Friday, May 17

My Top 5 Picks from Food Allergy Awareness Week

I usually only post once a week on Mondays (it's all I can handle right now!), but I wanted to write an extra post to highlight a few great food allergy articles and resources I saw this week since it's Food Allergy Awareness Week (May 12 - 18). 

Hopefully these will be helpful to you or your family and friends if you haven't seen them yet.  Here are my Top 5 Food Allergy Resources from this past week!

1. Here's an article from Allergic Living with some great reminders. As the articles says, "If there’s one thing we can all strive to do this Awareness Week, it’s to get the message out that: in anaphylaxis, seconds count and epinephrine – not antihistamines, not an asthma puffer – is the first-line medication and the allergic person’s lifesaver. Use it."

2. This poster from Allergic Living includes great reminders about anaphylaxis.

3. Kids with Food Allergies Foundation created this list of 15 Ways to Get Involved for Food Allergy Awareness Week. This list should be used throughout the whole year!  Lots of great ideas here.

4. I completely related to these two posts from another blogger and parent of a child with food allergies: Rants of a Food Allergy Mom and (Positive) Ramblings of a Food Allergy Mom.  Well said.

5. Here's a short video from FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education) about food allergy bullying. I hope we never have to deal with this, but it's a good reminder to watch out for it and talk with your children about it.

A number of these items came from my local food allergy parent support group. We have a Facebook group that I find SO helpful for tons of general and hyper-local information. If you're a parent of a child with food allergies and not already part of a local parents' group, then I highly recommend finding one (or starting your own!). 

Our support group is not the "sit in a circle crying" sort of image that pops in your head when you think of a support group.  We usually have educational in-person meetings with speakers once every few months, and use Facebook daily to share information. I've found our support group to be a great source of education and awareness- and we've even made new friends in the process!  Kids with Food Allergies Foundation is a great place to start the search for a support group near you.

For those who deal with food allergies...have you read or watched anything especially helpful during Food Allergy Awareness Week?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Thanks so much for including my posts on this list....I'm speechless! I can't wait to find a moment to dig into your blog more and check it out. I haven't had much time, but I will soon :)

Kathryn @ Mamacado said...

I and the whole food allergy community completed related to your posts! Just thought about them last night when we went to a local festival where my son could eat nothing and I saw kids chowing down everywhere. However, we had tons of fun anyway - no need for food!

Lynda Mitchell said...

Thank you Kathryn, for mentioning Kids With Food Allergies Foundation!

Kathryn @ Mamacado said...

My pleasure Lynda. We've appreciated KFA's resources for the past 3 years since we found out my son has food allergies. You do great work!

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