Childhood allergies. Part 2. What to eat when pregnant.

Chris Sherbon. Jun 19, 2012

In Part 1 we looked at how the avoidance of allergenic foods as a preventative for the development of childhood allergies in young children is not working. If fact, this strategy has largely been removed from most health guidelines. It seems that the question of what to eat when pregnant holds more promise as an effective way of warding-off childhood allergies!

There is mounting evidence that what you eat when pregnant is critically important to early childhood development in a number of ways. Allergy prevention may be one of them.

Key to prevention is an understanding of the environmental factors driving the increasing prevalence of allergenic disorders. Babies’ systems are especially vulnerable to the effects of adverse exposure. The epidemic of allergy in young children is one of the clearest indicators that the early immune system is affected by environmental change. We don’t know the exact causes. However, it’s probable that they include “more pro-inflammatory ‘western-style’ diets, environmental contaminants and pollutants and maternal transmission of antigens during pregnancy or soon after”.

Eating organic foods, produced without pesticides and herbicides, may be one way of reducing some of these environmental factors

Because differences in the immune function are evident at birth, there is intense interest in the prenatal factors that may be alternatively programming the developing immune system in pregnancy. There is a lot of interest in the role of “microbials” as an essential stimulus for normal immune development in early life. Most studies have focused on postnatal effects, but there is emerging evidence that there are effects on the baby while it is still in the womb. These effects may be the result of certain things the mother eats while pregnant making the unborn baby’s genes “express” themselves. That is, turn them “on” or “off”.

So far, the main diet-based prevention strategies have been probiotic supplements in pregnancy and/or infancy. Despite more than 19 randomised controlled trials to assess the effects of probiotics in allergy prevention there are still no definitive benefits or recommendations. This is frustrating, but this area of research has shown in animal studies that maternal diet can have epigenetic effects on immune function. This highlights that pregnancy provides an important window of opportunity for disease prevention and that diet may be a useful non-invasive strategy.

Other dietary factors that have been linked to allergic disease including antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, zinc and selenium, vitamin D and folate. Vitamin D has been attracting increasing attention due to the recent epidemiologic studies from Australia and the US that reported an association between the lower expose to sunlight/UVB in the northern hemisphere and anaphylaxis in children. The researchers proposed that: “vitamin D deficiency in a developmentally critical period increases the susceptibility to colonisation with abnormal intestinal microbial flora and gastrointestinal infections, contributing to… inappropriate expose of the immune system to dietary allergens” Once again, trials are ongoing.

In the face of these tantalising findings, it seems only logical to suggest that eating a healthy, balanced diet in pregnancy is a smart thing to do. Organic foods are obviously a good choice for pregnant mothers and it’s a regime that you can continue with your little one to promote healthy, mindful eating from an early age.

After an appropriate period of breastfeeding, which itself is very helpful in strengthening a baby’s immune system, Bellamy’s Organic has a range of organic baby formulas and first foods to help.

If you’d like to know more about baby formula, cereals and our other products click on this link. It will take you straight to our on-line store.

The information in this article was sourced from a paper whose abstract is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22189254

Childhood allergies. Part 1. Baby food, diet and fish oil.

Chris Sherbon. Jun 13, 2012

Childhood allergies are on the rise and it seems no one knows why. On 16^th May The Age newspaper reported that allergies were rising at a rate of 20% per year in Australia. Hitherto innocuous foods in a normal healthy diet, like apples and celery, are now causing allergic reactions in some babies and children. So, what do we know?

The developed world has been very successful at removing bacteria and viruses from its environment. There is a theory that suggests our sophisticated immune systems, with nothing much to do these days, are now easily trigged to react to things that are not actually a threat to us. Many researchers say there is no evidence for this. However, as we mentioned in an earlier blog, Get your baby off to a pure start to life, there is some very interesting and promising research being done in this area that might show there is a basis for the theory.

The first tactic to reduce the risk of allergic disease was to remove allergens, like peanuts etc, from the diet of young children. Unfortunately there is very little evidence, despite decades of research, that this approach has any significant benefits. Furthermore, rates of peanut allergy are very low in those counties like Indonesia or Israel where peanut consumption in pregnancy and very early childhood is unrestricted.

A long-term study is underway to test if “allergenic foods” given to children from weaning will help prevent allergenic disease. Those findings will not be available for another year or so.

So what of additives? It seems that fish oil is one of the ingredients that are in almost everything these days. We know the anti-inflammatory effects of omega3 poly-unsaturated fatty acid are well recognised. However, postnatal intervention studies using fish oil have so far failed to reduce the development of allergic diseases. Preliminary results from an ongoing “infant fish oils study” also suggest no benefit. Daily supplementation of fish oil from birth to 6 months has no observed improvement on early allergic outcomes at 12 months compared with a placebo group.

Note, omega-3 has other benefits and is recognised as an essential fatty acid in the diet of children and adults.

It appears that the avoidance of allergenic foods and the addition of supplements in childhood does not hold a simple answer. Perhaps the solution lies in pregnancy? In part 2 of this article we’ll look at what research is uncovering there.

If you’d like to know more about Bellamy’s Organic baby formula, cereals and our other products click on this link. It will take you straight to our on-line store.

The information in this article was sourced from a paper whose abstract is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22189254