Should I worry about the mild allergies? Is this common? How likely is it that she'll grow out of some or all of these allergies? How likely is it that they'll worsen with time?A warm welcome to you! I recall when my daughter (now 15) was diagnosed-- it was confusing and terrifying, and
my family HAD experience with food allergies.As the others have noted, some of those "mild allergies" may really be false positives. Avoidance
can make the situation worse, if you're going overboard. That's the hard thing, though-- there IS no one right answer. Some allergens and allergies, avoidance is all that you
can realistically do, in terms of management. In others, (milk and egg come to mind right away), avoidance beyond that needed to avoid reactions can actually cause a lower threshold to become a problem... so yes, you SHOULD worry about those mild allergies-- but mostly, you should be worried about them in terms of individual management decisions, made upon the basis of your particular, detailed case history and probably determined with the aid of a really great pediatric allergist. A good allergist will make your life EASIER. Really.
As for your next two questions... well, there is good news and bad news there. The bad news is that the generation of kids born after about 1999 seem to be "super-atopic" and they do
not outgrow their food allergies the way that their parents' generation did. For those of us in the vanguard of that cohort, believe me, it was BRUTAL to hear that my daughter "should" outgrow her egg allergy "by preschool... by kindergarten... by elementary school... um... well, don't know WHY she hasn't done that..."
We finally took matters into our own hands with the aid of a great allergist and came up with a modification of a desensitization protocol based on what egg she COULD tolerate. It was just too terrifying to have a child who, in her teens, was still so frighteningly sensitive to egg or milk. It was
severely limiting in terms of her quality of life, and it was certainly taking years off of my own.
The GOOD news is that the level of understanding about atopic conditions in general, and food allergy in particular, is WAY more nuanced than it was two decades ago. It is now clear, for example, which markers must be present in order to give reasonably good odds for an in-office food challenge to determine when an allergy has been outgrown. This is really terrific news since it USED to be thought that people like my DD probably would
never outgrow those allergies that they should not have had once they entered school. But she will be scheduling an open egg challenge (we think) just a few days prior to her start of college classes.
I consider that a miracle, and it's one that wouldn't have even occurred to us to LOOK for even a decade ago.
My DD was, at your DD's age, allergic to: wheat, soy, milk, peanuts, treenuts, and eggs, and had anaphylaxed pretty spectacularly to more than one of them. By the time she was four, she was no longer allergic to wheat, and tolerated some soy. By age 8, the list had shrunk to just egg, milk (with some tolerance) and peanuts/treenuts. By age 12, only egg and nuts remained, though she had some oral allergy syndrome that has been pretty refractory even with aeroallergen treatments (allergy shots). She challenged egg with a low-low dose baked egg challenge at that point, and we think-- almost 4y later, that is, of DAILY dosing-- that she might actually be able to pass an open challenge now.
So.
Her tolerance for soy, milk, and egg may never be what it is for someone who is truly NOT allergic... but it's enough for her quality of life to be nearly normal. That's really an extraordinary thing given where we were fourteen years ago. So PLEASE take hope.
I actually found myself mentioning to my husband that its likely that if the general population was tested, many people would probably have a low level allergy to many foodsYup. You nailed it. This study has actually been done, believe it or not, and at least half of those people who BLOOD-test positive have no sensitivity to the food at all.