Can This Kill You?
By Micah Gaudio

  When many of us go to a restaurant or eat at a friend’s house, we take for granted that we’ll walk away from the table. Allergy sufferers don’t have that luxury. When just the contamination from an allergen can send you into anaphylactic shock, your life changes dramatically.
  “One day my daughter ate a peanut butter cookie and instantly developed hives above her lips,” said Shannon Gaudio whose 2 ½ year old daughter was recently diagnosed with allergies. “We eat so many processed foods, and there’s so much in our food that we don’t even realize. Until you have to deal with allergies on a daily basis, you can’t understand how difficult it is.”
  A food allergy is an immune system response to a food that the body mistakenly believes is harmful. When you eat the food, your body releases massive  amounts of chemicals, including histamine, in order to protect itself. These chemicals trigger a cascade of allergic symptoms that can affect the respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, skin, or cardiovascular system.
  In the U.S. alone, doctors estimate that approximately 11 million people suffer from food allergies. Currently, there are no cures for food allergies, and avoidance is the only way to prevent a reaction. While many people can be allergic to a variety of items, there are eight foods which account for 90% of all food-allergic reactions: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat.  While some allergies, like those to egg, milk, and wheat are commonly outgrown as a child gets older, allergies to peanuts and seafood are usually lifelong.
  You might think that avoiding food allergens would be relatively simple, however that’s not necessarily true. Someone allergic to milk may not know that restaurants often put butter on steaks and burgers to enhance the flavor, or that some brands of tuna contain a milk protein. Someone watching for eggs would find them in unlikely places such as the foam of their specialty coffee, their pasta or even in their flu shot because the vaccines are grown on egg embryos. People who are allergic to peanuts should usually avoid all nuts, most chocolate, foods sold in bakeries or ice cream shops, most ethnic foods, and even products like barbeque sauce. They can even face the possibility that a bean bag could be filled with crushed nut shells.
  “I have to carefully read every label,” explained Shannon. “Even if I have bought the product before, I have to re-check the labels every time because companies can change how they make their products without warning. You feel like you come across as overprotective, but people don’t realize that you have to watch everything that goes into her mouth. With food allergies, my mistake could kill her. It can be frustrating because people often can’t understand how scary it is and how it affects your life.”
  The greatest risk to people with allergies is anaphylactic shock. Anaphylaxis is a sudden, severe and potentially fatal reaction that can occur within two minutes to several hours after contact with the allergen and be mild to life-threatening. The scariest thing about dealing with anaphylaxis is that only a trace amount of a problem food can cause a reaction in some individuals.
  Anaphylaxis causes approximately 30,000 trips to the emergency room and between 150 to 200 deaths in the U.S. each year. Strict avoidance of the allergen is the only way for allergic individuals to completely avoid a severe reaction. Many highly allergic individual carry epinephrine, or the EpiPen®.
  “During a reaction, the pen can buy you an extra 10 to 20 minutes to get to the hospital,” explained Shannon, who keeps several EpiPens on hand at all times. “The thing that most people don’t realize is that you cannot base a person’s future reaction on what has happened in the past. If you are allergic to something, you can go from a mild reaction to a full anaphylactic shock without any warning.”
  Doctors have not determined what specifically causes allergies. They have concluded that children of parents who have any kind of allergy – environmental, drug or food, have a greater chance of developing allergies. Individuals who have allergies are also more likely to develop additional allergies.  “Now any time she gets little red marks on her face, I think she could be having an allergic reaction to something new,” said Shannon.”
  “A 14-year-old girl died a month ago at a North Carolina mall because of an allergic reaction after eating at the food court’s Chinese restaurant. She had known that she was allergic to peanuts since she was two but had not had a reaction in many years. This can get really overwhelming because when you hear about cases like this you’re reminded that this allergy can kill.  It keeps you in an almost constant state of anxiety.”
  Shannon says the only way she copes is to remember that God is in control of the situation and by educating herself and those around her.  She visits several online support groups such as www.peanutallergy.com for recommendations on “safe” products and restaurants that others have trusted. As members of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), the Gaudios regularly receive updates on the latest news and research.
  “It helps to have other people to talk to who deal with this,” said Shannon.
  If you or your child suffers from food allergies and you would be interested in starting a support group or finding out more from people who understand what you are going through, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Food Allergy Awareness week is May 8-13.  For more information on how you can help visit www.foodallergy.org.