Have you ever been immunized? If you are reading this, live in the United States, and attended any form of schooling of course the answer is yes! You have taken precautions to ensure that you do not get sick from things like the Flu or Chicken Pox. Just like you wouldn’t want to get sick from the flu, you shouldn’t want to get sick from allergies!  As a young woman who has intolerances to gluten, corn, soy, lactose and a tree nut allergy, I know allergies should not be taken lightly. Parents are beginning to diagnose food allergies and do not bother to inform their child’s physician.

Photo by Hannah W.

According to a study done by the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the official publication of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology

• 70 percent report receiving a physician’s diagnosis for their child’s food allergy
• Lower income and minority households were more likely to have a child with an undiagnosed food allergy.
• Of the physician-diagnosed children, 32 percent did not receive diagnostic testing — such as a blood, skin or oral food challenge test.
• A skin test was the most popular diagnostic test with 46 percent. A blood test was second with 39 percent.
• Only 1 in 5 of reported that their child received an oral food challenge test — the gold standard of food allergy diagnose

Parents, for the most part, do not have the degrees or the smarts to fully treat their children’s allergies and keep their children safe without knowing the gravity of the allergies.

Here are key findings on the kind of reactions children had to the top nine food allergies, which are: egg, finfish, milk, peanut, sesame, shellfish, soy, tree nut and wheat:

• Cutaneous symptoms, such as hives, puffy eyes or lips, and eczema occurred in 80 percent of food-induced anaphylactic reactions.
• During severe, life-threatening reactions, hives only occurred in 40 percent of the cases and puffy eyes or lips in 34 percent of the cases