A common treatment for allergies is to go in for periodic shots of the allergen of carefully calibrated size, staying in the waiting area of the doctor’s office for a while after in case there is a reaction.

For some years, I have had a mild allergy to pistachios, pecans and walnuts—mainly a reaction of my tongue. This year I decided to try a home remedy modeled on the more formal periodic shots of allergens often given to deal with more serious allergies. I have been drinking some pistachio milk and pecan milk each day. As near as I could tell from googling around, I think they mostly have separate allergens. (Pecans and walnuts are more similar in their allergens.) So this is too mostly separate home treatments at once. So far, with this experiment just on myself, the results seem good. I have calibrated the dosage to an amount of each that I don’t react to. I soon found that I could drink that amount several times a day and have gradually been able to increase the dose to now half a cup of pistachio milk at a time and 3 tablespoons of pecan milk at a time, but I started at about 2 tablespoons of pistachio milk and 1 tablespoon of pecan milk at a time. I am also now able to tolerate a small spoonful of pistachio butter as an alternative to the half cup of pistachio milk, but that is recent.

Theoretically, I am betting that the my body might tone down reactivity to a type of food that I am exposed to every day in small quantities. It wasn’t guaranteed that would be right, but so far it seems to be working.

Walnut milk also exists. If I am able to conquer pecans, I can go on to treat my walnut allergy with walnut milk. Dealing with my walnut allergy seemed less urgent because I have the workaround of black walnuts. See my post “Hypoallergenic Nuts.” But getting over my walnut allergy would let me eat restaurant dishes that have regular walnuts in them.

Mostly, I want to deal with my allergies to certain nuts because I enjoy nuts. But nuts are generally quite healthy. (See “Our Delusions about 'Healthy' Snacks—Nuts to That!.”) Walnuts in particular have a very positive reputation.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see “Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide.”