Oh I wish that I could have a dog in my house and my kids certainly agree. I love dogs so I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried.

I’ve had my furry “nephew” come visit more than once (Kobi, the golden retriever who also has food allergies) and we’ve taken care of friends’ dogs for weekends while they’re away. I’ve stayed at friends’ houses that have all manner of dogs including the ones that are supposed to be less allergenic (less hair, yes, less saliva, no).  I watched with interest as the Obamas picked a Portuguese water dog as their family pet to mitigate their daughter’s allergies. But, alas, my asthma and congestion kicks in every time followed by catching every communicable disease around while my immune system struggles under the load.

But for those of you who don’t have to worry about the asthmatic side of allergies like me, you now have a weapon in your arsenal if you have a family history of eczema in your house and were avoiding a dog because of it. A new study suggests that having a dog can actually reduce the incidence of eczema in children before the age of 4 who were at risk of developing eczema due to family history.

Cats were also included in the study but the news was not so positive. Check out the link at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100930093229.htm

No, Megan, we still cannot have a dog to reduce your eczema but good try.

I always loved the quote from allergy expert Dr. Scott Sicherer in response to whether moms eating certain foods when pregnant could increase the rate of food allergies in their children, “We’ve also seen a rise in cat allergies and, as far as I know, mothers aren’t eating more cats than they used to.”

Not only did this quote make me laugh out loud when I heard it, it made me feel a whole lot better about my role in my children’s food allergies. Not so fast, it would appear.

Now Dr. Sicherer has released preliminary food allergy data that indicates that what we eat during pregnancy may indeed have an affect on the development of food allergies in our infants. When reading the article, it was like reading 100% of my own experience including milk allergies in both my daughters and quite severe eczema in my youngest.

Read the article here: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20101102/baby-peanuts-101102/

During my eldest child’s pregnancy, I ate peanut butter rarely because I found it made me nauseous. She now has no allergies. During my youngest child’s pregnancy, peanut butter was one of the few nutritious foods I could eat that didn’t make me ill and she currently has 4 food allergies and continues to have eczema. Hmm.

Dr. Sicherer does go on to say that more studies are needed to provide advice on what should be eaten during pregnancy. And obviously, for those of us who are finished our childbearing years and already have children with food allergies, the horse has escaped and there’s no closing the barn door so to speak.

Now in my forties and a little further along the food allergy path with my family, I’m not going to jump on the blame train quite as quickly as I might have in the past. Perhaps it’s also because, like any health issue, different studies often show conflicting data and so I don’t take absolutely every study as gospel truth anymore.

Besides, my husband has allergies to shellfish and I have environmental allergies, sulpha allergy, asthma and eczema, so I’m feeling we’ve got some murkiness in there. So I’m pretty content to share the blame with him, my mother’s environmental allergies, my uncle’s shrimp allergy, my grandfather’s…