She Might Grow On Me

The allergist that is.  We have been to see her every week for the past four weeks.  History for both the kids and then full skin and RAST testing.  We've spent a lot of quality time with our new allergist.  And, grumble, grumble, she's okay.  I will grudgingly like her.  Mainly because she has managed to tell me somethings I don't know and she wants to challenge a number of things on both kids to perhaps open up our diet a little.

The main thing she explained was conformational versus linear allergy in children with cow's milk allergy.  Apparently, studies have been done regarding children who can tolerate highly heated cow's milk products such as those in baked goods.  It has to do with espitopes attaching to proteins.  And though I understood her explanation at the time I'm not going to be able to explain it in plain English.  The gist of it is that they have discovered that those allergic to milk can be split into two groups; those with conformational allergy (able to tolerate highly heated milk) and those with linear allergy (those who can't) AND at sometime in the not so far future they hope to be able to TEST people to see which they are.

I had wondered what the shift in allergists' views had been as it seemed suddenly that not only was Max given the go-ahead on trying baked milk products but so were a number of food allergy families that I know of.  It seems to me with this study it isn't just that our children are now tolerant, it may be that they always were and we just didn't know it.

Food allergy research still has a long way to go.  But maybe we are making some head way.

Here's the only online info I could find on this study.