Allergy problems in children can be difficult to eliminate. The American College of Alergies, Asthma and Immunoligy says this about children’s allergy problems:

Advice From Your Allergist on Children’s Allergies

An estimated 50 million Americans have some type of allergy. In most people, allergies first appear during infancy or childhood. Allergic disorders rank first among children’s chronic diseases.

Any child may become allergic, but children from families with a history of allergy are more likely to be allergic. Children may inherit the tendency to become allergic from their parents, but only some of them will develop active allergic disease. Allergies can show up in different ways in children including:

* Skin rashes (atopic dermatitis or eczema)
* Asthma
* Allergic rhinitis (also known as “hay fever”)
* Food allergies.

Allergic rhinitis is the most common of all allergy problems. It causes runny, itchy nose, sneezing, postnasal drip and nasal congestion (blockage). The child with allergies may also have itchy, watery and red eyes and chronic ear problems. Despite its common name, “hay fever” these allergy problems can occur at any time of the year — seasonally or year-round, and do not cause fever.

The following are just a few points on potential problems for children with allergic rhinitis. Early identification of allergy problems in your child will improve their quality of life, decrease missed school days and keep you at work.

Nasal Congestion
Allergies are the most common cause of chronic nasal congestion in children. Sometimes a child’s nose is congested (blocked) to the point that he or she breathes through the mouth, especially while sleeping. This may also cause the child to not get a restful night’s sleep and then be tired the next day. If the congestion and mouth breathing are left untreated, they can cause abnormal changes the way the teeth and the bones of the face grow. Early treatment of the allergies causing the nasal congestion may prevent these problems.

Allergy and ear infections
Allergies lead to inflammation in the ear and may cause fluid accumulation that can promote ear infections and decreased hearing. If this happens when the child is learning to talk, poor speech development may result. Allergies can cause earaches as well as ear itching, popping and fullness (“stopped up ears”). Anyone with these symptoms should be considered for testing and treatment.

Allergies at school
Fall means going back to school. For allergic children, that may mean absences due to problems related to allergic rhinitis. The following are suggestions for helping the allergic child and problems to look for so that allergy can be properly diagnosed and treated.

Allergy or Asthma Action Plan for Emergencies
If your child has asthma or severe allergy, provide your child’s action plan to the school nurse or administrative office. Also discuss your child’s access to medication in case of an emergency.

* School pets: Furry animals in school may cause problems for allergic children. If your child has more problems while at school, it could be the class pet.
* Asthma and physical education: Physical education and sports are a big part of the school day for many children. Having asthma does not mean eliminating these activities. Children with asthma and other allergic diseases should be able to participate in any sport the child chooses, provided the doctor’s advice is followed. Asthma symptoms during exercise may indicate poorly control. Be sure that your child is taking controller asthma medications on a regular basis. Often medication administered by an inhaler is prescribed before exercise to control their symptoms.
* Dust irritation: At school, children with allergic problems may need to sit away from the blackboards to avoid irritation from chalk dust.

Food allergic infants
The best food for a newborn is mother’s milk. However, some especially sensitive babies can have allergic reactions to foods their mothers eat. Babies can be tested for allergies. Eliminating these foods from the mother’s diet may provide relief for the child.

As infants grow, their nutritional needs continue to change and your physician will advise when it is time for solid foods.

Cow’s milk can cause allergies in children, but it is a good source of protein and calcium. Milk should be eliminated from a child’s diet only if you are sure the child is allergic to it. Parents may suspect allergy if the child exhibits hives after the ingestion of milk or other dairy products. If you suspect your child may be allergic to milk, consult your physician, who may conduct appropriate tests to verify the allergy and prescribe the proper course of treatment.

Just remember:

* Allergies are common in children.
* Many childhood problems are made worse by allergies.

Treatment of your child’s allergies will make them happier and healthier.

That’s the end of the establishment view.  A more successful approach to healing your little boy or girl is most likely the following:

1) Avoid artificial colors, flavors and preservatives in your food. Paint, industrial chemicals, and microbe-killers may get a very natural reaction from a healthy body, let alone a weakened one. May I suggest you take a look at Why Your Child is Hyperactive, by Benjamin F. Feingold, M.D., if you’d like a second medical opinion.

My son Luke had some awful allergies.  Peanuts can kill him (and he has been hospitalized for accidentally getting some on his tongue at my mother-in-laws house), and we carry Epi Pens (adrenalin) every where we go.  But after a couple of years of crying his eyes out at feedings, we discovered that he is allergic to milk proteins, too.  We thought he cried at mealtime because he was hungry, but it was because the milk hurt him badly.  As he approached 28 months old, I discovered that he was MSG highly reactive emotionally and also had severe problems with gluten.  MSG is in virtually in everything that is processed and sold in a box or a plastic wrapper.  It has at least forty different names for camouflage, and it is a neurotoxin that sends me and my son howling at the moon when we eat it in food.  Fried chicken joints use it in their chicken, McDonald’s uses it in some of their products, KFC – oh my.  And your cabinets and refrigerators are full of it, too.

MSG is the most potent food toxin, from my experience, but gluten is near it in terms of physical reactions, and it is in darn near EVERYTHING.  Gluten holds things together.  Its even in Popcicles.  Bread, cereal, jelly, many canned foods, most things that come in boxes or wrappers. Gluten causes physical problems with Luke.  His joints start to ache within hours, and ache badly.  He cries, gets highly agitated, and suffers for hours.  It takes about a week to get gluten out of his system, and any meal of it after that will set him back another week.

You want your kids on a gluten-free diet.  Do it for a month and evaluate their behavior with your spouse.  We noticed a dramatic improvement within about four days, and consistent improvement thereafter.  We eat fresh food most of the time now, cooked at home.  Some restaurants also serve great, clean meals.  Fresh made is key.  Not fresh made bread.  It will be loaded up with gluten, unless it is specifically gluten free. Its a big deal, so learn what to look for.

2) Stop eating “deli meats”, especially cold cuts, hot dogs, and other preserved meats. I know a fellow that had chronic skin rashes. They went away in days when he simply stopped eating the above. Was it the nitrites? Might be, but who cares! The rashes vanished when the hot dogs did. “What kind of kid eats hot dogs?” Kids with allergies, that’s who. “Even kids with chicken pox.”  It figures.  Look for Bistro Brand hot dogs.  They are 100 percent all natural with no MSG or anything that might cause any type of physical reaction.  And they taste better than ANY wiener you will buy anywhere from any other food manufacturer.  Delicious.

3) Stop eating other meats, too. Regrettably, feedlot animals are raised with a steady diet generously fortified with antibiotics and hormones and corn, which cows are “allergic” to.  They do not digest corn well, and create a lot of nasty internal bacteria because of that.  Watch the Food, Inc videos on this site for the real low-down on feed-lot animals.  Buy organic.  It costs more, so you will eat less of it, but it tastes better than the general population stuff and almost like magic: no more allergies.

4) If you’ll do the above, you are virtually a vegetarian. Very few vegetarians have allergies. Vegetarians get much more fiber (average of 50 grams daily versus only 10 to 15 grams in the Standard American Diet (yes, what a lot of folks eat is pretty SAD).  Vegetarians eat more legumes (peas, beans and lentils), more whole grains, more vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables, and more high-quality protein foods such as sprouts and tofu.  This diet is going to do a lot more good than just help obliterate allergies. But if you want meat in your diet, do yourself a favor and buy organic meat, poultry and fish.

5) Vitamin C in large doses is an excellent antihistamine and antitoxin. There is abundant medical evidence to support this, and much value will be found in the hundreds of controlled studies cited in The Healing Factor, by Irwin Stone; How To Live Longer and Feel Better, by Dr. Linus Pauling, and the many papers of Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. summarized in Clinical Uses of Vitamin C, edited by Lendon Smith, M.D.  You may remember Dr. Smith as the “Children’s Doctor on the TODAY show).

To illustrate, consider the potentially deadly allergy to bee stings. That must be the ultimate in histamine reactions, where the breathing passages close up to the point of suffocation. I do not recommend this, but there is a person who had such an allergy and immediately after being stung took 25,000 mg of vitamin C.  By the end of the day he’d taken about 100,000 mg. He did not take his medicine or use his inhaler. He had no symptoms at all.This is a genuinely amazing episode, one which I do not suggest repeating. So why mention it at all? Because compared to this, what’s a stuffy nose?

6) President Ronald Reagan’s personal physician, Ralph Bookman, M.D., simply told Ron to drink a good bit more water to relieve allergies. There’s a good idea in general, and it’s drug-free.  Drink a big glass full to start your day, and another to end it.  With lots of water in between, all day.  A big glass of water will often open up my sinus passages almost immediately.  And water gets your happy juice flowing, too.  Your mood improves with more water consumed.

In an interview, Dr. Bookman said, “Unquestionably, the single most important element in the treatment of asthma and other bronchial allergy symptoms is hydration. Unless adequate fluids are available to the mucus glands in the bronchial tree, their secretions will be tenaciously hard to raise. In asthma, liquids are medications. . . Liquids make mucus liquid. They change it from a troublesome solid that makes breathing difficult to an easy to cough up liquid. I demand that my patients drink 10 full glasses of liquid every day, and I question them constantly to make sure they understand how important it is. . . Water is best, of course, but I tell them to drink what they like. . . Any fluids will work but you must make a fetish of it.” (Bookman R. 101 hints, tips and bits of wisdom from the president’s allergist: Timely help for people with allergies and asthma. Emmaus PA: Rodale’s Allergy Relief, Vol 3 No 7, July 1988, p 1-8. Posted at http://healthandenergy.com/101_allergy_tips.htm .  See also: Bookman R. The dimensions of clinical allergy. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1985.)

8)  Is lactose intolerance really a milk allergy?  Maybe not. For many, a simple solution is to eat yogurt, kefir, aged cheeses, or other cultured milk products.  These dairy products contain friendly bacteria that do a lot of our digesting for us. Pasteurized milk does not have these helpful microorganisms.  I therefore think fluid milk is the least desirable dairy product of all.  (My children’s mother works for a large dairy corporation, so I hope she’s reading something else right now.) The majority of supposedly lactose intolerant people actually aren’t, and can eat ice cream or even moderate amounts of milk with meals.  In fact about two-thirds of supposedly lactose intolerant persons do not prove to be so when they have a breath-hydrogen assay. (Williams, Nutrition and Diet Therapy, 7th edition, page 41). Lactase production in humans decreases after age 5, and in other mammals it disappears not long after birth. Is this perhaps simply biochemical weaning?  It does lend some credibility to a vegan (dairy-free) diet for older children and adults.  Lactose intolerance may be mostly due to a poor colon bacteria environment which makes it tough to properly digest many foods.  More fiber and less meat in your diet lessens constipation and will enhance your intestinal population of helpful bacteria. Did you know that about ONE HALF of a human bowel movement is composed of bacteria? That’s a lot of critters that are so small that you need a 1200 power microscope to see even one.