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Informationen zum Autor Meenal Lele, Foreword by Cezmi Akdis, MD Klappentext "A revolutionary parenting book that draws on cutting-edge research to reveal that the key to raising happy and healthy babies lies in carefully protecting and caring for their microbiomes"-- Leseprobe Chapter One The Rise of Immune Diseases Common Misconception: Food allergies are genetic. Many people assume that food allergies are entirely hereditary, and that if there's no incidence of a food allergy anywhere in the family tree, a child will be fine. I used to believe this, too, and that's why I was floored when my son developed allergies that no one else on either side of the family had. The fact is that while some of the risk for food allergies does lie in a child's genetics, it's not like some babies have an allergy gene. The real risk of developing food allergies rests in the food children eat, the medicines they take, the pathogens and environmental factors they face, and more. By protecting against these things, a parent can protect their child's immune system from breaking down and triggering a massive allergic response. When Scott and I took Leo home from the hospital after his asthma attack, we unpacked our bags with even more prescriptions than we'd had before. There were so many medicines that we couldn't find a drawer big enough to hold them, and we spread them out on his old changing table like a bootleg pharmacy. Leo now had a daily antihistamine to prevent itching and skin flares and three different topical steroids to treat the flares that happened no matter what preventative measures we took. He had a daily inhaler to prevent asthma attacks and a rescue inhaler in case he had an attack anyway. These medications were on top of the special soaps, detergents, and emollients we already used. He was on a strict avoidance diet to prevent him from having an allergic reaction, but we also had three sets of EpiPens in case he accidentally ate one of those foods and had an allergic reaction anyway. Have you noticed a pattern of futility yet? I am not one to suffer-or parent-in silence, so as we settled into our new "normal," I began opening up to friends and family about the pain of watching my child hurt and my fears about his future. When I started talking with others, I thought I was the only one dealing with a sick kid, but I quickly discovered I was wrong. As Dr. Julia Getzelman, a pediatrician and functional medicine practitioner in San Francisco, said to me, "Today, doctors and parents spend a lot of time dealing with chronic noninfectious illnesses such as food allergy, eczema, asthma, autoimmunity, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac, and more. All of these conditions-many of which used to only plague adults-are now being considered normal in the pediatric population." Every teacher I talked to saw multiple cases of one or the other in each class, and every pediatrician I encountered said each week they treated at least ten or twenty patients with these conditions. The more I looked, the more widespread immune diseases seemed to be, even among people I thought of as healthy. What was going on? What Are Allergic and Autoimmune Diseases? The first thing you should know is that all allergic diseases (like the food allergies and eczema Leo suffers from) are actually immune diseases. Not all immune diseases are allergic diseases, though. For example, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus do not develop because of allergic reactions. Some immune diseases are classified as autoimmune diseases and are distinct from allergic diseases for reasons I will describe below. Finally, all immune diseases-both allergic and autoimmune-are sometimes called self-diseases because they involve a normal body system going haywire. Each immune disease affects a different part of the body: e...
