Allergies: Read how you can reduce AND prevent allergies in children

Allergic diseases such as hay fever, eczema, and allergic asthma have increased significantly in recent decades. The most common diagnoses in children include allergies to foods. Read how you can reduce the risk of childhood.
Allergies to foods
Recent figures show that nearly 17 percent of all children and adolescents under the age of allergic disease suffer. Food allergies are much more likely than adults in this age group are. About eight percent of infants and young children suffer from it; most common are allergies to cow's milk.



Older children and adolescents react against it rather allergic to pollen. The risk of allergy is primarily determined by genetic factors. Children are considered at risk of allergies allergic to at least one first-degree relative such as parents and siblings.
However, many children who do not belong to this risk group develop allergic diseases. In addition to the various environmental factors such as genetics, exhaust gases, or flue play an important role in the development of allergies. To minimize these factors is responsible for the primary prevention of allergies crucial. One of the most important preventive measures is, for example, to protect children already in pregnancy from tobacco smoke.
Proper diet can prevent allergies in children
In addition, the diet can help allergy prevention contribute. In recent years, it was regarded as the best strategy to avoid potential allergens during the first months of life. Since the advent of the hygiene hypothesis, however, this approach is increasingly questioned.
It states that the risk of allergies increases when the immune system is not required. Children who have early variety of contacts with bacteria or viruses (for example, on a farm or in the nursery), to be less at risk of allergies than children from a relatively sterile environment.
Many allergic mothers leave during pregnancy off certain foods, for fear, their child could also develop an allergy. However, there is no scientifically proven evidence that a restriction of food choices during pregnancy against the development of allergies in child protection.
The same applies to the diet during lactation. Although antigens from the diet of the mother are detectable in breast milk and in very rare cases respond infants allergic to these milk components.
There currently are missing, especially that avoiding allergenic foods such as cow's milk, egg or nuts has a preventive effect on the development of allergies. On the contrary, it is even evidence that fish in the maternal diet during pregnancy and lactation a protective effect on the development of atopic diseases has.
Furthermore, the benefits of limiting the choice of food must be very critical weighed against the risk of inadequate nutrient intake. A diet during pregnancy should be discussed with the doctor and necessarily a dietitian.