Allergic to peanuts? Help is on the way!

I travel quite a bit and came across a newspaper article about a “new” approach to people with peanut allergies. What really struck me is that this new approach is similar to something we have been recommending in the health food industry for years. Admittedly, however, not for food but for airborne allergies.

What is generally suggested as a way of overcoming your allergy is to slowly introduce bee pollen or honey from the local area into the diet. In this way you begin to build tolerance for pollen allergens in the air.

Here’s what was said about the peanut approach. Researchers at Stanford University published a paper in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, stating that a simple blood test could determine who could benefit from this new approach. The therapy consists of giving the person small but increasing amounts of peanut powder to desensitize them to the peanut allergen.

The study centered on people who suffer from moderate to severe peanut allergies, but it could be “applied across various allergies,” said Dr Kari Nadeau, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford and an immunologist at Stanford Hospital. (See Stanford Medicine article here.)

“We don’t want people to do this at home,” she said, “because giving them something they’re allergic to is risky.” “We’re giving basically a protein to desensitize the body,” Nadeau said. “We’re actually trying to decrease immunity, to shut down the body’s reaction to peanuts. If you don’t do it daily, you could boost the reaction.”

Researchers want to identify patients who could stop oral immunotherapy without risking the return of their allergy. “It is risky, but getting patients to better therapies means understanding the mechanisms and new targets for therapies,” Nadeau said.

We know that all allergies are an immune issue. It happens when the immune system identifies the protein as an alien invader and it goes into action to destroy it. This is another reason why it is essential to take high potency supplements to ensure your immune system is in top notch condition.