Affiliate disclosure
Book titles on this page link to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, DataField.Dev earns from qualifying purchases — at no additional cost to you.
Chapter 28 — Further Reading
⚠️ This is the only chapter in the book where a gap in your knowledge could matter within the hour. The anaphylaxis section comes first for that reason.
⚠️ Read this today if you are near anyone with an allergy
Your national anaphylaxis guidance. In the UK: the Resuscitation Council UK anaphylaxis
guidelines and Anaphylaxis UK (anaphylaxis.org.uk). In the US: the AAAAI and FARE
(foodallergy.org). Equivalents exist everywhere and all are free.
⚠️ Read three things specifically:
1. ⚠️ The recognition criteria — and note that skin signs are not required. 2. ⚠️ The device instructions for the specific brand you or your family carry. They differ, and fumbling one under pressure is a documented failure mode. Most manufacturers supply a trainer device — get one and use it. 3. The positioning advice, ⚠️ including why you don't stand someone up.
And if you supervise children: ⚠️ your school's or nursery's allergy policy, and whether a written individual plan exists for each affected child.
On diagnosis
Search "food allergy diagnosis sensitization versus clinical allergy" and your national allergy society's testing guidance. ⚠️ The message is consistent everywhere: history first, targeted testing second, and no screening panels.
On component-resolved diagnostics: search "component resolved diagnostics peanut Ara h 2". ⚠️ This is what separates someone at real risk from someone cross-reacting to pollen, and it is under-used.
On oral food challenge: search "oral food challenge protocol safety" — ⚠️ worth understanding why it's the gold standard and why it isn't done casually.
⚠️ On coeliac disease
Coeliac UK (coeliac.org.uk) and the equivalent national society — ⚠️ free, practical, and
better than most clinical summaries on the day-to-day diet.
On testing: search "coeliac serology tTG IgA total IgA gluten challenge" ⚠️ and read the gluten challenge protocol before you remove gluten, not after. Knowing what it involves is the most persuasive argument for testing first.
On the non-classical presentations: search "coeliac disease iron deficiency anaemia prevalence" and "dermatitis herpetiformis coeliac." ⚠️ If you take one clinical fact from this chapter, take the anaemia one.
On the diet's nutritional quality: search "nutritional adequacy gluten-free products fibre iron fortification." ⚠️ The fortification gap is real and it explains why "compliant" and "adequate" are different.
On lactose
Search "lactase persistence global distribution" ⚠️ and look at a map. It reframes the whole topic in about thirty seconds, and it is one of the clearest illustrations in human biology of a trait being "normal" only in the population that wrote the textbook.
On thresholds: search "lactose tolerance threshold 12 g milk" and the systematic reviews of lactose challenge studies. ⚠️ The practical finding — most people malabsorb and most tolerate a normal serving — is not widely known by the people avoiding dairy.
⚠️ On non-coeliac gluten sensitivity
Skodje GI et al., Gastroenterology, 2018 — search "fructan gluten placebo crossover self-reported gluten sensitivity." ⚠️ This is §28.8's core evidence and it is worth reading in full, including the discussion, where the authors are careful about what they have and haven't shown.
Then the earlier rechallenge work — search "Biesiekierski gluten rechallenge FODMAP double blind." ⚠️ Note the nocebo response rates, and note that the authors' own conclusions shifted as their designs improved. That is what good science looks like from outside.
⚠️ And read something written by or for people who have this diagnosis, because the literature is about mechanisms and the experience is about being disbelieved. §28.8's "both halves" framing exists because of that gap.
⚠️ On the tests that don't work
Search for the position statements directly: "EAACI food specific IgG testing position", "AAAAI IgG food testing statement", and your national allergy society's equivalent. ⚠️ They are short, explicit, and free — and they exist because this is a large and growing market.
On the alternative tests: search "applied kinesiology validity food", "electrodermal VEGA testing evaluation", "ALCAT test validity." ⚠️ Read one properly conducted evaluation and you will not need to read another.
⚠️ And Chapter 27 CS1's four-step chain applies directly here — a real measurement, a real association, an unestablished causal claim, and an unvalidated recommendation, all printed identically.
On immunotherapy
Search "peanut oral immunotherapy randomized trial desensitization" and ⚠️ "oral immunotherapy meta-analysis anaphylaxis risk" — read both, because the second is the one that complicates the first, and a family deciding needs both.
On the newer options: search "epicutaneous immunotherapy peanut patch" and ⚠️ "omalizumab food allergy approval 2024." The anti-IgE approach is genuinely new and changes the accidental-exposure risk rather than removing the allergy.
⚠️ And your national allergy society's patient-facing material on immunotherapy — which is usually more honest about the trade-offs than commercial or media coverage.
On prevention
Du Toit G et al., LEAP — NEJM, 2015 (Chapter 25's reference), ⚠️ and your country's CURRENT infant feeding guidance, to check it has been updated.
On the mechanism: search "dual allergen exposure hypothesis Lack" — ⚠️ influential, coherent, and not proven, which is the honest description.
On eczema: search "early eczema management food allergy prevention" ⚠️ — an active area where the trials have been more equivocal than the hypothesis predicted.
A note on what to be careful with
⚠️ This chapter's two failure modes point in opposite directions, and they need different protections.
1. ⚠️ Trivializing a real allergy. If you finish this chapter thinking most food allergy is over-claimed, you have half the point. The over-claiming is real AND the person with IgE-mediated anaphylaxis or coeliac disease needs total seriousness — and the whole argument of §28.9b is that the first erodes the second.
2. ⚠️ Over-restricting. Six of the chapter's nine recommendations are about eliminating less, finding thresholds, and getting a diagnosis before a diet. The dominant error in the general population is restriction, and it is expensive, nutritionally costly and socially isolating.
⚠️ Three things I'd most want retained:
⚠️ Adrenaline, early, intramuscular, thigh — and never an antihistamine instead. If you remember one sentence from this book, this is a reasonable candidate.
⚠️ Test for coeliac disease before removing gluten. A fortnight of testing prevents a lifetime of not knowing.
⚠️ And a growing list of avoided foods is itself a finding — more important than any individual food on it, and Chapter 34 is the chapter.