HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — More than 170 foods can cause immediate allergic reactions. The “Big 9″ are milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. The symptoms can be anything from hives to swelling.

Maria Gracia Ramjon’s son Ezekial was breastfed. He later had a whole chicken leg, sweet potatoes, pears, and eggs. He loved avocados. His allergic reaction surfaced when he was 6 months old.

“For some reason, something was always telling me, like, be careful with peanuts,” Ramjon said. “So I gave him peanuts at six months when he had his pediatrician appointment ... at the parking lot, because I was a little scared, and immediately, just a rash around his mouth. And I was like, ‘Oh no!’”

The rash spread, and he vomited. It was clear to his pediatrician that he was allergic to peanuts, so she had to clean house.

“You don’t realize how much stuff has peanut butter in it,” Ramjon said. “There are so many things.”

Ramjon asked Dr. Nicole Akar-Ghibril, a pediatric allergist and immunologist at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, for help.

“We think part of the reason that we have as many food allergies as we do today is because of prolonged avoidance,” Akar-Ghibril said. “And so back in the day, when I was a kid, the recommendation was, ‘Don’t let your kid have peanuts until they’re three.’ Now, we really know that early introduction makes a difference.”

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine graduate is the director of the hospital’s oral immunotherapy program.

“The way it works is a desensitization to a food that we know a child is allergic to, and so the whole point is to raise the threshold that a patient can tolerate,” Akar-Ghibril said about the treatment.

Akar Ghibril has been retraining her patients’ immune system by exposing them to small, gradually increasing amounts of an allergen.

“When we’re making doses for oral immunotherapy, the amount that we’re starting with is diluted and diluted and diluted, so the amount we actually can’t measure it on a scale because it’s that small,” Akar-Ghibril said.

Ezekial was tested and started treatment at 8 months old.

“Every two weeks going to up dose. Every day, dosing him. It was a lot of work, but very thankful, very happy with the results,” Ramjon said.

At 2 years old, Ezekial had peanut butter crackers in his lunchbox without a problem.

“I used to hold my breath at first,” Ramjon said. “I was like, ‘Where’s the epic head? Where’s the Zertek? Where’s the Benadryl?’”

Akar-Ghibril said the maintenance phase is done daily, probably for the rest of their lives.

“They have to kind of consider it like their daily peanut medicine or their daily egg medicine that will give them that kind of layer of security if they were accidentally exposed to that food,” Akar-Ghibril said.

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