Allergies in Kids: Everything You Need to Know About

Sumit Sharma
3 min readJul 17, 2019

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A baby’s skin is three times thinner than an adult’s skin and loses moisture faster as well. This is why it is more prone to dryness, rashes and a host of other skin irritations. This also means that a baby’s skin requires extra care and attention.

Babies are delicate bundles of joy. With their immunity taking little baby steps to get stronger and better, they are prone to infections, allergies, colic…oh what not. No matter how much precautions, we as parents take, babies can get infections and allergies in children can be a thing of common occurrence.

Some time or the other, we all have experienced our children having cold, cough, fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, upset stomach, rashes, etc. Most parents jump to the conclusion that all the symptoms listed here, are due to infections. Well NO! Allergies can produce similar symptoms in babies. But the BIG dilemma for the parents is to identify, whether the child has an infection or an allergy.

Know-How and Why Allergy Happens

An allergy happens when the immune system & overreacts to an allergen, treating it as an invader and trying to fight it off. This causes symptoms that can range from annoying to serious or even life-threatening.

In an attempt to protect the body, the immune system makes antibodies called immunoglobulin E (IgE). These antibodies then cause certain cells to release chemicals (including histamine) into the bloodstream to defend against the allergen “invader.”

It’s the release of these chemicals that causes allergic reactions. Reactions can affect the eyes, nose, throat, lungs, skin, and gastrointestinal tract. Future exposure to that same allergen will trigger this allergic response again.

Some allergies are seasonal and happen only at certain times of the year (like when pollen counts are high); others can happen anytime someone comes in contact with an allergen. So, when a person with a food allergy eats that particular food or someone who’s allergic to dust mites is exposed to them, they will have an allergic reaction.

Some of the common and uncommon allergies:

Common Allergies:

The regular allergens in sustenance are nuts, dairy animals’ milk, wheat, banana, fish, certain added substances in nourishment and prescriptions, and so on. The basic allergens in the earth are dust, dust, pet hair and so forth.

In the event that your infant is hypersensitive to any of the normal allergens, it turns out to be hard to distinguish the genuine guilty party, as your tyke may have presented to various basic allergens. Thus, it turns into a speculating game to discover, what caused the unfavourably susceptible response.

The best thing you can do is to keep a rundown of all the regular allergens that your kid interacted with, in the previous 24 hours. At the point when the youngster encounters a hypersensitive response once more, you can cross-check your rundown, to discover the basic allergens the kid was presented to.

Uncommon Allergies

A portion of the not really regular allergens is beetroot, corn, cowhide, sunbeams, and certain metals like nickel and so on. It is exceptionally difficult to analyse if the unfavourably susceptible response is to not really normal allergen.

Continuously monitor everything that your child came in contact with, that he/she normally doesn’t. The other method to distinguish such hypersensitivities is to complete a sensitivity test by the specialist.

All things considered, your valuable pack won’t be oversensitive to each known allergen. Numerous a period, a kid exceeds the sensitivity. In any case, how would you realize that your infant’s resistant framework is battling like a ninja warrior? By looking for the indications obviously.

Some of the symptoms of allergy:

  • Skin rashes or hives (atopic dermatitis or eczema).
  • Difficulty breathing asthma.
  • Sneezing, coughing, a runny nose or itchy eyes.
  • Stomach upset.

Prevention from allergies:

Research shows that giving your baby the common allergy-causing foods before they turn one can greatly reduce the risk of them developing an allergy to that food.

Delaying the introduction of the common allergy-causing foods does not prevent food allergy.

If your baby is allergic to a particular food, do not feed your baby that food.

If you think your baby has a food allergy, you should seek advice from your family doctor.

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