How to Detect A Food Allergy

Food allergies are getting more and more common. Indeed, by now you have probably heard a great deal about food allergies. As it turns out, approximately eleven million Americans suffer from food allergies of different types. Maybe you have a child with a peanut allergy, for example. (Or maybe one of your child’s classmate’s suffers from this serious food allergy.) But how can you tell if you are allergic to a particular food or not? Read on to find out.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A desire to learn the symptoms of food allergies and to take action if necessary.

1. For starters, you need to know what a food allergy is. A food allergy refers to the response of an individual’s immune system to the ingestion of a food that the system construes as destructive. The immune system goes on to build up antibodies against the food in question.

2. If the food is eaten again, the body goes to work protecting itself against the perceived “enemy” by releasing certain chemicals. It is the release of these chemicals that cause the individual to experience allergic symptoms in one or more bodily systems, such as the skin, the joints, the digestive tract, the respiratory system, and/or the nervous system. (For instance, a person who experiences an allergic reaction to a certain food in his or her skin might break out in hives.)

3. It also helps to know the “food culprits” that are the cause of most (though not all) food allergies. These “culprits” are peanuts, tree nuts (pecans, walnuts, etc.), soy, shellfish, milk, wheat and fish. If you experience what strikes you as an allergic response when eating any of these foods, you will want to make an appointment with your primary care physician, who can refer you to an allergy specialist.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are concerned that your child may have a food allergy, you will want to speak to your child’s pediatrician immediately. Children, like adults, can be allergic to any type of food, but the most common food allergies in children involve eggs, peanuts and milk. On a positive note, however, some children end up outgrowing their food allergies when they reach adulthood, though not all of them do.
• Both children and adults who have been diagnosed with severe food allergies and who may experience life-threatening symptoms upon exposure to specific foods (such as constriction of the air passage that could lead to suffocation and even death) are strongly advised to wear medical alert necklaces (or bracelets) indicating as much.

[ibloomdrop]

on 1/10/2009 Thanks for this info.