Parenting a Child with a Food Allergy

I received the exact same comment on one of my posts. I have never tried alternative medicine, but a coworker of my best friend swears it helped her son with his allergies. She offered to give me information on it if I were interested, but I'm still to nervous about this. My son is only 2, and I think I would want to wait until he was older before I would even attempt anything like that. I would want his input, and he isn't able to do that at this point. I would also want our allergists input and experience with it. I also don't know the extent of the coworkers son's allergies and my sons are pretty severe.

I was skeptical at first, but now, I am starting to believe this is a spammer. I got exactly the same comment in one of my posts.

My personal opinion, I would *probably* try it on myself, but I won't do it on my son.

they are probably talking about NAET - from what I've read/heard it's hocus pocus where the person with the food allergy holds a glass vial of the offending allergen and if the alt med practitioner can push down on the patient's arm, it means the allergen makes them weak. then the practitioner treats or "cures" them thru chiropractic measures. In cases where the allergic patient is an infant, the parent holds the vial of allergen and the baby while the practitioner pushes on the parent's arm! Gimme a break here.

My personal belief is this works as well as simply wishing the allergy away.

Until someone can show me their RAST scores with history of reactions, get this (or other alt) treatment and be "cured", and show me new RAST scores indicating no allergy and eat the allergen with no reaction, I won't believe it. Even if it happened I'd assume allergy was outgrown before I'd think alt med cured them.

I do think chiropractic med can help a sore back. I don't believe it can cure food alelrgies.

I also believe there is great promise in what researchers are doing at Duke with the peanut and egg studies. But I'm not feeding my kid any amt of allergen myself. I'll let the real docs at Duke (or elsewhere) come up with the treatments and once proven to help, I might pursue it. Until then, we'll just avoid the allergens.

I'm pretty much in agreement with lizzy about this. I've actually tried some of this stuff back when we were new to all, and I'm just far enough into the more mystical mindset to believe that this sort of thing is legitimate to a certain point . . . but it gets down to semantics. To some people, allergies are headaches and discomfort. I would *never, ever* try to downplay or disrespect anyone's individual health experiences, but those "allergies" are not IgE mediated allergies. And things like NAET and muscle testing do not have an effect on IgE allergies. My personal preference is to call those other food issues "sensitivities," and I concur that there is anecdotal evidence that some of those treatments seem to have a positive effect on *sensitivities* (I know too many people who claim their lives were changed). But unfortunately the mass majority of folks continue to call them allergies, and I think it is a terrible disservice to us all. I can't tell you how many times people, upon hearing that my daughter has food allergies, have pounced upon me with information about the fantastic cure they got. Their eyes glaze over when I explain my daughter's anaphylaxis, then they shake it off and explain their terrible migranes and how they are cured now. It is frustrating. And it is scary. As I mentioned in another comment, I am VERY interested in the legitimate work being done in the medical profession in orally desensitizing life-threatening food allergies, and am finding myself excited and hopeful for the future; but even though I have definite leanings toward alternative medicine in general, I am firmly rooted in skepticism about any alternative approaches to food allergies.