Welcome to Natural MD Radio, your place to hear the whole truth on health and medicine for women and children and get the tools you need to take back your health naturally starting now. I'm Dr. Aviva Rong. picking my three-year-old granddaughter up from preschool not too long ago I just

asked her the normal question, hey kiddo, what'd you have for lunch today?

She said pasta beba, that's what she calls me beba.

I wanted peanut butter and jelly, but I can't have it in school

because it can make my friends sick.

I really felt like crying in that minute when she said that to me.

I felt like crying that food allergies,

in the case that she was referring to peanut allergies are so common

that my then three-year-old granddaughter would be able to articulate this to me so clearly.

What's so amazing is that allergies at all weren't even

discussed in the medical literature until the 19th century in England and what

happened was was more and more people were moving to the

cities and people in what was considered the upper classes started to develop

hay fever. So at that time the condition was estimated hay fever not food

allergies was estimated to affect at most about one in 30 people and mostly the

wealthy because they didn't get dirty and have contact with

soil or farm animals actually and they began to spend increasing amounts of

indoors. So it was interesting it was actually considered a status symbol to have seasonal allergies.

Now seasonal allergies or hay fever is clearly a household term.

I'm sure nobody listening to this doesn't know somebody

affected probably in your own home because about as many as 40% of all kids

actually have a seasonal allergy. But what's really scary is the growing rate of allergic and inflammatory

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