• Question: Is it not having any nuts when you're a foetus or having them that makes you allergic to them?

    Asked by to Daren, Lynne, Phillip, Simon on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Daren Fearon

      Daren Fearon answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      An allergic reactions is caused by our immune system incorrectly thinking something in our food is an infectious agent. Not a lot is known about how people develop allergies but nut allergies are more common in babies who have eczema when they are young.

    • Photo: Lynne Thomas

      Lynne Thomas answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Like Daren says, an allergy is when our immune system doesn’t respond to something in the right way. We don’t understand why this happens and there have been lots of studies to investigate the common traits of people who develop nut allergies. But these only tend to be theories and they often change depending on the group of people who are looked at and the people who are doing the investigation. But I don’t think any link between your mother not eating nuts when she is pregnant and the child developing a nut allergy has been established.

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