Food Allergy Inter Relations – Testing for Determination

Description: While allergies could be caused due to multiple reasons like dust, water, heat, or atmospheric exposures, food has always been one of the major reasons for such allergic attacks.  Certain foods cause allergies more often than not and is considered to be common causes of allergic attacks. Some of the common allergic foods are eggs, fish, soy, wheat, and peanuts.

There are millions of people who suffer from allergic attacks due to multiple reasons. Some people are highly allergic to dust exposure.  Others are similarly allergic to heat, cold, atmospheric pressures, and even water.  However, till date the greatest reasons for allergy has been food and among the foods there are certain types that are common causes of allergies. Mostly the foods like eggs, milk, peanuts, nuts, wheat, soy, fish and shell fish that are reasons for allergic tendencies in people who consume them.

There are however cases where your child could be allergic to everything.  More interesting, even many grown up people suffer from such syndrome. In such cases it may not be good for you to go for some stray treatments or simple dieting.  Consulting the pediatric allergist could be the real solution in such cases for you.  Food allergy tests often look easy, but are extremely difficult interpreting appropriately.  RAST tests are carried out using the blood sample of the patient.  However the test shows IgE antibody levels instead of directly analyzing the result in positive or negative.  The problem is that the IgE levels are existent in low levels in most of the people who do not have allergy problems.  That means only the high levels of IgE causes the allergic problems. 

Physicians also carry out skin testing for determining the allergic affects on the patient.  The positive results only suggest that the patient might be allergic to certain foods.  However, the result may not always be correct. In fact even if the test results positive and you have never experienced any allergic reactions, then you may not be really allergic to such food. At the same time you have to be careful about carrying out the allergic tests on the kids.  Though such tests can be carried out almost at any age and there is no barrier to skin testing, you can have positive results could be obtained at any age and such testing could not be accurate if the testing is carried out for children below 12 years. Another risky factor is that blood allergy tests carried out on young children would require large samples and therefore it is better to carry out the preliminary testing only.

Coming back to the core issues of food and allergy relationships, one of the most important questions is that whether food allergies can be prevented?  The answer is in the positive as years of research and experiments have proved.  If you avoid the high risk foods, chances of allergy attacks can be reduced to a very large extent. Patients would broadly come in three categories.  First of all there are people who are already suffering from high allergic reactions after consuming certain foods.  Second, there are people who occasionally suffer from such syndrome though not regularly.  The third and most difficult to diagnose category is the people who have not yet suffered from such allergic attacks. Avoiding high risk food could be beneficial for all these three types of people, either by curing, or by reducing, or by preventing the possible allergy attacks.