This review is for Dr. Randhawa and his work at SoCal Food Allergy over in Long Beach. I created a new yelp listing for it (https://www.yelp.com/biz/southern-california-food-allergy-institute-scfai-long-beach), but also wanted to review Dr. Randhawa specifically:
Dr. Inderpal Randhawa and his cutting edge, innovative Tolerance Induction Program (TIP) has changed so many lives... and it is changing ours. Our daughter has a life-threatening peanut allergy that we discovered when we introduced peanut butter to her when she was about a year old. The reaction was immediate, and sent her to urgent care. We avoided nuts and were careful about restaurants for years, until an acquaintance told us about SoCal Food Allergy and the work that Dr. Randhawa is doing. Their child was extremely allergic to peanuts, and was able to eat it with no issues after going through the program. We immediately put ourselves on the waiting list. We thought being 700+ on the waitlist was long, but now their waitlist is 2000+ people long! Patients fly in from all over the country, and even as far as Australia, to come see Dr. Randhawa. That is a true testament to his work.
When we met and talked to Dr. Randhawa for the first time at our second appointment, we knew right away that we would do this. He is so knowledgeable and compassionate. You can tell he really cares about these children, and has a deep passion and conviction for food allergies. His "precision medicine" approach is uniquely his, and different from other traditional OIT methods.
First of all, they do thorough diagnostic testing and data analytics. What they're doing is discovering patterns within the data collected. Through their research, they've been able to design predictive markers based on phenotypes, so they can predict at what dose for which allergens they can anticipate issues, and make a plan for dosing using this data. Their success rate is 99.9%
Protein matching - they don't simply say "your child is allergic to peanuts" and leave it at that. They seek to understand exactly what specific proteins in the allergen is the child allergic to. Peanuts are purposely one of the last allergens to be introduced because they can introduce 8 of the 13 proteins that exist in peanuts through other foods. Thus, by the time peanuts are introduced, the child's allergy to peanuts might have already decreased by 15-20% because the child was already previously exposed to certain peanut proteins from other allergens in earlier food challenges.
We have both our kids in TIP now, and are about halfway through. It has been a very positive experience so far. Mr. Randhawa has always directly responded to any questions or concerns I have, and has always felt within reach via a simple email despite the fact that he must receive so many inquiries a day! The staff also always provide a detailed plan of care after each visit, so you know exactly what you need to do at home. They also detail out what you should do should your child have a reaction while home dosing.
SoCal Food Allergy's end goal is to have the child eat whatever they want, whenever they want - without restriction. The program focuses on high dosing to induce tolerance and seeks to turn the immune system off, so that it will no longer be allergic to certain proteins in foods. They work to make regular dosing as infrequent as possible, so that the child will be okay even if she doesn't eat the allergen every single day for the rest of her life. The child will still need regular ongoing dosing, the frequency would just be significantly less.
I highly recommend doing the research yourself, and look into his program if your child suffers from food allergies! read more