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

Banana Trees

I really want to be like banana trees. Not physically! I am really proud of banana trees because all parts of them are very useful for human. They have trunk, leaves, heart (flower), fruits, and also rhizome (underground stem). They are native to the tropical region of Southeast Asia. Today, they are cultivated throughout the tropics.

Parts of Banana Trees

Tree

People around the river use banana trees as traditionalism raft. They are also used as raw  material for many kinds of handy crafts and laces. When the banana fruits are ready to be harvested, the tree should be cut. In a period, new banana tree will grow next to the dead tree. Banana tree will not dead until it produces the fruit. 

Rhizome

Banana trees have underground stem or rhizome as their root. One of important jobs of this part is to produce the new generation of banana tree after the old tree is dead. One cannot seed a banana tree, still that tree is reproduced and grows. As many other plants it has asexual reproduction, where the new plants are identical in every respect to the parent plant.

The asexual reproduction involves no union of cells or nuclei of cells, there are not mingling of genetic traits. There emerges a large flower spike, with numerous individual flowers, that bends downward to become fruits. After the plants had fruits, they die and are replaced by others that arise from the underground stem, and that process can keep on going for many years.

Trunk

Children in village use this trunk to make their own toys. They use it to make a toys gun and play together using it. Nice!

Fruits

Banana fruits are used a lot in culinary, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Several kinds of banana can be eaten raw, while other have to be cooked  first. This fruit contains many vitamins that are good for our body. Beside that it also has carbohydrates, energy, dietary fiber, fat, protein, and many other substances.

Leaves

Banana leaves are often used as ecologically friendly disposable food containers or as “plates”. Steamed with dishes it imparts a subtle sweet flavour. It is often also seen used as a wrapping for grilling food and as such it contains the juices and prevents the food from getting burned whilst at the same time giving off a subtle flavour.

Banana Heart

Banana heart (banana flower, banana blossom) is used as vegetables and cooked in soup and curry. It tastes good.

Not only people like eating banana, but also monkeys love it.

Written by SAA

No Rain, No Rainbow

Have you ever seen a rainbow? Of course you saw it a moment after the rain falls. What exactly a rainbow? Rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets. The same case as a prism does to sunlight.

Let’s see what a prism does to sunlight.

Sunlight is made up of the whole range of colors that the eye can detect. The range of sunlight colors, when combined looks white to the eye.

A prism is a triangular piece of glass, which allows light to spread out into a band of colors. These colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. When the sunlight passes through the prism, it will break into its composition colors as you can see in the picture above.

What Makes a Rainbow? Or, A Double Rainbow?

When it rains, there are many droplets of rain water in the air. These water droplets acts as prism to refract white sunlight into its colors.

Sometimes we see two rainbows at once, what causes this? We have followed the path of a ray of sunlight as it enters and is reflected inside the raindrop. But not all of the energy of the ray escapes the raindrop after it is reflected once. A part of the ray is reflected again and travels along inside the drop to emerge from the drop. The rainbow we normally see is called the primary rainbow, and another one is secondary rainbow.

Written by SAA

Wash Your Hands!

“This kitten is cute,” says a little girl. She touches and holds it. Next to her is her mother shaking hands and talking to a friend. When they come home, mother asks her child to wash her hands. Yes, most of adults love doing it because they know the importance of washing hands.

Why Do We Have To Wash Our Hands?

We do many activities everyday and touch many germs. We touch telephone, toilet, money and so on. We also shake hands with people. Whatever you did today, you came into contact with germs that cause many diseases. It’s easy for a germ on your hand to end up in your mouth. Think about how many food you eat with your hands. Washing your hands is the best way to stop germs from spreading, so those germs don’t get a chance to make you or someone else sick.

Time To Wash Your Hands

• After using the bathroom
• After touching animals
• After blowing your nose or coughing
• Before eating and touching food
• Before and after visiting a sick relative or friend
• Before treating wounds or giving medicine
• Before inserting or removing contact lenses
• Before handling garbage or something that could be contaminated, such as a cleaning cloth or soiled shoes
• And so on

Use Hand Soap

Hand soap is very useful to kill germs, so don’t forget to use it in washing your hands. There are many kinds and brands of hand soap in the market. We can choose the best one for our skin. Several people complain that washing hands too often makes their hands dry. May be they can try other hand soap.

How To Wash Your Hands

• Follow these simple steps:
• Wet your hands with running water.
• Apply liquid, bar or powder soap.
• Lather well.
• Rub your hands vigorously for at least 20 seconds. Scrub all surfaces, including the backs of your hands, wrists, between your fingers and under your fingernails.
• Rinse well.
• Dry your hands with a clean or disposable towel or air dryer.
• If possible, use your towel to turn off the faucet.
• Keep in mind that antibacterial soap is no more effective at killing germs than is regular soap. Using antibacterial soap may even lead to the development of bacteria that are resistant to the product’s antimicrobial agents — making it harder to kill these germs in the future.

Hand Sanitizers

Sometimes we need to clean up our hands while we are in the car, bus, class, or other places that we can’t find water around. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers — which don’t require water — are an excellent alternative to soap and water. If you choose to use a commercially prepared hand sanitizer, make sure the product contains at least 60 percent alcohol. High concentration of alcohol is needed to kill germs and replace the function of hand soap. Then follow these simple steps:

• Apply enough of the product to the palm of your hand to wet your hands completely.
• Rub your hands together, covering all surfaces, for up to 25 seconds or until they’re dry.

If your hands are visibly dirty, however, wash with soap and water. Antimicrobial wipes or towelettes are another option, although they’re not as effective as alcohol-based sanitizers.

Well, have you wash your hands?

Written by SAA