It’s a misconception that food allergies are confined to children, technically food allergies can be developed at any age. You can even develop an allergy to foods, you have consumed for years without any trouble. We hear about food allergies more than often but do we know that it has extensively affected Americans. More than 50 million Americans are suffering from some kind of allergy out of which 4-6 percent are children and 4 percent are adults, claims Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Food allergy is nothing but body’s immune response. It occurs when your immune system overreacts to a food or a substance in food, taking it as a threat. Symptoms of food allergy can vary from mild to life threatening. May range from vomiting stomach cramps to Anaphylaxis-a potentially life-threatening reaction that can impair breathing and send the body into a state of shock.
While any food can cause an allergic reaction but the below mentioned food items account for about 90 percent of reactions:
Tree nuts
Eggs
Milk
Peanuts
Fish
Wheat
Shellfish
Soy
It is very important to diagnose food allergy on time to avoid serious medical outcomes, and food allergy tests play a vital role in this. There are three types of test for food allergy. Elimination Diet – Under this test, the patient would be asked to avoid eating certain food items that are suspected to be the cause of allergic reactions and monitor if the symptoms go away. Oral Food Allergy Challenge – It is considered as the best way to diagnose your allergy. In this, the patient is asked to consume a variety of food that possibly causes an allergic reaction under Doctor’s supervision. Skin Tests and Blood Test – Tests like scratch test, intradermal test and patch test, and blood tests like the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA or EIA) and the radioallergosorbent test (RAST) are often used to diagnose food allergies.