The Skinny on Food Allergies
By Susan Mosley
FAST FACTS:
11 million Americans have food allergies; 2 million are school age children.
Food allergies result in over 30,000 emergency room visits a year.
8 common foods cause 80% of all allergic reactions: milk, eggs, peanuts, nuts (walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, pecans, and pine nuts), wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish (crab, shrimp, crayfish, lobster). Strawberries, papaya, kiwis, peaches, bananas, chocolate, citrus fruits, tomatoes, and rice are also problematic.
Preservatives and flavor enhancers cause symptoms, too. Yellow dyes numbers 3 and 5; vanillin, MSG, BHA, BHT, and sulfites are some of the major culprits.
Most people have a reaction to a food they thought was safe, or that they had never had a problem with before.
150-200 people DIE each year from anaphylactic reactions to food. Most deaths happen when eating away from home, and can occur within minutes.
NO medication can be taken before eating to prevent a reaction.
If both your parents have asthma, hay fever or hives you are much more likely to develop allergies.
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A food allergy occurs when a person’s immune system induces an IgE antibody response to a substance in an ingested food, just like when you have an allergic response to pollen. With food intolerance, you lack enzymes necessary to digest certain foods. Food intolerance may cause pain and discomfort, but is not truly menacing. However, if your digestive tract is irritated or inflamed, particles of undigested food may enter the bloodstream, and you could end up with an autoimmune response, with allergies, Crohn’s disease, colitis, or irritable bowel syndrome.
Foods like shrimp and peanuts usually cause obvious and immediate symptoms, within an hour of exposure. Or you may only have mild, annoying signs like itching, hives and coughing. But, you could have reactions as scary as abdominal pain, cramping, wheezing, swelling of the throat, vomiting and diarrhea, or a sudden drop in blood pressure. Antihistamines can improve symptoms slightly. Emergency medical treatment with bronchodilators, steroids, and epinephrine injections may be necessary. You should carry an Epi-pen at all times if this has ever happened to you.
Very minute amounts of allergens can cause severe life threatening reactions. If you are allergic to dairy, you may be in jeopardy if your deli uses the same knife for meat and cheese. Some people have swelling and hives just from being in a kitchen where shrimp is cooking. Your reaction may be stronger if you are exposed to multiple allergens at the same time. For instance, if you eat strawberries during the height of hay fever season.
Delayed reactions are subtler and may take hours or even days to show up: headaches, joint and muscle pain, tiredness, sinus pressure, chest pain, unfocused mental state, bloating, and upset stomach are common complaints. Soy, wheat, eggs, and milk are some of the foods that cause delayed symptoms. Some of my clients have also reported problems with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and the newer product sucralose. Saccharin doesn’t seem to cause these symptoms, however.
How do I figure out what’s going on?
Doctors rarely look at food allergies or intolerance when their patients complain of headaches or gastrointestinal problems. Many people who have undiagnosed food allergies bounce from one medical specialist to another. They endure expensive and invasive tests like colonoscopies, upper GI series, and CT scans. They often end up with unneeded gallbladder surgery, or taking multiple medications to try to alleviate their symptoms. And they still continue to eat the problem foods, making matters worse.
Despite mounting evidence, many physicians still don’t believe that hyperactivity, depression, concentration problems, worsened arthritis pain, migraines, or chronic fatigue could possibly be linked to the toxic effects of certain foods and chemicals. You must find a health care professional who is willing to invest the time and effort necessary to help you find your allergens, monitor your nutritional intake, and strengthen your immune system.
Skin scratch testing is not necessarily helpful, since you can have a positive reaction to the scratch, but not to that particular food. Blood tests such as RAST and ELISA are even more expensive and not necessarily predictive, though better for detecting delayed reactions.
A double blind placebo-controlled food challenge is a more definitive test. Suspect foods are ingested, and the patient closely monitored. This type of testing is costly and time consuming, however, and can be dangerous when testing highly reactive foods.
What is the point of putting yourself through this testing anyway when no allergy shots work for food allergies? I suggest you save your wallet, by keeping a food diary to uncover your food triggers. If you eat any processed foods this will be difficult to do, since most products have hidden ingredients. Eat your foods as natural and plain as possible while doing this self-evaluation.
The book ‘Prescription for Nutritional Healing” by James Balch, MD, has a complete food record ready for you to fill out. Keep a diet log for 4 weeks. Any foods you eat more than 4 times a week are suspicious, since your odds of developing food allergies increase if you eat the same foods over and over.
After 4 weeks, add back the questionable foods to your menu, but only one food a day, in small 1-teaspoon quantities. For example, if testing for corn, eat a few fresh unbuttered kernels, not cornbread. You may also be allergic to other ingredients in the bread, like milk or eggs, which will invalidate your test. If you have any headaches, upset stomach, bloating, palpitations, or if your heart rate increases more than 10 beats per minute when reintroducing the suspect food, you should omit it for 2 more months, then try again. If you still react, you should eliminate this food permanently.
The Balchs’ book also tells you how to perform a rotation diet, where you can safely eat your problem foods no more than every four days. You must take charge of your own health. Seek information from groups such as: the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, at www.foodallergy.org, or www.allergysupport.org . You can get safe recipes from www.foodallergycookbook.com.
Locally, contact FAST, the Food Allergy Support Team of Chattanooga, at www.foodallergysupportteam.org, or 423-876-1065. They have frequent support meetings at Memorial Health Place at Hamilton Place Mall.
Is there anything else I can do?
Do not take aspirin with any foods that you may be allergic to. Absorption of that food is increased, possibly because of irritation of the stomach lining. Aloe juice or oat bran can slow the absorption of allergenic foods.
Watch for hidden allergens in processed foods. Though the government mandates ingredient lists on food labels, trace constituents are often omitted. Labels can be confusing, too, especially when chemical or unfamiliar names are used instead of the common name. Labels aren’t usually changed to include temporary ingredient substitutions. A product may have mayonnaise listed, but not the egg used to make it. For example, egg proteins are found in cosmetics, shampoos, bouillon, noodles, marshmallows, ice cream, salad dressing, processed meats, and certain drugs. Egg white is used to give shine to bagels, pretzels, and pastries. Watch labels for the terms binder, emulsifier, and lecithin.
For lists of hidden allergens in other foods, go to www. allergyadvisor.com/hidden.htm.
Probiotics like acidophilus or proteolytic digestive enzymes improve your assimilation of food and promote the integrity of the intestinal tract. Contact your local reputable health food store for assistance.
Don’t take antacids! You can have heartburn with low levels of acid in the stomach. Recent studies show that people who take antacids are more likely to develop food allergies. Avoid foods that give you heartburn.
For more information call:
Susan Mosley, LAC, Dipl. C.H.
Four Seasons Wellness
6245 Vance Road, Suite B
Chattanooga TN 37421
423-596-9024
www.fourseasonswellness.com
This article was posted by susan mosley
