Allergies: How to support young people as they grow up
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When we hit our teens it's often a time when everything starts to change. We meet new friends through work or studies, we start going out more at night and we're often in new situations independent from our parents. For people with severe allergies it can be a risky time because they have all this change in their life, on top of what Priya Matharu calls the 'full time job' of managing your condition. Presenter James Gallagher talks to Priya about her experience of having severe allergies from a young age and how she has coped with reactions that mean just touching her face after chopping a carrot has put her in hospital. For Priya, when she reached adolescence and moved out of her family it was a scary time and she had to grow up quickly to take responsibility for her allergies.
In a recent debate in the House of Lords it was discussed that moving young people out of the paediatric allergy services they have grown up with the support of and into adult services, just as everything else in their life is changing too can be really difficult for patients, and potentially dangerous.
Dr Claudia Gore from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust shared her experience of working in a children's allergy clinic in London for that debate and she joins James along with Dr Paul Turner from Imperial College London to discuss how this transition from children's to adult services could be made safer and smoother for patients.
Also in the programme, James is joined again by Dr Vanessa Apea, Consultant in Genito-Urinary and HIV medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust to answer more of your questions on genital herpes, UTIs and urinary incontinence.
Presenter; James Gallagher Producer: Tom Bonnett Assistant Producer: Anna Charalambou Editor: Colin Paterson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, |
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| 0:27.4 | listen only on BBC Sounds. You're about to listen to Inside Health with me, James Gallagher. |
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| 0:40.3 | Once you're there, you'll find even more podcasts that are available on sounds before anywhere else. |
| 0:46.3 | Today, we're going to talk about allergy and I'd like you to meet Priya Kormatharu. |
| 0:51.3 | It almost felt like the floor was being taken out beneath me. |
| 0:56.1 | Since childhood, Priya's had multiple severe food allergies, |
| 1:00.0 | and that there was the moment when after years of care from the same specialist, everything changed. |
| 1:06.1 | Priya's now in her mid-20s and on the other side of one of the most challenging periods for many people |
| 1:12.2 | living with life-threatening allergies. It's when you go from childhood to adolescence |
| 1:16.8 | and early adulthood, when parents are no longer controlling what you eat and helping you |
| 1:21.4 | avoid risky food, to when you're managing the condition yourself. And that shift comes |
| 1:26.6 | at a time of huge change. It's when we're |
| 1:28.2 | leaving home, making new friends, starting work and going out. But if you have allergies, |
| 1:34.0 | it's also when your NHS care changes too. You say goodbye to the doctors who you've known, |
| 1:39.0 | possibly your whole life, and are moved into adult services. And this has come under increasing scrutiny as a |
| 1:45.2 | generation of children who grew up with a greater risk of allergy and now entering adulthood. And |
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