Episode transcript
Time stamps
0:51 - The pros and cons of allergies being discussed in the media.
5:50 - Examples of allergy in media - alpha-Gal syndrome.
8:45 - Examples of allergies in media - food sensitivity testing.
13:15 - How providers can address trends and allergy news with patients.
14:25 - What to expect in future newsroom episodes.
Announcer:
ImmunoCAST is brought to you by ImmunoCAPTM Specific IgE testing and PhadiaTM Laboratory Systems, products of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Gary Falcetano:
I'm Gary Falcetano, a licensed PA with over 11 years experience in allergy and immunology.
Luke Lemons:
And I'm Luke Lemons, with over five years of experience writing for healthcare providers and educating on allergies. You're listening to ImmunoCAST, your source for medically and scientifically-backed allergy insights. Welcome to ImmunoCAST. This is a special episode. You may notice that it's titled Newsroom. And in these episodes on ImmunoCAST, we're going to be talking about allergies in media. Whether it's a new study that came out, whether it's a topic that a lot of people are talking about that's relevant in the news, we're going to be discussing it here to keep you informed and keep you up to date on what's going on with allergies in media.
Gary Falcetano:
This is an interesting topic, Luke, because I think there's a lot of positives that comes out of the topics being covered in media and increased awareness. And there's also some negatives too, and I think we're going to really explore both sides of the coin today.
Luke Lemons:
Yeah. So, today, we're going to be talking in general the role that media has with allergy. And we see this come out in trends on TikTok, or advertisements on Instagram, or just news that gets picked up by local media or national media, that brings allergies more to the forefront of the everyday person's life. So, like you said, Gary, there's some benefits to having allergies in the media and there's also some cons to it all. Most importantly, the more people talk about allergies, the better. It raises awareness.
Gary Falcetano:
No, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of great information out there and there's a lot of questionable information out there. And sorting through that can sometimes be difficult for patients and for consumers. So, hopefully, we'll be able to provide some guidance for primary care providers on how to better help your patients navigate.
Luke Lemons:
Yeah. And so, because of allergies, not popularity, but how many people have allergies in America specifically. Content around allergies is often eaten up, because almost everyone has probably had symptoms of allergies or probably does have an allergy. When news is presenting allergies to the everyday person and it's around a topic that is impactful. For example, I don't know if you've heard of the Teal Pumpkin Project by FARE, the Food Allergy Research and Education Organization, which raises awareness around trick or treating, and bringing treats and giving treats to kids who may have food allergies and the safe treats that you can offer. These are great things to see in the media. But to your point, Gary, there's also some misinformation that spreads around allergies.
Gary Falcetano:
Yeah. I think it's not uncommon to see someone's TikTok that talks about some crazy experience or some very unorthodox treatment that they've discovered. And that's exactly right. I think on the positive side of things, you mentioned Teal Pumpkin and FARE. I think another area is Elijah's Law, the awareness around something that happened, very unfortunate event that happened several years ago in New York. And Elijah's Law has really helped increase awareness around the need to educate daycare providers and school providers on asthma, and allergy, and the proper way to respond to someone who's experienced a crisis.
Luke Lemons:
I lived in New York when that happened. And it was all over local media and people knew more about allergies. They knew the risk of allergies. Allergies is no longer this thing that people think about as just sitting at a different table at lunch. This is a life and death disease sometimes to people. And so, any awareness that's given to people out there is good. We need to educate the masses, but we need to make sure that this education is credible.
Gary Falcetano:
Absolutely. I was going to say, and then on the negative side, I think we've already talked about misinformation. But also, I think there's an issue with inappropriate diagnoses, unnecessary testing being done because of this widespread awareness as well. So, helping patients navigate the massive amount of information that they're getting from various sources, social media, online sources, friends with these incorrect assumptions around allergies and allergy testing, I think is important as well.
Luke Lemons:
I saw a while back on TikTok, this creator was trying to cure their peanut allergy by eating a spoonful of peanut butter every day. And their throat was closing. And people were commenting like, "Oh, let me know if it works. Let me know if it works." And that's extremely dangerous, and it sends a wrong message to people. So, if you're listening, don't try to cure your peanut allergy by eating a spoonful of peanut butter at home. You could end up in the hospital. But again, people see these videos. And I don't know, Gary, if you can speak to experience about this.
Gary Falcetano:
Yeah. And it's tough. It's really tough with limited time for patient encounters. The time certainly hasn't increased over the years, and the ability for providers to spend time with patients. It's really tough to help them, speak with them and understand what their concerns are and then undo some of the misinformation that they've encountered.
Luke Lemons:
In one of the most recent examples of an allergy, I want to say an allergy trend or just topic that was really popular, was last summer with alpha-Gal syndrome coming into the limelight that not a lot of people knew about this red meat allergy.
Gary Falcetano:
And so, I would put that in the positive column. So, for those of you out there that don't know what alpha-Gal syndrome is, and I'm sure we'll have an entire podcast on it in the future. But in brief, this is a red meat allergy that's delayed in nature. So, it doesn't have typical onset of minutes to an hour, but sometimes multiple hours. And the sensitization to red meat is actually caused by a tick bite and predominantly a tick bite by the lone star tick. What you're referring to, Luke, was the morbidity mortality weekly report that came out last summer, that really looked at prevalence of alpha-Gal. And they looked at tests for alpha-Gal that had been done over a fairly large period of time and showed how the incidents had been increasing and the media just ran with it.
It was in so many different spots, because it's interesting. It's atypical, an allergy caused by a tick bite. We just don't see that, but it's true. And this isn't something made up or in someone's mind. This has been documented in multiple research studies. And there's now testing for alpha-Gal sensitization to help diagnose alpha-Gal syndrome.
Luke Lemons:
And it all starts with that report, which was created by the CDC, correct, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report?
Gary Falcetano:
That's correct, yeah. And I would venture to say most of the people listening, most of the providers listening are aware of that report and probably receive those emails from the CDC.
Luke Lemons:
And this is how it starts, a very credible organization will put out a report like this, and then it blows up and it brings awareness. But with that, it transforms into telling, I don't want to say scaring people, but some news outlets or some people on TikTok or Instagram may talk about it in a more scary way. And people get information from these sources. And we see patients coming into the doctor convinced that they've diagnosed themself.
Gary Falcetano:
And helping them sort that out, I think is really important. The pro side of that is, when this report came out, they actually estimated about 43% of clinicians were unaware of alpha-Gal syndrome. So, that in itself, to me, tells us we have more work to do and keeping clinicians up to date, which is one of the reasons we're doing this podcast. And while the negatives were certainly there with the alpha-Gal's sensationalism that occurred after the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, I think the positives definitely outweighed the negatives there.
Luke Lemons:
Yeah. And I guess in a different light, not a more negative, but a little less upsides are the advertisements on Instagram or Facebook around food intolerance testing, food sensitivity testing. These aren't allergy tests by any means, but patients may order these tests, and get them and diagnose themselves with food allergies. But we're not testing for allergies in this test, correct, Gary?
Gary Falcetano:
Yeah. I think there's very little upside here when we're talking about food intolerance, food sensitivity tests. There's a lot of social media advertising going on for these tests. And there's no real empirically backed, evidence-based information around these tests and whether they do anything really to help us figure out why certain foods may make us feel bad. As you said, they're not allergy tests. Allergy tests look exactly at one immunoglobulin, IgE, and these tests look at a variety of other things, some of the other immunoglobulins that are not involved in type one hypersensitivity reaction. But I think the bottom line is the major allergy organizations, major guidelines have all spoken to these tests really are not helpful, and can be dangerous when people take the results of these intolerance tests and eliminate broad swaths of foods from their diet based upon them.
Luke Lemons:
And the bottom line is these advertisements or alpha-Gal in general are just evidence of media in people's lives influencing how they go about their health. And so, when a patient does come into a provider's office, I'm curious if you have any experience. How can a provider help a patient or educate a patient based on something that they saw online or on YouTube or wherever?
Gary Falcetano:
Yeah. I think every provider has a little bit of an individual approach to how they deal with these kind of issues. But I would say, in general, it's best to acknowledge their concerns. They're coming there because they have an issue. They have symptoms that they're trying to get answers to. And sometimes it's more about acknowledging, well, what you've done might be helpful, but let's focus on some of the things we know will be helpful. So, let's look at, in particular, I'm thinking about a patient case study that I often speak to. An elderly woman comes in with chronic sinus, rhinosinusitis, and is sure that she's allergic to her beloved cat who she's had for years and has no intent of getting rid of or even keeping out of the bedroom for that matter.
And she's looking for relief from these chronic symptoms. When assessing her, the providers actually looked at the whole picture, ordered some allergy testing, demons:
And so, giving those results to that patient, the woman with the cat, it's helpful to see it, to see the actual data, to be able to tell them, "Listen, for example, I know you took a food intolerance test and you think you're allergic to apples, but we ran a specific IgE test, which with patient history can diagnose a clinical allergy, and you're not sensitized to apples. You can eat apples."
Gary Falcetano:
Well, that's exactly right, but that doesn't mean that she can necessarily eat apples. If a patient's having symptoms when they eat apples, those symptoms are real, even if there's no IgE mediated allergy. For instance, my daughter has trouble eating apples specifically because she's fructose intolerant. It has nothing to do with an allergy. We ruled out allergy, but she just does not process fructose well. And when she has fruits that are high in fructose, like apples, she ends up with symptoms. So, again, ruling out the most severe form IgE mediated, and then allowing you to figure out what else could be causing the symptoms.
Luke Lemons:
And so, when providers do maybe notice a trend starting to pick up or multiple patients asking about the same thing that they read or that they saw, what can providers do to help equip themselves more to talk to patients when these trends or news articles start getting shared and gain popularity?
Gary Falcetano:
Yeah. I think it's really about having some trusted sources, a portfolio that is your go-to for information on the latest in whatever area of medicine we're talking about. But obviously, we're talking about allergy today. So, there's a multitude of sources, whether it be the American Academy of Allergists, American College. Our friends over at allergyinsider.com are specific repository of all things allergy, all evidence-based and medically vetted. So, I think you develop your trusted sources. Some of those can even be transferred or recommended to patients, so that you can send them to sources that you trust and they're not getting this sensationalized irrelevant type of information.
Luke Lemons:
And you mentioned it before, Gary, but that's part of the reason we started this, is we want to spread allergy awareness and we want to make sure that everything is clinically backed and scientifically proven when speaking about different subjects. And so, in the future, if our listeners see another newsroom episode, just know that we're going to be talking about maybe one of these trends or maybe an article that just came out, and trying to provide some clinical background to what is being said, and then also how it may impact your patients.
Gary Falcetano:
Exactly. I think today's episode, we are really setting us up for the future of future episodes on allergies in the news. But we'll be more specific and cover in depth more of those topics that are really in the headlines.
Luke Lemons:
Well, thanks for listening today. And don't forget to subscribe. And feel free to share ImmunoCAST with patients if you see an episode that may help them better understand allergies. And don't forget to go to thermofisher.com/immunocast to look at some resources based on this episode's conversation. Thanks for listening.
Gary Falcetano:
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
Luke Lemons:
Bye.
Speaker 1 :
ImmunoCAST is brought to you by ImmunoCAP specific IgE testing and Phadia Laboratory Systems, products of Thermo Fisher Scientific. For more information on allergies and specific IgE testing, please visit thermofisher.com/immunocast. Specific IgE testing is an aid to healthcare providers in the diagnosis of allergy and cannot alone diagnose a clinical allergy. Clinical history alongside specific IgE testing is needed to diagnose a clinical allergy. The content of this podcast is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as or substitute professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Any medical questions pertaining to one's own health should be discussed with a healthcare provider.
