICHED MACARONI PRODUCT (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, FERROUS SULFATE [IRON], THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), CHEESE SAUCE MIX (WHEY, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, CHEDDAR CHEESE [MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES], GRANULAR CHEESE [MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES], SALT, CALCIUM CARBONATE, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF PARMESAN CHEESE [PART-SKIM MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES, DRIED BUTTERMILK, SODIUM TRIPOLYPHOSPHATE, BLUE CHEESE [MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES], SODIUM PHOSPHATE, MEDIUM CHAIN TRIGLYCERIDES, CREAM, CITRIC ACID, LACTIC ACID, ENZYMES, YELLOW 5, YELLOW 6).

U.K. Version of Kraft Mac & Cheese:

Macaroni (Durum Wheat Semolina), Cheese (10%), Whey Powder (from milk), Lactose, Salt, Emulsifying Salts (E339, E341), Colours (Paprika Extract, Beta-Carotene)

Given that Kraft’s latest ad campaign invites us to “Bring Back the Fun”, while we’re at it, how about they bring back products that don’t contain ingredients that have been shown to cause things like hyperactivity, cancer and allergies? You know, products like their UK version of mac and cheese that don’t contain the artificial dyes like the ones seen on these kids’ tongues?

Wouldn’t that be fun?

Food Allergies & Food Sensitivities: What You Need to Know

Written by Robyn O’Brien, founder of the AllergyKids Foundation, author of The Unhealthy Truth

Today, one in eleven children struggle with asthma, and one in four are affected by allergies. The incidence of allergy has increased significantly over the past two decades, and allergy to peanuts has more than doubled from 1997 to 2002. Approximately 30 million children – more than 1/3 of our kids – are affected by one of these four new childhood epidemics. This is not something we can just accept.

The official statistic holds that allergies affect some 7 million Americans, including about 6 percent of children below the age of three. That information comes courtesy of U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Lester M. Crawford, J., D.V.M., Ph.D., speaking before the Consumer Federation of America on April 22, 2002. But that data is now almost ten years old.

Since then, the only update we’ve had is from the Centers for Disease Control and a report issued in 2008 that said that there has been a 265% increase in the rate of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions.

This begs explanation.

An allergy is basically an overreaction by your immune system to a protein that it perceives as a threat—for example, the proteins in particular types of food, the dust mite protein, or pollen. For people without allergies, these proteins are harmless. But if you’ve got an allergy, your immune system sees these proteins as dangerous invaders.

To drive the invader out, your immune system mobilizes all its resources: mucous, to flush out the intruder; vomiting, to force it out; diarrhea, to expel it quickly. Such conditions may make you feel sick, but they’re actually evidence of your body’s attempts to get well.

A key aspect of the immune response is known as inflammation, characterized by one or more of four classic symptoms: redness, heat, swelling, and pain. Inflammation doesn’t occur only in allergic reactions; it flares up whenever your body feels threatened, in response to a bruise, cut, bacteria, or virus as well as to otherwise harmless pollen, dust, or food. Scientists now believe that much of our immune system is found in our digestive tracts, where many of these inflammatory reactions occur in the form of stomachaches, cramping, nausea, bloating, and vomiting.

Ironically, the immune system’s inflammatory reaction—meant to heal and protect the body—often causes more problems than the initial “invader” in the cases when allergic reactions become life-threatening.

Common Symptoms of Food Allergy: Immediate Reactions

* rash or hives

* nausea

* stomach pain

* diarrhea

* itchy skin

* eczema

* shortness of breath

* chest pain

* swelling of the airways to the lungs

* anaphylaxis

Food Allergies and Food Sensitivity: Our Immune System Overreacts Again

At first glance, the distinction between “allergies” and “sensitivity” may seem like a meaningless word game. But understanding the relationship between these two conditions is crucial to grasping the true nature of the allergy epidemic—and to seeing how even the supposedly healthy foods in our kitchens may be harmful to our health.

As we’ve seen, allergies are an overreaction of our immune system, a kind of exaggerated response to a perceived danger. When a child comes in contact with these proteins (peanut, egg, wheat, etc.) her immune system “recognizes” the protein as dangerous, just as it would have seen the danger in the bacterium that causes pneumonia or the virus that causes mumps. In response, her immune system creates special “fighter” proteins called antibodies designed to identify and neutralize the “invader.”

These fighter proteins are known as immunoglobulin E, or IgE for short. When they’re released into the bloodstream, their purpose is to “seek and destroy” the invader, which they do by creating one or more of the classic food allergy symptoms, such as the hives, or the diarrhea with which other children respond, or, in more extreme cases, the anaphylactic shock that can kill a child within minutes.

The classic IgE response occurs within minutes or even seconds, because IgE proteins are some of the most aggressive antibodies we know. That immediate IgE response is the defining characteristic of an allergic reaction.

Food sensitivities start out in a similar way. If a “sensitive” child is exposed to a protein that his system perceives as a threat, he’ll manufacture another type of fighter protein, known as Immunglobulin G, or IgG. Although IgE and IgG antibodies play similar roles, they produce somewhat different—though often overlapping—symptoms.

A crucial difference between the two, though, is their reaction time. The less aggressive IgG antibodies typically produce a delayed response that might not appear for hours or even days after the child has consumed the offending food.

So even though food sensitivities and food allergies both produce painful, inflammatory, and potentially dangerous responses, this delayed reaction time has led many doctors to give food sensitivities second-class status. Partly that’s because they don’t present an immediate and obvious threat to children’s lives: only the IgE proteins trigger anaphylactic shock, for example, and in that sense, only the IgE proteins can kill (though the IgG reaction can have serious long-term consequences). I also think that traditional doctors tend to downplay the importance of nutrition, frequently dismissing the idea that such symptoms as earache, eczema, crankiness, brain fog, and sleep problems might be related to a child’s diet.

However, an article in The Lancet, Britain’s most respected medical journal, casts another light on the subject. The article referred to doctors who use elimination diets—diets that begin with a very limited, “safe” array of food choices and then add potentially problematic foods back into the diet, one by one.

The reason to do an elimination diet is to identify which foods in your diet might be triggering symptoms like skin rashes, fatigue, or stomach ache. Often, some foods affect us without our realizing it and we live with the symptoms, taking medicine to alleviate the suffering. But if you eliminate these foods from your diet, you may find that your symptoms disappear. What becomes even more interesting is that when you reintroduce the offending food, you may suddenly suffer drastic symptoms which make it clear that the food was indeed triggering one or more problems. An elimination diet can sometimes reveal with dramatic speed that a particular food you’ve always believed was harmless is actually causing such chronic symptoms as headache, digestive problems, and even more serious complaints. Masked by your daily diet and by the slowness of the food-sensitivity reaction, the offending food does its dirty work without ever realizing that it is the culprit behind your—or your child’s—disorders.

When you take a break from eating that problem food, however, and then add it back into your diet, you see how powerful its effects are and how responsible it may be for a seemingly unrelated problem. Foods that you thought were safe for you turn out to be highly problematic, indicating the presence of a previous undiagnosed food sensitivity. As a result, the authors of the Lancet article conclude that the prevalence of food sensitivity (referred to in the article as “food intolerance”) has been seriously underestimated.

Certainly, food allergies are far more dramatic. Whenever you read about a kid who died within minutes of eating at a fast-food joint or after breathing in the peanut dust from a friend’s candy wrapper, that’s an “IgE-mediated” food allergy. They’re fast, they can be deadly, and I’m glad doctors want to give them the attention they deserve.

But I also think doctors should be looking at delayed reactions, too, the “IgG-mediated” responses to food sensitivities. And some doctors do look seriously at both. Most conventional doctors, though, tend to focus on IgE immediate reactions. I think there are lots of reasons why they should view the two types of reactions as part of a larger, single problem.

First, both reactions have the same ultimate cause: the immune system’s overreaction to apparently harmless food. According to internationally acclaimed author and physician Kenneth Bock, M.D., there’s also quite a bit of overlap between IgE and IgG symptoms. Both can contribute to inflammatory responses in multiple body systems.

True, the delayed IgG reactions are less likely to cause hives and are more likely to produce a host of apparently vague symptoms, such as headache, brain fog, sleep problems, joint pain, fatigue, and muscle aches. But both the immediate and the delayed responses are immune system problems triggered by a supposedly “harmless” food.

Conventional doctors’ tendency to separate “IgE-mediated” food allergies and “IgG-mediated” food sensitivities into two separate problems has the effect of minimizing the allergy epidemic. Remember, IgE allergies, IgG sensitivities, and asthma—three similar ways that our immune systems can overreact—are all on the rise. It makes sense to find a doctor who is willing to address all three as symptoms of a greater underlying issue.

Common Symptoms of Food Sensitivity: Delayed Reactions

* fatigue

* gastrointestinal problems, including bloating and gas

* itchy skin and skin rashes like eczema

* brain fog

* muscle or joint aches

* headache

* sleeplessness and sleep disorders

* chronic rhinitis (runny nose), congestion, and post-nasal drip

Four Take-Aways:

1. Even if your kids can’t talk, their skin speaks volumes! Did you know that the skin is a person’s largest organ? Even when your kid is too young to tell you how he feels or too used to her symptoms to identify them (when kids hurt all the time, they don’t know they hurt!), you can often read your child’s condition in his or her skin.

Does your kid have eczema? Does he get rashes around the mouth, especially after he eats a certain food or swallows a certain beverage? Rashes around the knees, elbows, or armpits? Does he have “allergic shiners”—that is, dark circles under the eyes?

These are all inflammatory reactions, signs that the body is trying to rid itself of what it perceives as “toxic invader.” In your child’s case, that “toxic invader” might be an apparently harmless food, to which your kid is either allergic or “sensitive.” Keeping that invader away from your kid may bring relief from symptoms—and it may clear up other problems, such as brain fog, crankiness, sleep problems, inattention, acne, and mood swings.

2. The toilet bowl has a lot to tell you. Your kids’ bowel movements, not to be too delicate here, also speak volumes. Runny poops are a sign that a person isn’t properly digesting his food. And indeed, as we got the allergens out of some children’s diets, poops tend to firm up.

3. Chronic ear infections are often a sign of dairy allergies. In some cases, milk may have ill effects like eczema, upset stomachs or chronic ear infections for children who are allergic or sensitive to it.

4. Find a doctor who is willing to work with you, test for both IgE and IgG allergies and sensitivities and to address the important role that elimination diets can play in managing allergic symptoms like eczema, ear infections and chronic mucous.

Disclaimer: Always discuss individual health inquiries and medical issues with a qualified personal physician and/or specialist. Robyn O’Brien/AllergyKids is not responsible for medical decisions made by any one person. The professionals who share their knowledge, discussions, minutes, handouts, agendas, and other products do not constitute medical and/or legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Always discuss individual health inquiries and medical issues with a qualified personal physician and/or specialist.