Best Way To Combat Peanut Allergy? Prenatal Peanuts, Of Course

Peanut allergies are one of the most common and dangerous types of allergies children can develop. With cooking substances like peanut oil and various nuts in a wide variety of foods, it can sometimes be extremely difficult to detect what dishes contain peanuts; so, a careful, diligent and conservative approach always has to be in effect whenever the sufferer eats food prepared by others. At this point, we don’t know of anyway to cure peanut allergies, but thankfully, we may now have some ways to prevent them before they start.

In a new study published by JAMA Pediatrics, and condensed by Health Central, doctors discovered a clear link between women who consumed plenty of peanuts during pregnancy and babies who didn’t have any nut allergy problems. In fact, while it wasn’t a guarantee of health, the more peanuts the mother ate, the less likely it was her child was affected by the allergy.

As a general rule, tolerance is usually developed from exposure either in the womb or at a very young age. That’s why parents obsessively trying to keep their children healthy isn’t necessarily a good thing. Our defenses and immune systems are built up through fighting pathogens and dealing with new substances. Consequently, what doctors recommend is pregnant women to eat as wide of a variety of different foods as possible. This diversity will expose the child to plenty of different things, and ideally, it will keep him as close to allergy free as possible.

Obviously, if mom suffers from any kind of nut allergies, she should not expose her unborn baby to nuts. The benefits for the child definitely don’t outweigh the potential danger to the mother because even if he or she does develop an allergy, there are plenty of people out there living sweet lives who just deal with it, regardless of how bizarre their particular type of allergy might be. That being said, if she’s just kind of meh on nuts and doesn’t really enjoy eating them, this study would indicate she should probably take one for the team and suck it up for however many months the child will remain in her womb.