The End of Food Allergy: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse a 21st Century Epidemic by Kari Nadeau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I bought this book, because I’m going through a LOT of food allergies right now. Even though we’re in COVID, I’m stuck in the house more than just about anyone else. I have allergic reactions to the pollen outside to the point that my throat feels like it’s closing up. On top of that, I keep rolling back my food uncovering new things that I’m struggling with. Testing can be a challenge and it’s kind of impossible to test for everything. Just the other day, I figured out that I couldn’t have pasta sauce, either because of basil or because of tomatoes. Regardless, things are hard and really stressful for me.

So, I bought this book looking for some other sorts of ideas that could help with my ongoing treatment. I’m currently undergoing Immunotherapy, which this book is basically all about. Well that and preventing food allergies in kids. So, if YOU are expecting and really worried about your kids having allergies, this book is for you! There’s seriously a full chapter on the different types of research conducted to uncover the root cause of allergies.

The general findings are that you need to expose kids early, with a bunch of stuff together, rather than waiting a long time. (There are things that make that easier). That and if your kid has dry skin, you better doing everything you can to heal it, cause that’s a major vector for food allergies.

The Authors spend a bit of time scaring the crap out of readers with short cases of allergy sufferers dying. Which kind of sucks to read. Cause they are young kids that unknowingly eat something that kills them. It’s a stupid tragic death. It’s terrifying, cause I feel like that could happen to me. I’m pretty sure that could happen to me if I eat ginger, so it’s looking at death in the face, if you have allergies.

However, there’s good news, because they go from talking about kids dying to talking about how they saved a bunch of other kids using Oral Immunotherapy. They also talk about a couple drugs that speed up the immunotherapy from a year or more to less than a few months. However, I’m actually ALLERGIC to that drug, so I hope, in your case, you have much better luck.

In terms of peanut allergy sufferers there’s even better luck, because there’s something of a “vaccine” that switches your immune system from attacking peanut protein to actually treating it as food. There are a number of studies in progress.

Overall, this book was really well written, there are fantastic layperson explanations of very technical immune system deep dives. There’s clear explanations of risks for any and every treatment options. There’s a lot of hope in this book. The other thing that’s really nice. They talk about the emotional and psychological toll these allergies take on a person. They strongly recommend finding a therapist to talk through the anxiety and stress of the disease.

My biggest complaint is the last of end notes to indicate what study they are referencing at any given time. They often have summaries that are cited at the very end, but it’s not like the Body Keeps the Score, which has notes to the actual papers as they are reference.

Highly recommended if someone you know is suffering from food allergies.



View all my reviews