Food Allergy Test - Symptoms and causes

Food allergy symptoms are most common in babies and children, but they can appear at any age. You can even develop an allergy to foods you have eaten for years with no problems.
While any food can cause an adverse reaction, the following eight types of food account for about 90 percent of all allergic reactions in India:
    •    Eggs
    •    Milk
    •    Peanuts
    •    Tree nuts
    •    Fish
    •    Shellfish
    •    Wheat
    •    Soy

Certain seeds, including sesame and mustard seeds (the main ingredient in the condiment mustard), also are common food allergy triggers and considered a major allergen in some countries.

Symptoms of an allergic reaction may involve the skin, the gastrointestinal tract, the cardiovascular system and the respiratory tract. They can surface in one or more of the following ways:
    •    Vomiting and/or stomach cramps
    •    Hives
    •    Shortness of breath
    •    Wheezing
    •    Repetitive cough
    •    Shock or circulatory collapse
    •    Tight, hoarse throat; trouble swallowing
    •    Swelling of the tongue, affecting the ability to talk or breathe in
    •    Weak pulse
    •    Pale or blue coloring of skin
    •    Dizziness or feeling faint

Food Allergy Test
Testing is the most controversial aspect of food allergy. Just getting a skin test or a blood test isn’t enough. The problem is that tests for food allergy are very sensitive. This means that if you do have a food allergy, the tests are very likely to catch it. But the tests aren’t very specific. This means that the tests often are positive when there’s no food allergy. Many children with food allergies become tolerant to those foods over time. This is most likely to happen with allergies to cow’s milk, hen’s eggs, wheat, and soybeans. However, it is least likely to happen with peanut, tree-nut, and seafood allergies.
When a person becomes less sensitive to a food to which he has been allergic to in the past, doctors call it “tolerance.”