Food Allergy for Beginners: Proteins

A Few Introductory Facts

  • Living things, including you and the food you eat, are made up of proteins, fats, sugars (carbohydrates) and minerals.
  • For the most part proteins – not sugars, fats, or minerals- cause food allergies.
  • Proteins are like Lego creations. They are large, complex structures made up of a slew of small, simple units (amino acids) stuck together.
    Amino Acid

    Single Amino Acid

    Protein Structure

    Protein Structure containing hundreds of amino acids.

     

  • A Millennium Falcon made out of red, green, yellow, blue, and white Lego pieces put together in a particular way “looks” like a Millennium Falcon.

Mellinium falcon lego

 

  • A pile of colorful, unconnected Lego pieces does not.

 

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  • Our immune system “sees” protein like we see a Lego-block Millennium Falcon, It does not recognize unconnected amino acids.
  • To stay healthy your body needs amino acids from the food you eat. It does not need intact proteins.
  • If your immune system decides that proteins looking like the Millennium Falcon are a threat, it may launch an attack with sophisticated weapons that go off when in contact with any Millennium falcon-looking food taking you down the dark path to… Allergy!

 

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Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] but it is most likely that the positive skin test reaction is the result of cross reaction between proteins in the tree nut and very similar proteins in the tree pollen that she is sensitive […]

  2. […] To understanding WHY we can have allergic antibodies to a food that we tolerate it is helpful to understand a few things about proteins. You can find a brief introduction to proteins here. […]

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