We want your help get the message out to as many people as possible! To get you motivated we have joined forces with our great friends at AllerMates (allermates.com)- creators of a wonderful line of allergy awareness products for kids- who have donated a fabulous gift pack.

We will give this great gift pack (pictured) to the person who comes up with the most proactive, most creative and most impactful allergy awareness tip, project or action this week. It can be anything from something simple you do with your own children to educate them on allergies to holding a community event to doing some creative social media campaign- anything to get the word out about the need for food allergy awareness.

So please email us at info@triggerallergy.com with your name, address, contact number and what you have done to raise awareness this week. We will keep you updated on the amazing efforts being done throughout the week and will announce the gift pack recipient at the end of the week.

Lets raise awareness together! Thank You.

What started out as a simple plan to make a film that was accessible to everyone in the hopes of raising awareness to help teachers- like my daughter’s kindergarten teacher (Mrs. E) who inspired the idea for the project – and families struggling to protect their children diagnosed with food allergies has put us on an awareness journey we could never imagined.

Launching TRIGGER, seeing the amazing response, experiencing some of the roadblocks has opened our eyes to the very real need to raise awareness and keep an honest, open dialogue going so we can all learn as much as possible.   Throughout this first year we have been blessed with many highs including acknowledgment via the World Allergy Organization, We were equally blessed and humbled to be acknowledge on the floor in the Australian Federal parliament. Thank you to Senator Fiona Nash and other politicians who recognized the importance of this project.

There were many other moments of support that gave us hope and inspired us to continue our efforts, We would like to thank every organisation who has helped us along the way including FREEDOM FOODS, The PTA (U.S), Early Childhood Australia, our friends in the media and the list goes on.

Finally, we would like to thank every single person who has helped us along the way- from our inner circle who go beyond the call of duty every day (Jo, BC, Malary, Monny, Angela, Vee ) to active parents/community members and of course – You, who are reading this now.

We want you to know that it is your likes, your emails and your passion that drives us harder on days when we are exhausted or have been deflated. These experiences have shown us the real need to have FREE information available to all.

Moving forward, We remain committed to providing FREE independent films and FREE resources until a Cure for Food Allergies is found.

Again, Thank You.

Grace

The report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) on children up to age 17, based on answers from the National Health Interview found; Skin allergies such as eczema have risen the most over the past decade, going from a prevalence of 7.4 per cent in 1997-1999 to 12.5 per cent in 2009-2011.

Food allergies also rose from 3.4 per cent to 5.1 per cent over that time span. Rates of respiratory allergy, such as hay fever, stayed about the same and continued to be the most common childhood allergy (17 per cent). Children living in families that made more than 200 percent of the poverty level had the highest rates, the statistics showed.

“The prevalence of food and skin allergies both increased over the past 14 years,” said report co-author LaJeana Howie “This has been a consistent trend.”

In the 1980s, Dr. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered that ulcers were caused by a bacterium and thus, could be eliminated by antibiotics . In 2005 they won a Nobel Prize for their work.

Fast forward to today and Dr. Barry Marshall is currently Clinical Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the University of Western Australia and the 61-year-old WA professor has completed successful studies on mice, and is now giving doses of the bacteria to humans in an attempt to eliminate food allergies.

We hope the professor is just as successful with this research so that people will be free from the dangers of food allergies.

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A new Australian study has found babies with low vitamin D levels are more likely to have food allergies.

In a study of 5000 children, researchers from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne found that one-year-olds with vitamin D deficiency were three times more likely to have a food allergy than those whose levels were sufficient.

The study found the link was only evident for low vitamin D babies with Australian-born parents, leading researchers to speculate that the link may relate to skin colour, genetic or environmental reasons.

The findings are compatible with existing research that indicates the further from the equator, the more cases of food allergies.

The project titled POSITIVE  aims to make a low-cost instrument that performs an analysis on a single drop of blood in fifteen minutes potentially for hundreds of foods simultaneously and without risk to patients.

“Currently, the most common allergy tests are expensive tests and especially traumatic for children, as well as pose a risk of adverse reactions,” says Daniel Hill, project coordinator  “Beyond the project, the idea is to be able to put a food allergy diagnostic instrument that is fast, effective and safe in the surgery of every paediatrician, so that they can test during the first few years of life”.

The device is expected to be finished by February and clinical trials will commence in Germany from June.

Sublingual Immunotherapy, the practice of treating food allergies without injection by slowly building up a tolerance by placing tiny amounts of the allergen under a patient’s tongue to decrease their sensitivity to it.

The National Institutes of Health supported study of 40 participants aged 12 to 37 revealed 70 percent of candidates undergoing sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) were able to consume at least ten times more peanut powder after 44 weeks of treatment.

Although the results are promising researchers say more work is needed.

Please be advised: SLIT should only ever be administered under medical guidance.

The posters are designed to assist schools and teachers in providing safety tips on how to help keep food allergy sufferers safe at school.

Among the tips included is the importance of students washing hands after eating and why it’s vital that they NEVER share food with other children.

Our mission here at TRIGGER is to raise awareness by providing helpful FREE resources to assist the community.

We would like to express a heartfelt thank you to FREEDOM FOODS who have partnered with us and have been instrumental with the creation of the posters. Additionally, we want to thank Karen Boyes and her team at Spectrum Education for their efforts in supporting this campaign.

The ‘TRIGGER’ posters will be available to schools in Australia and New Zealand to start with and then we will hopefully expand to the U.S., U.K. and other territories. If you believe you can assist us with the distribution of these free posters or would like them for your child’s school please contact us at info@triggerallergy.com