Children’s Food Allergies Linked to Bullying

A recent study conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discovered by survey results, that almost a third of children with allergies are bullied by other children.

The survey was conducted on 251 pairs of parents and their children with allergies, and was reported in the online issue of Pediatrics’ December 2012 issue. Nearly half the parents were not aware of their child being bullied, but they all reported higher levels of stress and a lower quality of life. [1]

So what picture does this conclusion paint? One scenario comes to mind: An eight-year-old boy in the cafeteria line refuses a food because he’s allergic to it, then school bully Buck and his buddies lean over to taunt and threaten the kid. As these occurrences increase over time, the food allergy kid could become more withdrawn and maybe, neurotic. This is an over simplified, misinformed, knee jerk  response, of course.

Unfortunately, some insights connecting bullying to childhood allergies get little press. There’s too much money involved with selling and advertising pharmaceuticals to follow up on mostly nutritional remedies to allergies. Maybe the acknowledgement of possible cures would also discourage the forcing of immune system-stifling antibiotics and vaccinations onto children to keep them as constant customers.

But as traditional Chines medicine has purported for centuries, all health begins in the gut. The western queen of the gut-brain connection is Russian born pediatrician Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.

She claims to have cured her own son of autism spectrum disorders by restoring his intestinal flora balance with her GAPS (gut and psychology syndrome) diet and began using it in her UK practice on others successfully. [2]

What she and a handful of doctors have discovered is: There are neurological connections to the gut. This is why it’s common for autistic kids to have extremely painful gastrointestinal inflammations. This why GAPS is real. It impacts the child’s emotional, behavioral, and psychological state.

And this explains why some food allergy kids are at least a little whacky or pale and withdrawn or depressed—you know, the type of kid bullies like to pick on. The solution is beyond isolating the allergens; it’s necessary to restore the proper balance of beneficial gut bacteria.

Read more at Natural News.

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