For the first time in 3 years, my Chloe ate a peanut butter sandwich and did NOT break out into hives. We tried it first when she hit the two year mark, as was recommended by the pediatrician. We waited another year before trying again, but had the same results. Red rash spreading out around the mouth. The same from eating pineapple.
I made a mental note to self that I'd take her in for allergy treatments when she got older, but that timeline moved up much faster than I had planned when she broke out into hives and stayed in a body suit of hives (in spite of benadryl doses every 4 hours) for over two and a half weeks. Chloe's school didn't realize that when they switched to a different brand of fruit cocktail that it had pineapple in it. This was also the same week that the school switched fruit punch juice brands and whoops! the new one had pineapple. She ate that fruit cocktail with the aforementioned pineapple on the same day that her teacher cut up a fresh pineapple and stuck it in a dish on one of the class room tables in Chloe's 3 year old classroom. Of course all the kids left it alone, as three year olds are not prone to touch anything new. At their height. Nor did they touch everything else in the room afterwards. Because that's just not what three year olds do. They stand back. And look. But they don't touch.
Chloe's hives disappeared after bedtime, but reappeared at school. They disappeared on the weekends, but reappeared shortly after returning to school. Benadryl got rid of the hives at home, but did little while she was exposed to the pineapple juices all over her classroom. School was great. They moved her to a different classroom. Two of the teachers did a top-to-bottom cleaning of the room (baseboards and chair rails included) and the owner even had the carpet steam-cleaned. It was at that point that I realized we didn't need to wait until Chloe got older to treat her allergies. And not by the well known practice of allergy shots or oral meds that many pediatricians or allergists prescribe.
So let's jump back in time six years....one of our friends would practically sit in a fetal position on our couch with her eyes swollen shut within 15-20 minutes of entering our house (as bad as that sounds, we only had two cats and I PROMISE the cat hair did not cover our furniture or carpet!). She was just extremely allergic to cats. Janice started seeing a doctor about her allergies and asked us to give her a glass baby food jar full of our cat's hair. Off to her appointment she took it and was treated through accupressure and cured by the next day. Six years later and she still has no problem coming to our house and staying for hours without even a sniffle.
When I was pregnant with Chloe, some of my food allergies worsened. I couldn't eat any orange or red fruits or vegetables without having my lips blow up larger than Angelina Jolie's on botox. Seriously. Strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupe, carrots....they all made my lips swell and tingle before going numb. And I had always been allergic to animals, although that didn't stop me from having cats and ferrets. Or petting the random horse and trying my darndest to not touch my face or eyes before washing my hands because then I would be on the fast route to having my eyes swollen shut. I also had more problems with acid reflux (gotta love the big belly pushing everything back up), although PF Changs Kung Pao Shrimp had long been an instigator of that. I started seeing Dr. Andrea Robbins for allergy treatments and within weeks had all of my food allergies cured. Gone.
Dr. Robbins doesn't use needles. Nor does she prescribe medicine. She uses NAET, which is an accupressure treatment that eliminates allergies. An IgG blood test (it detects antibodies in the blood to 100+ foods for the basic test) re-confirmed my food allergies that she diagnosed through muscle testing. The treatment is simple in that accupressure is used along the spine while holding a vial of the allergen. Gatepoints (similar to pressure points in location) are massaged on the arms and legs. Then an avoidance period of 24 hours ensues. For the treatment to be successful, it is best to not only avoid eating the substance (or breathing it in, if airborne like pollens or animal dander) but also avoid touching it. A return visit to her office would confirm if the treatment succeeded. I am five years away from those appointments and do not have any allergic reactions to the foods I was treated for and I can smooch any animal I want while holding them to my face and telling them how cute they are. I can also stuff myself full of PF Changs Kung Pao Shrimp and not have any indigestion. That. Is. Huge.
So this is the treatment process Chloe has gone through over the past couple of months. It has taken longer because I live/work farther away from Dr. Robbins office and am lucky when I can get Chloe in once every week (cause she had a TON of allergies that showed up on that blood test!). The ELISA scoring scale on the IgG blood test has foods under 0.199 scored as a zero, 0.200-0.299 as a 1, 0.300-0.399 as a 2 and greater than 0.400 as a three. She had ratings of 3s on egg yolks (0.845), gluten (0.894), milk (0.490), peanuts (0.435), wheat (0.919 OMG!) and many others. As of yesterday, Chloe is no longer allergic to eggs, wheat, yeast, sweet potatoes, oats or PEANUTS!
This is a longer post than I had intended, but I received quite a bit of curiosity about it on facebook, twitter and always in conversations I have had over the last five years. If you're interested in finding a doctor close to you who uses NAET, you can look here. Or you are welcome to ask me more about my own experience. This has been life changing for me (my Mom would be happy to tell you how miserable I made myself throughout my childhood/teenage/adult years petting every animal I met, even though I knew my eyes would itch and swell and my nose would stop working to the point I could only breathe through my mouth) and now for my daughter.
So I will end on this note. As I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich for Chloe yesterday, she stopped me and asked "What if I don't like the peanut butter?" I gave her a taste; her eyes widened and a smile slowly spread across her face before saying "YUM!" She ate that peanut butter sandwich all gone. There was no rash. And there was not one hive. Not one!
I made a mental note to self that I'd take her in for allergy treatments when she got older, but that timeline moved up much faster than I had planned when she broke out into hives and stayed in a body suit of hives (in spite of benadryl doses every 4 hours) for over two and a half weeks. Chloe's school didn't realize that when they switched to a different brand of fruit cocktail that it had pineapple in it. This was also the same week that the school switched fruit punch juice brands and whoops! the new one had pineapple. She ate that fruit cocktail with the aforementioned pineapple on the same day that her teacher cut up a fresh pineapple and stuck it in a dish on one of the class room tables in Chloe's 3 year old classroom. Of course all the kids left it alone, as three year olds are not prone to touch anything new. At their height. Nor did they touch everything else in the room afterwards. Because that's just not what three year olds do. They stand back. And look. But they don't touch.
Chloe's hives disappeared after bedtime, but reappeared at school. They disappeared on the weekends, but reappeared shortly after returning to school. Benadryl got rid of the hives at home, but did little while she was exposed to the pineapple juices all over her classroom. School was great. They moved her to a different classroom. Two of the teachers did a top-to-bottom cleaning of the room (baseboards and chair rails included) and the owner even had the carpet steam-cleaned. It was at that point that I realized we didn't need to wait until Chloe got older to treat her allergies. And not by the well known practice of allergy shots or oral meds that many pediatricians or allergists prescribe.
So let's jump back in time six years....one of our friends would practically sit in a fetal position on our couch with her eyes swollen shut within 15-20 minutes of entering our house (as bad as that sounds, we only had two cats and I PROMISE the cat hair did not cover our furniture or carpet!). She was just extremely allergic to cats. Janice started seeing a doctor about her allergies and asked us to give her a glass baby food jar full of our cat's hair. Off to her appointment she took it and was treated through accupressure and cured by the next day. Six years later and she still has no problem coming to our house and staying for hours without even a sniffle.
When I was pregnant with Chloe, some of my food allergies worsened. I couldn't eat any orange or red fruits or vegetables without having my lips blow up larger than Angelina Jolie's on botox. Seriously. Strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupe, carrots....they all made my lips swell and tingle before going numb. And I had always been allergic to animals, although that didn't stop me from having cats and ferrets. Or petting the random horse and trying my darndest to not touch my face or eyes before washing my hands because then I would be on the fast route to having my eyes swollen shut. I also had more problems with acid reflux (gotta love the big belly pushing everything back up), although PF Changs Kung Pao Shrimp had long been an instigator of that. I started seeing Dr. Andrea Robbins for allergy treatments and within weeks had all of my food allergies cured. Gone.
Dr. Robbins doesn't use needles. Nor does she prescribe medicine. She uses NAET, which is an accupressure treatment that eliminates allergies. An IgG blood test (it detects antibodies in the blood to 100+ foods for the basic test) re-confirmed my food allergies that she diagnosed through muscle testing. The treatment is simple in that accupressure is used along the spine while holding a vial of the allergen. Gatepoints (similar to pressure points in location) are massaged on the arms and legs. Then an avoidance period of 24 hours ensues. For the treatment to be successful, it is best to not only avoid eating the substance (or breathing it in, if airborne like pollens or animal dander) but also avoid touching it. A return visit to her office would confirm if the treatment succeeded. I am five years away from those appointments and do not have any allergic reactions to the foods I was treated for and I can smooch any animal I want while holding them to my face and telling them how cute they are. I can also stuff myself full of PF Changs Kung Pao Shrimp and not have any indigestion. That. Is. Huge.
So this is the treatment process Chloe has gone through over the past couple of months. It has taken longer because I live/work farther away from Dr. Robbins office and am lucky when I can get Chloe in once every week (cause she had a TON of allergies that showed up on that blood test!). The ELISA scoring scale on the IgG blood test has foods under 0.199 scored as a zero, 0.200-0.299 as a 1, 0.300-0.399 as a 2 and greater than 0.400 as a three. She had ratings of 3s on egg yolks (0.845), gluten (0.894), milk (0.490), peanuts (0.435), wheat (0.919 OMG!) and many others. As of yesterday, Chloe is no longer allergic to eggs, wheat, yeast, sweet potatoes, oats or PEANUTS!
This is a longer post than I had intended, but I received quite a bit of curiosity about it on facebook, twitter and always in conversations I have had over the last five years. If you're interested in finding a doctor close to you who uses NAET, you can look here. Or you are welcome to ask me more about my own experience. This has been life changing for me (my Mom would be happy to tell you how miserable I made myself throughout my childhood/teenage/adult years petting every animal I met, even though I knew my eyes would itch and swell and my nose would stop working to the point I could only breathe through my mouth) and now for my daughter.
So I will end on this note. As I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich for Chloe yesterday, she stopped me and asked "What if I don't like the peanut butter?" I gave her a taste; her eyes widened and a smile slowly spread across her face before saying "YUM!" She ate that peanut butter sandwich all gone. There was no rash. And there was not one hive. Not one!
