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Allergic Living: How to Build ‘Can-do’ Confidence

Young adult standing in front of skyline

Allergy Force recently spoke with Kortney Kwong Hing, food and travel blogger and co-founder and creative force behind a new online magazine that celebrates life with food allergies with positivity and a can-do mentality — Zestfull.

Teens and young adults face tremendous pressure to fit in, to be social. Being social often means eating out, going to parties, attending team events, navigating high school and college cafeterias—lots of activities where you connect with friends and teammates over food. And then there’s life after college when you’re finding your footing and making lifestyle choices solo.

 

“You have to figure out how to have peace of mind and keep yourself safe mentally and physically.“

 

After college, Kortney moved to Germany and found herself drowning in a language she couldn’t speak {yet}. In Germany, the language barrier drastically shrank her world. Her allergies became excuses to avoid uncomfortable situations. She admits using the opt-out option regularly. It just felt safer.

“The fears and anxieties I experienced in Germany when I first moved,” Kortney recalls, “made me see that maybe what I felt, other people were feeling, too.” Even though she had mixed feelings about publicly sharing her personal journey, this insight inspired her to try and help the generation of allergy kids coming up and encourage their parents to have more faith and give their kids more confidence.

To do this, she launched the Allergy Girl Eats blog in 2015 (recently rebranded as an online magazine for food allergies— Zestfull.) “You can give people confidence. It just depends on the framework you use to look at the challenge.”

“When you’re open to it, connection with others with
food allergies gives you courage and helps you cope.”

 

As a teen or young adult, when you don’t know other people with food allergies, there’s trepidation. You’re not sure what other teens and young adults with food allergies feel in different situations. You don’t know how they get past all the negative feelings that chip away at their confidence and psyche them out. There’s no how-to plan, no trail to follow. When you do know others with food allergies like you, it shifts your perspective and validates your feelings.

She offers the following framework to help teens and young adults build confidence:

1. Embrace the fact that you have food allergies. They are a part of you. If you just embrace them, they don’t become everything. They don’t define you. You move on with the rest of your life. Finding that balance is important. You don’t want to dismiss allergies as not being important to talk about, but you don’t want to over-focus. How do I live? How do I not let food allergies control my life?

Embrace. Accept. Move forward.

2. Don’t be afraid to talk about your allergies. Don’t be afraid to tell people about them, whether it’s a new roommate or a very special someone. Think about it like an ‘elevator pitch’. If you have your pitch polished, you’re not as afraid to talk about your allergies when the time is right.  You can find your ‘allergy voice’.

  • Know enough to feel informed.
  • Know your allergy story so it flows.
  • Know how you’ll spin the conversation to your food allergies, then spin away.
  • Pick your moment.

Finding the right moment is hard. Finding what to say is hard. Finding the right words is hard. Finding the right time is hard. But you can do it.

3. Learn from other people’s experiences. Seek out content that departs from a ‘can do’ place. For example, Kortney’s new online venture focuses on living your food allergic life with a Zestfull outlook and spirit, and her podcast, ‘The Itch Podcast’ unpacks allergies, asthma and immunology with easy to understand information backed by scientific evidence.

A focus on the positive, the avoidable, the controllable keeps you from falling into the rabbit hole of fear and anxiety.

4. Find an allergy buddy. It takes the edge off having to manage the emotional part of food allergies all by yourself when you can find someone to sanity-check your feelings. Kortney’s found ‘allergy buddies’ around the world —sometimes next door, sometimes 8 time zones away — and they’ve made navigating foreign travel and living day-in, day-out with food allergies much easier.

When you’re going it alone, an allergy buddy can lighten the load of emotions triggered by food allergies.

5. Give yourself ‘permission’ to explore the world and think bigger, broader when you do. Exploring a region’s culinary delights on a global adventure does not have to top your bucket list. Soak up the culture, the history, (the sun?) and stick to very basic foods. Make sure you have your epinephrine with you and be aware of ER locations nearby.

Remember, there’s so much more to going global than the food.

6. Don’t ever second guess an allergic reaction. If you think you’re having an allergic reaction follow your emergency action plan. To. The. Letter.

With the onset of a reaction, even a ‘maybe’ reaction, do NOT overthink. Use your epinephrine. Time is of the essence.

“Food allergies and the accompanying fear and anxiety are not something you can manage in a balanced way,” explains Kortney. “You carry them with you, every second of every day. You have to figure out how to have peace of mind and keep yourself safe mentally and physically. “

Making a difference with zest…

 

Kortney manages multiple food allergies, asthma, eczema and OAS. They’ve been a fact of life for her since her earliest days. She is a food allergy changemaker who shares heart and creativity to make allergic living easier for others through kitchen adventures, the online community Allergy Travels and co-hosting The Itch Podcast with Dr. Payel Gupta.

Over the past year, Kortney did a lot of soul searching and concluded it’s time for a change. After five years of helping countless people navigate food-allergic living on the road and in the kitchen, Kortney announced she would rebrand the Allergy Girl Eats blog and pursue her NEXT.  Zestfull — an online magazine that celebrates life with food allergies — launched September 2020. Kortney, co-founded Zestfull with food allergy mom, friend and partner, Shahla Rashid (founder of My Berkeley Kitchen.) to bring even more positivity to the food allergy community.

Thank you, Kortney, for all you do for people navigating life with food allergies. Wishing you ‘zest’ and success with your NEXT!

“You can have a full life with food allergies, it may just be lived a little differently!”

 

The Allergy Force Changemaker Series shines a light on movers and shakers in the food allergy community who drive change and bring positivity to the space for the benefit of the entire community.

Image Credit: Thank you to Kortney Kwong-Hing for sharing the image

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Disrupting the Auto-injector Market — Dream It. Do It.

Sailboat on blue water

“If everyone just made the positive changes they see needed, our world would be so different.”

Allergy Force caught up with Jessica Walsh, CEO and Founder of Rx Bandz, maker of the innovative MiniJect auto-injector that’s working its way through the FDA approval process. MiniJect is a highly durable and portable miniaturized auto-injector designed to administer emergency medication – think allergic reactions or opioid overdoses or low blood sugar. Rx Bandz was founded in 2014 and has a multi-disciplinary team of 10 collaborating virtually from across the US and Europe.

Rx Bandz Founder, Jessica Walsh, is no stranger to tackling daunting challenges. She built out a wireless telecom infrastructure when the only people who carried cell phones were doctors and drug dealers. While she was not an engineer and didn’t do CAD drawings, she was someone who could get things done through a deep understanding of requirements, the ability to connect disparate dots and the ability to bring together a team with the right skills for the job.

Jessica is also deathly allergic to bee stings. She’d been stung many times as a child without any reaction, but when stung again as an adult she immediately swelled, had a lump in her throat, couldn’t swallow and broke out in hives — with no epinephrine to be had. She made it to the ER and emerged unscathed, epinephrine prescription in hand. She now carries an EAI at all times.

She’s the type of person who takes things apart and looks inside. She took her EAI apart and was surprised there was so little medication. For all the bulk of the industry’s leading EAI devices, the medication amount that gets delivered is about the size of your pinky fingernail and the EAI itself is expensive! “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she remembers thinking. “It could be so much smaller and less expensive and still deliver the exact same amount of medication.” Jessica’s been on a mission ever since to do just that.

“It’s so easy to see something that needs to change and think someone should do it, but never act on it,” Jessica reflects. “Why can’t that someone be you? If everyone just made the positive changes they see needed, our world would be so different.”

 

“True innovation is a lot like sailing – you have to read the wind, read the waters…”

When the Rx Bandz team originally innovated the MiniJect auto-injector, it was a bracelet. Then the company listened deeply to patients to learn what they really wanted.

“As a founder you have to be open to honest feedback that tells you ‘your baby’ isn’t perfect,” Jessica reflects. “There’s no room for ego, even when you’re three years in with a product design you love. Being able to let go of your preconceptions about patient pain points, even when you’ve walked in their shoes, is critical.”

During the MiniJect discovery process, parents recounted the fights they have with their food allergic children about carrying their bulky EAI’s. Even severely allergic medical professionals (who should know better) reported leaving their EAI’s behind when going to events because they are too inconvenient to carry. “Beyond that, they are just plain scary,” adds Jessica. “It’s hard to wrap your head around giving yourself a shot. That needle is long and it looks like it will hurt!”

Jessica explains, “true innovation is a lot like sailing – you have to read the wind, read the waters. When the winds change, you have to reset your sails and change course to catch the wind. And so, we did.”

Rx Bandz’ patient-centric approach to product design allowed the company to quickly pivot and redesign a prototype that could be carried discretely, and could fit into everyone’s life. MiniJect is only 2.5 inches long, will easily attach to something you always carry — your phone, your pop socket, your keychain, your wallet, your belt – and is waterproof, rugged and durable.

 

“Customer discovery revealed that people like to keep their medical conditions private.”

Rx Bandz also learned that people are self-conscious about their medical conditions and want to keep them private. While people loved the idea of a wearable EAI – like the bracelet concept — they don’t want to wear anything conspicuous that calls attention to their medical problem.

Research participants felt that carrying an EAI – along with daily essentials you don’t leave home without — would be less conspicuous than wearing a bracelet.  Jessica recounted the thought process behind the pivot, “Why not make it different? Patients can figure out design changes if a product better meets their needs.”

The auto-injector market is about a billion-dollar market growing at 20% (give or take). The market for epinephrine auto injectors in particular is ripe for disruption, with an underserved population clamoring for easier access to more convenient device options at lower prices. Rx Bandz’ ambition has been to make life easier for people needing emergency medication, not only those with food allergies and allergies to insect venom, but people struggling with opioid addiction, epilepsy and diabetes.

A lot of creativity goes into making an auto injector as small as the MiniJect. The Rx Bandz team had hundreds of ideas, ran computer models, tested extensively. “We had springs flying across the lab,” recalls Jessica. The team didn’t give up until they had a miniature device that worked and consistently delivered an incredibly precise amount of liquid with a ¼ of a second between delivery and needle retraction.

It takes significant investment to bring an auto injector to market – whether you’re just tweaking an existing product idea, or your envisioning something radically different. The product concept received a huge stamp of validation from the New England medical community when they won first and second round grants totaling $50K from the  New England Pediatric Device Consortium.

Rx Bandz spends every dollar carefully, given investors who are counting on execution and returns, and the need to pour everything into development. “We’re a small, scrappy team of talented and driven people who get the work done,” Jessica adds with pride. “I feel so lucky to be working on something that will make such a difference for people and save lives.”

 

“If you put your mind to something, you can accomplish anything.”

When you are food allergic you live with uncertainty. When will you make a misstep that will cause your body to go into anaphylaxis?  You should have access to epinephrine at all times, but that can also pose challenges.

Why?

The design of the currently available epinephrine auto-injectors (EAI’s) leaves you wanting more. They can be bulky to carry, temperature unstable, they may or may not have retractable needles, and they may be confusing to use, resulting in needle misfire. Their shelf lives can be short and they can be costly. Plus, there’s a complacency that sets in when you go long stretches between food allergy emergencies or you’ve never dealt with one {yet}. An “I’ve got this!” mentality can take root in your head, giving you a false sense of confidence in your ‘invulnerability’, and over time, you let your guard down and leave your EAI at home.

An auto-injector the size of a MiniJect has potential to be life changing for people with food allergies — improving adherence because it answers answer many of the current auto-injector shortcomings.

MiniJect is on an expedited pathway through the FDA review process and hopes to be in market within the next two years. The company has received FDA feedback on testing and has identified contractors for the testing work ahead. Raising additional funding – from investors large and small — will be critical for this feisty start-up with a vision to be able to ‘open the gates and release the hounds’.

When asked how the food allergy community can help Rx Bandz bring MiniJect to market, Jessica didn’t miss a beat. “We can only be successful if people tell us what’s on their minds. So, participate in surveys, share your pain points, share your stories with us on our website.  It makes us better.”

This is definitely a product to keep an eye on as it wends its way through the FDA approval process.

 

“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do” —Steve Jobs

 

The Allergy Force Changemaker Series shines a light on movers and shakers in the food allergy community who drive change and bring positivity to the space for the benefit of the entire community.

Image Credit: Thank you to Mike on Pexels for use of the image