louise on the left (coast)

Great article by Christine Peddle in Allergic Living Magazine  which is always full of amazing information and entirely up-to-date info regarding auto-immune issues and allergies. And this edition has an article featuring someone very dear to my heart:  My eldest daughter, Juliet Larsen, who, in spite of life-threatening food allergies has found the courage to pursue a professional modeling career since the age of 14. NOTE: Juliet Larsen to address Teens at FARE Conference this Sunday, Long Beach, CA.  She will discuss how she felt growing up with this particular food allergy and how she did not let her fears of anaphylaxis stand in the way of following her dreams regarding participating in sports, theater events or even a professional modeling career.   **This Sunday, Long Beach, California at the 2015 annual  F.AR.E. Conference.

22 year old young man turns himself into jail for a misdemeanor of pot possession, tells the jail about his his life-threatening food allergies, stated they had a medical file about his life-threatening health condition in their possession already and even asks prison guard about the ingredients of his food, then later begging for medical help - is abandoned and left for dead in his jail cell. This is how our country deals with food allergies in institutions?  They just walk away and let people die? Horrific and upsetting.  His mother is filing a lawsuit and I hope she wins every penny and raises awareness about how institutions disregard the severity of food allergies in all institutional settings. So heartbreaking.

As the mother of a food allergic kid, I know what it's like to anger people by requesting they make changes in how they eat or prepare food. Food is primal, and requesting changes about something primal is hard.  I've been on the food allergy road already, and it's not easy, I'm on it, 24/7. (I founded the blog  Parents of Severely Peanut Allergic Kids   as on a successful group on  Facebook .) However, right now I'm talking about something very different, and not really connected to those issues, I'm talking about changing how we feed children in schools.  I'm talking about why we need to teach them about food and nutrition earlier than in high school. The reality is, the school lunches they're serving the kids roughly 180 days a year are unhealthy and actually hurting our children, and it's not the school cafeteria's fault, it's the state and federally mandated choices that are in  need of rethinking. Support Food Education

Wow. Nice to know there may actually some hope on the horizon about this horrific "allergy." I would be happy to sign my child up for any treatments that may lessen the severity of reaction to peanuts, but I don't know if I'd ever really believe they were actually gone for good. In my own life I have come to see that sometimes allergies come and go. Immune responses fluctuate. This is what's maddening about working with allergies and rheumatological issues: They rarely stay the same from year to year. They seem to evolve all the time, so would I let my child ever pig out on Snickers Bars or Chinese food? Nope. But, I'd breathe easier knowing that she has the most current treatments that may help protect her from another life-threatening anaphylaxis episode. Look: I watched how fast, how severe and how worried the ER staff were. I heard the words "we are doing our best, but we may not be able to save her." I saw my tiny daughter reach out for

Here's a strong piece about how deathly food allergies can be. I would like to see an american group carry on the wonderful awareness project here in our country. Sometimes it seems that Canada and the UK are light years ahead of America in warning people about the dangers of these deadly reactions. (I'm sure it has nothing to do with Peanuts being a major US export.)