Archive for the 'FOOD ALLERGIES' Category

Thinking that you have a food allergy? To confirm you should consider your health care provider.

Before performing a food allergy test your doctor will diagnose your disease.

He may consider a history of your reactions to try and finds if you have one. The more details you can give the better the results you will get.

Here are some of the questions that you have to prepare before going to take a food allergy test.

• How much time it will take to appear a symptom after you ate the food?
• Have you taken any treatment for allergy and did it work?
• Is your food properly cooked or not?
• How frequently you get such type of reactions?
• How much of the food do you eat at this time?

How to prepare for the food allergy test?

• Avoid taking any medications before going to the allergy test because they might affect the result. You should not take antihistamines 3 to 7 hours before the test.
• If you have taken any medications, herbs, or supplements, surely you need to inform about them to your health care provider.

You or your child suffering with food intolerance! For some foods the body’s immune system reacts differently and cause serious illness and sometimes leads to death.

Food allergies affect 2 percent of the children and about 5-8 percentage of the younger children.

During the first year of life, food allergies are the common health problems in your child.

Symptoms of food allergies in your child:

Usually you can observe the symptoms of food allergies after your child ingest the food, often within minutes to hours. The symptoms can be mild or severe and they depend on how much of the food your child is ingested and how allergic he is to the food.

• Abdominal pain
• Allergic shiners
• Difficulty breathing
• Diarrhea
• Eczema
• Flushing of the cheeks and ears
• Hives
• Itchy skin
• Nausea
• Nose congestion
• Respiratory infections
• Swelling around the mouth and in the throat
• Vomiting
• Wheezing

A severe reaction to food allergies can include anaphylaxis. This reaction includes symptoms like difficulty breathing, swelling of the mouth and throat, decreased blood pressure, shock and even death.

A cheap source of dietary protein that is available in large amounts is peanuts.

They can be ingested as peanut butter. Peanuts are one of the world’s most allergenic foods.

Peanut allergies affect 7 percent of brothers and sisters of persons with the allergy.

These allergies affect approximately 3 million Americans or 1.1 percent of the population. Peanuts are the primary cause of severe allergic reactions, followed by shellfish, fish, tree nuts, and eggs.

Don’t confuse tree nut and peanut allergies. They are completely different. Tree nut allergy is less common than peanut allergies. If you are allergic to peanuts you will also allergic to another type of tree nuts.

Effects of peanut allergies:

The effects of peanut allergies can be characterized into 3 severe reactions such as gastrointestinal, skin, and respiratory symptoms.

If you are sensitive to peanuts you may also experience potentially life-threatening anaphylactic shock in response to ingestion of peanuts.

In this reaction the release of histamines can cause difficulty breathing, circulatory collapse, heart failure, swelling, and sometimes lead to death.

Therapies for peanut allergies:

There is no cure for peanut allergies and no therapies that eliminate or reduce the severity of allergic symptoms.

So, you or your children have reacted to nuts. It is a type of food allergy.

Nut allergy is an increasingly recognized problem, especially in children.

Nut allergy can sometimes progress rapidly to anaphylaxis.

If you suffer from a nut allergy, strictly avoiding nuts can give you relief.

Cause of nut allergy:

The nuts that cause nut allergy include:

• Almonds
• Brazil nuts
• Cashew nuts
• Hazelnuts
• Macadamia nuts
• Pecans
• Walnuts

If you are sensitive, in some rare conditions all these nuts can cause anaphylaxis. If you are allergic to one type of nut then there a chance that you may also allergic to other nuts. If you are suffering with nut allergy, you need to be very careful to avoid nuts and unrefined nut oil.

Effects of nut allergy:

• Asthma symptoms
• Abdominal pain
• Diarrhea
• Extreme low blood pressure in a very rare condition
• Faintness and unconsciousness
• Formation of hives where the nuts touch you
• Hives
• Hoarse voice
• Itchiness on the lips or mouth
• Lightheadedness
• Swelling in the areas where the nuts touch you

You or your child is sensitive to proteins found in the milk! This sensitivity causes milk allergies.

Millions of people are suffering with milk allergies. It is an immune system’s response to cow’s milk.

Your immune system reacts against the proteins found in milk.

Cow’s milk is one of the most frequent food allergen because of one or more of the proteins. Milk allergies when come to your child they are often confused with lactose intolerance. Casein and whey are the two protein allergens in the milk.

Irrespective of the age all of you can get milk allergies at any point in your life, but they are most common in infants. According to American academy of pediatrics 2-3 percent of the infants have milk allergies. They go away on their own when your child reaches to 3-5 years old.

Symptoms of milk allergies:

There are 3 types of reactions comes from milk allergies.

Intestinal and stomach reaction:

• Abdominal pain and bloating
• Cramps
• Diarrhea
• Gas or wind
• Vomiting

Lung, nose and throat reactions:

• Coughing
• Itchy and watery eyes
• Runny nose
• Shortness of breath
• Sneezing

Most of you believe that you are allergic to chocolate.

But this is not the fact, you are not allergic to chocolate, instead you are allergic to the ingredients of cocoa that is used in chocolates.

Cause of chocolate allergy:

Chocolate allergy is mainly caused by an intolerance or allergy to one or more of the other ingredients or food additives in chocolate.

The ingredients of cocoa include milk, nuts, caffeine, corn syrup, soy lecithin, Phenyl-ethylamine, Theo-bromine, dyes, and gluten.

Some unclean facilities where chocolate is packed may also contain some unintentional additives including mouse droppings, some insect parts, or trace amount of rats, when consumed may cause an allergic reaction.

In the countries other than United States often chocolates have less stringent regulations for listing trace ingredients in foods. There is variety of different symptoms of chocolate allergy.

Symptoms of chocolate allergy:

• Acne
• Anxiety
• Asthma
• Confusion
• Coronary problems
• Depression
• Eczema
• Feeling of anger
• Headaches
• Hay fever
• Heartburn
• Hives
• Irritability
• Rectal itching
• Skin irritation

Sometimes chocolate allergy may also cause asthma if you are sensitive to more than one ingredient of the chocolate. In severely allergic people, chocolate allergy may trigger anaphylaxis.

Everybody likes to eat corn. You may eat corn without knowing its presence in the food that you ate.

You may find corn in so many different foods such as corn chips, corn flakes, cornmeal, cornstarch, tortillas, and so on.

However corn is such as popular food, it is extremely difficult to identify when you are affected with corn allergy.

Corn is an enormous part of your diet, eliminating all the foods that contain corn is almost impossible. That means if you have corn allergy then you need to eliminate so many foods to diagnose and treat your disease.

Corn allergy occurs when your immune system encounters a corn protein and mistakes as a dangerous substance. To fight with this dangerous substance, the immune system causes the release of antibodies that promotes the release of inflammatory chemicals known as histamines.

These histamines are responsible for common allergy symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, and swelling. These symptoms usually occurs within minutes after the exposure to corn.

In some severe cases these symptoms can lead to anaphylactic shock. You should seek medical attention immediately after realizing the symptoms.

You may all know that shellfish is a type of seafood. Commonly adults are allergic to seafood.

Shellfish allergy is most common food allergy and the people who are allergic to shellfish can also react to the number of different types of shellfish, such as prawns, crabs, scallops, mussels, shrimps, lobsters, crayfish, and clams.

People who are allergic to one type of shellfish can often allergic to other types. Some people can also react to the vapors from cooking shellfish.

Recent studies have shown that protein tropomyosin in the shellfish may be culprit in causing allergic reactions to shellfish.

Symptoms of shellfish allergy:

The symptoms of shellfish allergy are almost same as food allergy. These allergic reactions include:

• Swelling of the face, or throat
• Hives
• Wheezing
• Nasal congestion
• Itching
• Dizziness
• Shortness of breath
• Upset stomach
• Fever
• Muscle paralysis
• Tingling of the lips
• Loss of balance
• Heartburn
• Gas
• Vomiting or Diarrhea
• Light headedness
• Fainting
• Sudden fall of blood pressure
• Anaphylaxis
• Difficulty thinking
• An intense sense of fear
• Tightness in the chest

Life becomes very difficult with gluten allergy. It is one of the rarest types of food allergies that make the sufferer sensitive to gluten.

A component of wheat called gluten has been discovered to trigger allergies, even in small amounts. The protein, gluten in the wheat is a common type of allergen.

Gluten is one of the most allergenic foods in the western diet. Gluten is the substance which can be found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt and low level oats.

More than 1.5 million Americans are affected by gluten allergy symptoms.

Symptoms of gluten allergy:

The symptoms and severity of the symptoms of gluten allergy vary from one person to another. The general symptoms of gluten allergy are:

• Gas and abdominal cramps
• Swelling
• Bloating
• Hives
• Eczema
• Nausea and vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Chronic fatigue
• Weakness
• Weight loss
• Anemia
• Osteoporosis
• Asthma
• Anaphylaxis

People who have gluten allergy are often suffered with Celiac disease. It is a hereditary disorder of the immune system that causes the destruction of the lining in the small intestine. This results in malabsorption of the vitamins, nutrients, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, water and salt.

Dairy products are identified as one of the cause of food allergies.

Dairy products at the young age could be the triggers of allergies later in your life. This allergy is called as dairy allergy.

What is dairy allergy?

Dairy allergy is the immune system response to one or more of the proteins found in the cow’s milk.

Dairy products are the most frequent allergens which cause dairy allergy.

Dairy allergy is common in adults and infants. 2-3 percent of the infants are affected with milk allergy.

As the age increases milk allergy will disappear in children but in some children it will continue up to the age of adults.

What cause dairy allergy?

Lactose, casein and whey from the milk are the common causes of dairy allergy. These three substances are included in a variety of foods other than milk and cheese.

Food sources for lactose and casein:

• Milk in any form
• Ice cream and ice milk
• Salad dressings
• Dessert toppings
• Ghee
• Custard
• Cereals
• Processed meats
• Margarine
• Curd
• Lactose
• Whey
• Potato chips
• Butter
• Cottage cheese and sour cream