Why Is Chili Spicy?

For some people, spicy food is nice. It makes food more delicious. But others say that it's bad because spicy food makes their mouth feels hot. This burning feeling cause their eyes water and their nose runs. If it's happening, people usually drink much water to cure it. Does it work? Of course not. Drinking milk is much helping in this case. Why?

Chili or Chili Pepper?

In Asian Country it's called chili, but others call it chili pepper. It's the fruit from genus capsicum. There are several species of capsicum which has different amount of the spicy things.

Humans have been cultivating chili and using it for cooking since 6000 years ago, but we still studying about it and the reaction to our body. Scientist found that the chemical which cause the hot feeling is capsaicin.

When you eat spicy food, the chemical capsaicin binds to receptors that respond to pain from heat in the mouth and throat. The brain gets the message and the body reacts resulting in increasing circulation, cooling perspiration, and also causing runny nose and watery eyes.

What To Do To Cure The Burning Feeling

Many people try to cool down the burning feeling by drinking a glass of cool water. It does nothing because this capsaicin doesn't dissolved in water. So, what should you do to cure it? Of course you have to find a kind of liquid which can wash it away from your mouth. Milk can do this! Find and drink a glass off milk after eating spicy food, so the burning feeling will go away with the milk. So, what if the burning feeling occurs to your skin? Yes, you can also try to wash your hand using milk.

Written by SAA

Why Does Your Nose Run?

Image from knightwatch.typepad.com

What Is Mucus?

When your nose runs, there is sticky things that is made inside your nose. It is called mucus. Mucus is actually good. It keep germs, dirt, and bacteria from getting into your lungs by stopping them in your nose. It helps your body get rid of infections.

There Are Several Reasons For Running

Crying

When you blink, your eyelids spread the tears over the surface of the eye. Sometimes tears flow over your lower eyelid, but mostly the tears flow down a tiny tube at the edge of your lower eyelid, next to your nose. This tube carries the tears to the back of your nose, and this is why your nose runs when you cry.

Allergies

Several people who have allergies get their nose run when they are around the allergen like animal hair or pollen. Their bodies react to the allergen like they are germs.

Having Cold

 

When you have cold, your nose makes mucus to keep germs out of your lungs and body. This mucus contained something that can make you sicker than you already are. So, this is the way your body protects itself.

Eating Spicy Food

To cook spicy food, chili is needed. Yes, of course chili causes hot in your mouth, water in your eyes and mucus in your nose. So, what does chili do to make your nose running? Chili contained the chemical capsaicin and allyl isothiocyanate which can irritate mucous membranes that protects your lungs and various body openings and cavities from infectious agents such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. The more irritated it becomes, the more mucus it produces as a defense.

Written by SAA

The Amazing Human Brain

Human Brain
(Image from livescience.com)

Do you know that human has something amazing and powerful inside his body? It weighs about 1.4 kilograms in your head. It is called brain. The human brain makes up about 2% of a human's body weight. It contains about 100 billion nerve cells (gray matter) and millions of nerve fibers (white matter).

Anatomy of The Human Brain

Forebrain

It is made up of cerebrum, thalamus, hypothalamus and pineal gland among other features.

Midbrain

It is composed of a portion of the brainstem and located near center of the brain.

Hindbrain

It consists of the remaining brainstem as well as cerebellum and pons.

Human Brain Facts

Brain control everything that we do, such as enabling you to think, eat, walk, cry, even blink, breath and many others.  Brain also enable we to feel emotion like happy, sad, angry, tired, bored and so on. 

Computer acts like the brain, but our brain is faster and much more powerful than a supercomputer. No computer in this world can get close to the ability of our brain to process and react to many information from our skin, eyes, ears, nose and other sensory organs.

Our brain's activity never stop even if we are sleeping. That's why we are dreaming in most of our sleep. And of course, we need to dream. The brain processes and and reacts to billions of messages from outside of body. A single neuron generates only a tiny amount of electricity, but all neurons together can generate enough electricity to power a low-wattage bulb.

The structure of our brain changes every time we learn. Can you play a skateboard? If you can't, it seems impossible to play, and it looks so difficult to do. But if you try to practice, practice and practice again, of course you will be good in skateboarding. Why? At first, your brain sends message that you can't play skateboarding. As you practice, your brain sends "skateboarding" message along certain pathways of neurons over and over, forming new connection.

Written by SAA

Meat-Eating Plants

Dionaea muscipula

Meat-eating plants? Yes, some species of plants eat meat for their meals. What kind of plants is that? What meat?

Well, meat-eating plants or carnivorous plants are plants that get their nutrients from trapping and eating animals or protozoans, especially insects. These plants usually grow in a place where the soil is poor of nutrients such as nitrogen. Being carnivorous is the way for adaptation.

The species produces small, shiny black seeds 

Venus flytrap (Dionea muscipula) is one of the example for meat-eating plants. It eats insects or spider for its nutrients because it grows at poor nutrients soil. When an insect or spider crawling along the leaves contacts a hair, the trap closes.

Venus flytraps produce flowers in the spring 

Most meat-eating plants selectively feed on specific prey. This selection is due to the available prey and the type of trap used by the organism. With the Venus flytrap, prey is limited to beetles, spiders and other crawling arthropods.

(Image from wikipedia)

Written by SAA

Where Do Tears Come From?

Tears are produced by tear glands, which are small glands inside your upper eyelid. Tears keep the surface of your eyeball clean and moist, and help protect your eye from damage.

When you blink, your eyelids spread the tears over the surface of the eye. Sometimes tears flow over your lower eyelid, but mostly the tears flow down a tiny tube at the edge of your lower eyelid, next to your nose – if you look very carefully you can see a tiny dot that is the beginning of this tube. This tube carries the tears to the back of your nose (and this is why your nose ‘runs’ when you cry!)

Written by SAA

Related post: Tears Help Us To Be Healthy

Do Mosquitoes Really Walk On Water?

Many of us hate mosquitoes because they are bloodsucking and diseases carrying pest. They bite and cause itchy skin. For people who are allergy to mosquitoes bite, it's so annoying because they get really itchy on the bitten spot skin and it looks reddish. Several kinds of mosquitoes are dangerous because they carry diseases and sometimes cause death to people.

Despite all the disadvantages mosquitoes give to human, they have an amazing talent; they walk on water. How mosquitoes do that? Why most of other insects can't do this circus attraction?

Hairy Nanostructures on Legs

Mosquitoes stay afloat because of hairy nanostructures on their legs that holds pocket of air. This prevents its leg from being wet and let them stand on the surface tension. The water tries to minimize surface contact area with air. The area its leg standing on water will make a water dimple. Water surface acts just like trampoline that create dimple downward and gives up force to support weight of mosquitoes.

Human Walks On Water

Can a human being stand and walk on water like a mosquito does? Unfortunately it's impossible for humans. The bigger an object, the smaller water surface area which respect to its weight. So there is less surface area available to take advantage of the surface tension of water to support its weight.

If we calculate the feet size which support a human to stand and walk on water, it takes something like kilometers. Yes, it's difficult to do. Or may be you can learn it from a Ninja who runs on water just like in movies.

Written by SAA

All About Bubbles

Kids love so much playing bubbles. They can make bubbles from soap solution. Soap is added to water and mixed together, air is blown into the mixture, and a thin wall is formed and then the air is trapped. Ta da! A bubble appears.

Well, soap bubbles is not the only kind of bubbles. We can find other kinds of bubbles like in plain water, carbonated soft drinks, effervescence dissolved in water, and so on.

Are Bubbles Always Round?

Bubbles are naturally round. A bubble always try to take the smallest surface area and hold the most air that possible. It happens because of the phenomenon called Surface Tension. Round is a shape that take the smallest surface area if we compare with other shapes like square and tetrahedron.

Sometimes when we blow bubbles with a bubble wand at a windy air, the wind will make the shape of the bubble not round. But then the bubble itself tries hard to get round shape naturally.

The Bubbles Burst

Bubbles can easily burst. Everything that can disturb the very thin wall will broke it such as wind, wood, or your finger. But, if there is no outside disturbance, bubbles will burst naturally. The thin wall keep holding the air inside as long as the water molecule is enough to make the wall stay strong. When water evaporates, the wall gets weaker and then broken.

Freezing A Bubble?

Yes, of course we can do it. A bubble is made of water and soap can be frozen just like what we do to water. Put a bubble in the temperature below 0 degree Celsius and it will freeze. Since a bubble bursts fast, it is difficult to do.

Written by SAA

Water

Water is very important for all living things. It is found covering nearly 70% of the Earth surface. We need water more than food, because in fact, we can survive much longer without food than without water to drink. Beside that, many of our daily activities use water such as taking a bath, cooking, washing, swimming, and so on. Plants and animals need water to keep alive. What about fish?

What Is Water?

Water is a substance made of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. Water can exist in three states:

• Ice. When the temperature is below 0 degree Celsius, water will freeze and become ice.
• Liquid. This is water that we drink and use to take shower.
• Vapor. When the temperature gets above 100 degree Celsius, water will evaporate and turn into gas state called vapor.

The Water Cycle

The amount of water today on the Earth is the same as there has always been. The water keeps moving on an endless cycle called water cycle.

Water evaporates from river, ocean, living things and others. Then, it goes to atmosphere and form clouds. Clouds turn into rain or snow, and it falls to the ground. The process begin again and again.

Written by SAA

Why Is The Sky Blue?

The sky is dark without sunlight. The Sun is yellow or sometimes orange. So, why is the sky blue?

Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Well, may be we can find the answer from this clue.

The sky appears blue to us on a clear day, because the atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere separate the suns white light into its many colors, and scatter them throughout the atmosphere.

The wavelength of the blue light scatters better than the rest, predominates over the other colors in the light spectrum, and makes the sky appear blue to us.

Why Not Another Color?

The human eye has three types of light receptors, known as cones, located in the retina. The cones are either considered to be red, or blue, or green, based upon their strong response to light at these wavelengths. As light stimulates these receptors, our vision translates the signals into the colors we see.

When gazing at the sky, the red cones respond to the small amounts of red light scattered, and even less strongly to the orange and yellow wavelengths. Although green cones respond to yellow, their response to scattered green and green-blue wavelengths is stronger. Finally, colors near the strongly scattered blue wavelengths stimulate the blue receptors.

In short, the skylight stimulates the red and green cones almost equally, while stimulating the blue cones more strongly. For these reasons, our vision naturally adjusts as clearly as possible to separate colors.

Written by SAA

Related post: Why Is The Ocean Blue?

We Need To Dream

Did you dream about something last night? Nice dream, or nightmare? Many people say that dreams mean something. But most of our dreams mean nothing. We usually dream every night in our sleep, but we forget it when we awake. Sometimes, we remember the dream, but it’s not clear.

How could we dream in our sleep?

A theory says that sleep is a state of exhaustion, requiring restoration of bodily functionality. However, our brain never sleeps. It keeps working all the time. Dreaming means that the brain is not switched off.

Sleep is an almost similar situation with coma, we are in unconscious condition. We are not aware of ordinary sound around us and we don’t know if someone or something is touching or watching us. So, we have to wake up and reach the conscious condition anytime. 

For example, someone calls your name, your alarm rings or maybe a crocodile suddenly comes to eat you. You have to wake up to consciousness to respond to those things. It’s ok that you keep sleeping when your friend is calling you, but you put your life in danger if you don’t aware  that a crocodile is biting your feet

Why we dream?

The function of dreaming is keeping our brain working so that we don’t fall to a deep coma. We don’t shut off an automobile engine if we anticipated its use in the near future. Therefore, we allow an automobile engine to idle, to let it tick over very slowly, ready for instant acceleration.

One night, someone dreamed about crying baby that really disturbed her. When she woke up, she relized that swans were roaring behind the house. This is one of example that our brain keep responding our sorrounding.

Because of the function of dreaming, animal must be dreaming too in their sleep. They need to always be aware of any danger around them and keep themselves safe.

Written by SAA

Plain Water Is Very Good for Our Health

Plain water is the most popular drink in the world. Everyone knows about it. Unfortunately, only several people know about its benefits to our beloved body. Here are several of many benefits of plain water for our health.

Drinking enough water will help taking care the balance of our body fluids needs. Human body consist of 60% water. Water is needed in our body metabolism, food adsorption and transportation, circulations, saliva production, and keeping the body temperature constant.

When body needs water, the brain will give any signal called thirsty. If you feel thirsty, drink water. Alcohol can disturb this signal that alcoholic person can’t feel thirsty even though his body is in bad dehydration.

Water can control body calories. Since years ago, many people in a diet program drank much water in order to lose weight.

While doing exercise, we need to drink enough water because we lose much of our body fluids through the production of sweat. Drink a glass of water an hour before doing exercise and keep drinking water while doing exercise.

Water is needed for our skin health because skin consists of much water. One of skin function is protecting our body from losing much water. Dehydration causes dry skin, and we can solve this problem by drinking much water.

Written by SAA

Tears Help Us To Be Healthy

Scientific studies have found that after crying, people actually do feel better, both physically and physiologically—and they feel worse by suppressing their tears.

Where Do Tears Come From?

Tears are produced by tear glands, which are small glands inside your upper eyelid. Tears keep the surface of your eyeball clean and moist, and help protect your eye from damage.

When you blink, your eyelids spread the tears over the surface of the eye. Sometimes tears flow over your lower eyelid, but mostly the tears flow down a tiny tube at the edge of your lower eyelid, next to your nose – if you look very carefully you can see a tiny dot that is the beginning of this tube. This tube carries the tears to the back of your nose (and this is why your nose ‘runs’ when you cry!)

Why Do We Cry?

Many reasons cause us to cry:

• We are sad or hearing about something sad
• We are afraid
• We feel hurt or pain
• We feel really angry
• We watch a sad movie or listen to a sad music
• We think that we have done something wrong or something bad
• We feel lonely
• We lose or win a game
• Someone we love has died or left our lives
• We are happy
• We laugh until we cry
• and many other reasons.

Crying Is Good For Our Health

If you feel really bad, angry and stress, then crying can reduce your bad feelings. The simple act of crying also reduces the body’s manganese level, a mineral which affects mood and is found in up to 30 times greater concentration in tears than in blood serum. They also found that emotional tears contain 24 per cent higher albumin protein concentration than tears caused by eye irritants.

Chemicals produced by the body during stress are removed by tears, and this can lowered the stress. These include the endorphin leucine-enkephalin, which helps to control pain, and prolactin, a hormone which regulates milk production in mammals.

We also cry while cutting onion. Onion releases chemical which turn into sulfuric acid and it can damage your eyes. So, to protect your eyes, tears dissolve this chemical when it has contacted with your eye surface. Your tears fall and bring the toxic away.

So, if you have no reason to cry, you can watch sad movie, laugh until you cry or find other reason. Because beside to reduce the stress and pain, we also need to cry to keep our eye healthy.

Written by SAA

I Need Breakfast!

I need breakfast, you need breakfast, everybody needs breakfast. The word breakfast is really two words; break and fast. Fast means that you don’t eat food for several hours; the night during you have been sleeping. So, breakfast means that you break your fast by eating food. Of course your hungry stomach will be really glad about it.

Why is Breakfast Important?

When you are doing your activities,  you are using your energy. So if you want to do your job well, your body needs food. It’s the same case when a car needs gasoline to work.

Breakfast is brain food. As our body needs energy to do everything, our brain also needs food for energy to think. You have to think every time. When you are learning something, you have to be focused. You can’t do it well when you are hungry. And what are you thinking when you are hungry? Yes, you want to eat some food.

You need to eat foods like cereal, bread, eggs, milk and dairy foods which will release energy for a longer time and keep you going until lunch.

Beside that, having breakfast every morning with all family members will help us to have time together and better relationship among family members.

Written by SAA

Have A Good Sleep.

Is Sleeping Important?

We always sleep every night, and sometimes we also take a nap because it’s good for our health. A baby needs longer time of sleeping every day than a teenager. The older someone, the less sleeping time they need.

We sleep because of several reasons:

• Sleep has fuction as physical rest. When we are tired and sleepy, we tend to fall a sleep. After sleeping, the body will be fresh again.

• Sleep is the time to recharge the brain. Our brain need to be shut down to take a rest, so the neurons can be repaired. Neurons have hard work to deliver information from the brain to the muscle and vice versa.

• Sleep gives the brain opportunity to reorganize data to help find  solution to a problem. When we have a problem and don’t know how to solve it, just forget it for a while. Have a good sleep at night and we will get idea as the solution, or at least we can think more clearly about the problem.

• Sleep lowers a person’s metabolic rate and energy consumtion. We need a little energy to sleep if it is compared to other activities such as sit, stand, walk, run, and so on.

• During sleep, the body has a chance to replace chemicals and repair muscles, other tissues, and dead cells.

• Hormones are released during deep sleep. Many hormones, substances produced to trigger or regulate particular body functions, are timed to release during sleep or right before sleep. Growth hormones, for example, are released during sleep, vital to growing children but also for restorative processes like muscle repair.

Sleep Deprivation

Do you get the sleep as you needed? Sleep deprivation occurs when you sleep less than the sleep hours you needed. For examples, a student has to study hard until late at night to prepare his final exam, a worker works in a night shift, and a mother has to take care of her baby at night.

Having less sleep at night can disturb your body health and daily activities. These are several signs of sleep deprivation:

• Have difficulty to wake up in the morning.
• Have a bad mood.
• Feel sleepy and fall asleep during class or work.
• Have difficulty in making decicion.
• Poor performance in school or work.

So, if you want to have better day, have enough good sleep every day.

Written by SAA

Related post: We Need To Dream

Fireflies

In the dark around the river, I saw spots light shining. They looked like stars but they were moving. Yes, they were fireflies. But, it happened many years ago. Now, it’s difficult to find fireflies because they are disappearing.

Why Are Fireflies Disappearing?

Scientists belive that many factors cause fireflies disappear. Female fireflies usually lay their fertilized eggs on or just below the surface of the ground. When the eggs hatch, the larvae grow in rotting wood in the forest. And the problem is many forests in our beloved earth are being paved.

Fireflies love to grow and play around the river, stream and lake. But, our waterways are seeing more development and noisy boat traffic. Beside that, many lakes and river are not clean any more. Use of pestisides can also make lakes and rivers are poisoned. It’s really uncomfortable to be in such a noisy and dirty place.

What about light pollution? Of course, it can disturb fireflies too. They use their flashing lights to communicate each other, and sometimes across large groups of thousands of insects. So, what happen if we use too much light in the night everywhere? Light from houses, cars, building, lights along the road and many others. Since there are less forest in the Earth, they are gone.

What Do Fireflies Eat?

Fireflies larvae live on the ground, under bark, and in moist swampy places. They eat earthworms, snails and slugs, plus they may scavenge certain small dead animals and other organic material . They have been seen following slime trails to their slug and snail victims.

Light Production

A firefly can produce light from it’s body through a chemical reaction called bioluminescence. This process occurs in specialised light-emitting organs, usually on a firefly’s lower abdomen. The enzyme luciferase acts on luciferin, in the presence of magnesium ions, ATP (adenosene triphosphate), and oxygen to produce light.

Written by SAA

Antioxidant Causes Diabetes

One paper from the journal Cell Metabolism, study about the connection between antioxidant and diabetes. Some mice given antioxidants were more likely to become diabetic, because free radicals help muscle cells respond to insulin.

We know that free radicals caused heart disease, cancer and so on. Most of us take antioxidant vitamints to help get rid of these unwanted toxin. May be we don’t have to do it. Because a study in the journal Cell Metabolism says that some amount of free radicals can be good for us.

We produce free radicals naturally as we metabolize food, and we make large amount of them when we eat too much food. That’s why people who eat a lot of food have risk of becoming obese and developing diabetes.

Free radicals can help muscle cells respond to insulin. So, mice that can’t get rid of their free radicals actually do well on a high-fat diet, and it’s only when they’re given antioxidants that they get diabetes.

Written by SAA

What Makes A Good Website?

What makes a good website? What were you thinking while reading that sentence? Well, when you’re surfing the web, may be you only think about whether or not it’s fun and attractive. What are the essential traits of great Web sites?

After you visit a site and find yourself staying awhile, what makes you stay? A sense of humor helps. Flashy graphics are nice. But the fundamental traits that make a site work are more elusive. This article will talk about many things about the essential characteristics of great websites.

Page Design

• Pages download quickly
• Animated graphics turn off by themselves
• Links are underline so they are instantly clear to the visitor
• Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages
• Pages within the website link back to the home page, and to elsewhere in the site
• Buttons are not big and dorky

Text and Navigation

• Background does not interrupt the text
• Text is big enough to read, but not too big
• The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear
• Navigation is consistent throughout the web
• Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are, what page of site they are currently on

Who Made It?

Anyone can make a Web page. In fact, anyone can make a Web page and lie about who they are! You could make a Web page that said you were Celine Dion, and no one would stop you from putting it on the Web. But sites that really belong to the people should have some way to contact the people responsible for the site; usually an e-mail address, sometimes a phone number and street address, too.

Content

• Original and easy to read
• Valuable and attractive Share everything you learn
• Well organized
• Dominate a subject area; become the site for that subject.
• Custom-tailored the information to user preferences

Are There A lot of Adds?

Ads can be long, rectangular banners at the top or bottom of the screen, or sometimes they are on the left or right side of the screen. It’s not always easy to recognize all the ads on a page; sometimes ads will look like messages from your computer, or just like part of the website that you’re looking at. Teach yourself to spot ads, and be aware that if a website has a lot of ads, you may want to think twice about whether the information on it is unbiased. However, many valuable sites do contain advertising to help support themselves.

Written by SAA

Why Is The Ocean Blue?

Have you ever wondered why the ocean is blue? Do you know that sometimes ocean is not blue, it’s green or even yellow.

Take a glass of plain water and put it on a table. Take a look, what color does water have? Blue? White? Green? No! Water has no color, it is clear. So, why is the ocean blue?

The Sunlight

First, we have to know that sunlight is made up of the whole range of colors that our eyes can detect. The range of sunlight colors when combined, looks white to our eye. We can see this all colors on the rainbow. We can also see the colors by passing a beam or sunlight through a prism. A prism is a triangular piece of glass, which allows light to spread out into a band of colors. This color are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Where The Blue of Ocean Comes From?

The first reason is that the ocean is blue because it is mostly water, which is blue in large quantities. Not only ocean is blue, but also lake, river, swimming pool and so on. When light strikes water, like sunlight, the water filters the light so that red is absorbed and some blue is reflected.

Second, ocean reflects color of the sky.

For your information, color of the ocean is not always blue. Sometimes we see green or yellow ocean. These color is caused by algae that cover the ocean.

Written by SAA

Related post: Why Is The Sky Blue?

If Water is Recycled, Why We Conserve it?

Do you often hear people say, “save our earth, save water” or “use water wisely”?

Our Earth consisted of about 70% of water and 30% of land. Yes, we have lots of water in our planet. Hmm… What is happening? We have much water but we have to use it less.

What is Water?

What is water actually? Water is a chemical substances with chemical formula H₂O. The word water is usually refers to its liquid state. We use to drink plain water, take a bath using water, and rain drops water to the Earth. Water has three state; liquid, solid and gas. Ice is the solid state and water vapour or steam is the gas state of water.

Why We Conserve Water?

If water is constantly being cleaned and recycled through the earth’s water cycle, why do we need to conserve it? The answer is that people use up our planet’s fresh water faster than it can naturally be replenished. Fresh drinking water makes up just one percent of the Earth.

Most of us use lots of water everyday more than they actually need. These are several activities that people do using water, and tips to use water wisely.

Bathroom Activities.

More than half the water we use every day is in the bathroom.

- Your daily eight-minute shower uses about 20 gallons of water. So, take a shower only 5 minutes or less.

- 20 gallons is used to flush the toilet. More water goes if your toilet is leaks. Up grade your toilet to saver one and always check it for leaks.

Washing Machine

You waste water when you use washing machine to wash only several clothes. Use it only when it full.

Washing Hands and Cleaning Teeth

Close the tap when cleaning your teeth or washing your hands. We do many other activities using fresh water. We lost not only water but also energy, because water can produce energy. Let’s save our Earth water.

Written by SAA

Food Allergies

What Is a Food Allergy?

Food allergies occur when your immune system makes a mistake. Normally, your immune (say: ih-myoon) system protects you from germs and disease. It does this by making antibodies that help you fight off bacteria, viruses, and other tiny organisms that can make you sick. But if you have a food allergy, your immune system mistakenly treats something in a certain food as if it’s really dangerous to you.

The same sort of thing happens with any allergy, whether it’s a medicine (like penicillin), pollen in the air (from flowers and trees), or a food, like peanuts. So the thing itself isn’t harmful, but the way your body reacts to it is.

If a kid with peanut allergy would have eaten that peanut-topped brownie, here’s what would happen. Antibodies to something in the food would cause mast cells (a type of immune system cell in the body) to release chemicals into the bloodstream. One of these chemicals is histamine (say: his-tuh-meen).

What’s a Reaction Like?

The histamine then causes symptoms that affect a person’s eyes, nose, throat, respiratory system, skin, and digestive system. A person with a food allergy could have a mild reaction – or it could be more severe. An allergic reaction could happen right away or a few hours after the person eats it. Some of the first signs that a person may be having an allergic reaction could be a runny nose, an itchy skin rash such as hives, or a tingling in the tongue or lips. 

Other signs include:

• tightness in the throat
• hoarse voice
• wheezing
• cough
• nausea
• vomiting
• stomach pain
• diarrhea

In the most serious cases, a food allergy can cause anaphylaxis (say: ah-nuh-fuh-lak-sis). This is a sudden, severe allergic reaction in which several problems occur all at once and can involve the skin, breathing, digestion, the heart, and blood vessels. A person’s blood pressure can drop, breathing tubes can narrow, and the tongue can swell.

People at risk for this kind of a reaction have to be very careful and need a plan for handling emergencies, when they might need to get special medicine to stop these symptoms from getting worse.

Many kids outgrow allergies to milk and eggs as they grow older. But severe allergies to foods like peanuts, certain kinds of fish, and shrimp often last a lifetime.

How Do You Know if You Have One?

Sometimes it’s easy to figure out that a kid has a food allergy. He or she might get hives or have other problems after eating it. But other times, it’s more of a mystery what’s causing the problem. Most foods have more than one ingredient, so if a kid has shrimp with peanut sauce, what’s causing the allergy – the peanut sauce or the shrimp?

Doctors believe that allergies could be hereditary, which means if your parent or other close relative has certain allergies like hay fever, you’re more likely to develop the allergies. Some kids are born allergic to certain foods, whereas others develop food allergies over time. This may be due to someone’s surroundings or changes in the body as they grow older.

Many people react to a certain food but are not actually allergic. For example, people with lactose intolerance (say: lak-tose in-tah-luh-runtz) get belly pain and diarrhea from milk and other dairy products. That doesn’t mean they’re allergic to milk. They don’t feel good after drinking milk because their bodies can’t properly break down the sugars found in milk.

What Will the Doctor Do?

If you think you may be allergic to a certain food, let your parents know. They will take you to the doctor to get it checked out.

If your doctor thinks you might have a food allergy, he or she will probably send you to see a doctor who specializes in allergies. The allergy specialist will ask you about past reactions and how long it takes between eating the food and getting the symptom, such as hives. The allergist also may ask about whether anyone else in your family has allergies or other allergy-related conditions, such as eczema or asthma.

The allergist may also want to do a skin test. This is a way of seeing how your body reacts to a very small amount of the food that is giving you trouble. The allergist will use a liquid extract of the food and, possibly, other common allergy-causing foods to see if you react to any of them. (A liquid extract is a liquid version of something that usually isn’t liquid.)

The doctor will make a little scratch on your skin (it will be a quick pinch!) and drop a little of the liquid extract on the scratched spot or spots. Different extracts will go on the different scratch spots, so the doctor can see how your skin reacts to each substance. If you get a reddish, raised spot, it shows that you are allergic to that food or substance.

Some doctors may also take a blood sample and send it to a lab. That’s where it will be mixed with some of the food or substance you may be allergic to and checked for certain antibodies.

It’s important to remember that even though the doctor tests for food allergies by exposing you to a very small amount of the food, you should not try this at home! The best place for an allergy test is at the doctor’s office, where they are specially trained and could give you medicine right away if you had a serious reaction.

How Are Food Allergies Treated?

There is no special medicine for food allergies. Some can be outgrown, and others a kid will have his or her whole life. The best treatment is simply to avoid the food itself and any foods or drinks that contain the food.

One way to figure that out is to read food labels. Any foods that might cause an allergic reaction will be listed near or in the ingredient list. Doctors and allergy organizations also can help by providing lists of safe foods and unsafe foods. Some people who are very sensitive may need to avoid foods just because they are made in the same factory that also makes their problem food. You may have seen some candy wrappers that say the candy was made in a factory that processes nuts, too.

Have a Plan

No matter how hard you try, you may eat the wrong thing by accident. Stay calm and follow your emergency plan. What’s an emergency plan? Before a slipup happens, it’s a good idea to create a plan with your doctor and parents. The plan should spell out what to do, who to tell, and which medicines to take, if you have a reaction.

This is especially important if you have a food allergy that can cause a serious reaction (anaphylaxis). For serious reactions, people may need a shot of epinephrine (say: eh-pih-neh-frin) with them. This kind of epinephrine injection comes in an easy-to-carry container that looks like a pen. You and your parent can work out whether you carry this or someone at school keeps it on hand for you. You’ll also need to identify a person who will give you the shot.

You might want to have antihistamine medication on hand as well, though if anaphylaxis is occurring, this medicine is not a substitute for epinephrine. After receiving an epinephrine shot, you would need to go to the hospital or a medical facility, where they would keep an eye on you and make sure the reaction is under control.

Written By SAA