Food Allergy Symptoms

Celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, cow’s milk protein sensitivity and other food intolerance may be associated with numerous digestive and non-digestive symptoms. Some of the most common non-digestive symptoms include fatigue or sense of being overly tired, headaches, bone, joint and/or muscle pain, mental fogginess or impaired attention, nerve pain (neuropathy), and painful or severely itchy skin rashes. The most common digestive symptoms include feeling of excess fullness with meals or afterwards, bloating or distended abdomen, diarrhea, excess or foul gas, constipation, heartburn, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Rating the severity and frequency of common symptoms, in particularly creating and tracking your own individual “Top Ten Symptoms” will be very helpful to you and your doctor, especially when combined with a detailed food-symptom diary. In addition to medical tests like blood work, stool samples, and endoscopic exams, assessing symptoms for severity and frequency before, during and after an elimination diet trial is critical. This helps determine if certain foods are causing or aggravating your symptoms.

The foundation of treating food intolerance usually includes an elimination diet. Prior to an elimination diet, a food diary is usually kept and reviewed for trends by a doctor. In the context of your medical history, symptoms, family history and medical evaluation a medical evaluation is usually recommended that may include blood and stool tests, skin testing for food allergens, and scope examinations of the upper and/or lower digestive tract. Your medical evaluation however could vary widely based your doctor’s experience, specialty, biases about food allergies or intolerance and your history, symptoms and age. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you experienced various symptoms after eating a certain type of meal? Some rashes perhaps or itchiness? If so, then it’s certain that you have food allergy. This condition will occur depending on what food you’re allergic to. There are people who may experience negative reactions to regular daily foods like eggs, fish, soy and peanuts. Typically, people don’t know what they’re allergic to until they grow up since symptoms like hives are almost always related to other conditions. Furthermore, most people also consider hives or itchiness as the only symptom of this condition but the truth is other symptoms can occur like swollen lips. This number of symptoms is the main reason why you’ll see a lot of food allergy remedies in the market to meet the type of symptoms every people may have.

Apart from the symptoms mentioned above, you’ll also see some individuals who may throw up after eating a certain food. But remember that the main focus here is not the symptoms of food allergy but the things that are causing it. the good news is there are lots of food allergy remedies that can be useful for this problem. People who are experiencing swelling and itching because of allergy can take in Benadryl. Benadryl is an over the counter medication which has been known to be effective on allergies throughout the years. Epinephrine pen is also a good solution to use to keep you from experiencing shock from the allergy attacks. Allergic shock occurs when you experience severe medical reactions from food. Aside from taking in food allergy remedies, it’s also a good choice for you to avoid foods you’re allergic to. For instance, don’t eat peanuts and other foods that may be causing you to react negatively on them.

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Food allergies are due to IgE antibodies made for specific foods that an individual has for some reason developed because their body has misinterpreted the food(s) as a foreign invading protein. The presence of IgE antibody to the specific food a person is allergic to results in an immediate immune reaction of the body to the food when it is eaten. The IgE antibody binds its specific food protein and initiates reactions in the body that include the release of chemicals such as histamine that may result in symptoms of itching, swelling, wheezing or difficulty breathing, rash or hives, and if severe, shock resulting in death if not reversed. Vomiting and diarrhea may occur but are less common.

Testing for the presence of allergy to a food or foods can be done by blood test or skin testing or both. One of the most common blood tests is the RAST test that looks for the presence of the specific IgE antibodies to common food allergens and other foods based on a history suggesting that a particular food is suspect. Skin testing is done by injecting or applying extracts of the common and any suspect food(s) to pricked or scratched skin and looking for diagnostic “hive” like reactions at the site of the suspect food. The most common food allergens are peanut, cow’s milk, wheat, corn, soy, shellfish, eggs, tree nuts, chocolate, pork, tomato, and citrus.

The terms food intolerance and sensitivity are commonly used interchangeably. They refer to a group of food reactions that occur that are not IgE antibody caused. In more general terms they refer to any adverse or unpleasant reaction that occurs after a food is eaten. Read the rest of this entry »