The Problem with Testing for Food Allergies
It turns out you may not need to buy that expensive hypoallergenic
formula after all. After years of steadily rising allergies in kids, pediatricians
are beginning to acknowledge that it might be the allergy tests, not the food,
that
Great explanation for why tons of kids seem to have peanut allergies today and all my life growin up I never ever met one. It adds a lot to cost with these misdiagnoses, as now you have to change so much in schools and classrooms for instance.
I am allergic to tree nuts, sesame and poppy. I have never had an allergy test to confirm, but I have gone anaphalactic so I don’t doubt my allergy. Interestingly enough, typically with the allergy test, they test “food families” and the recommendation is to stay away from the allergen family. If I was tested and positive, in the case of sesame, I’d be told to stay away from all foods in the family, but I am not allergic to sunflower seeds/oil, which is in the same family as sesame.
Also, when I first became allergic, I didn’t have reactions for 6 to 8 hours after the exposure. It took a while to even figure out what I was allergic to b/c the assumption was that I was allergic to what I had just eaten, except it was different every time (once we realized the common factor was the nuts or seeds, we narrowed it down), but it wasn’t until the reactions occurred closer to the exposure time that we really could hone in on it. This is why I also doubt the scratch test or the feed it to them and watch test, because if the allergy is just starting, the reaction time could be longer than most doctors believe.
My elder son is allergic to peanuts, tree nuts and sesame seed (we haven’t tried almond yet). We’re not sure about our younger son yet. Of course, we’ve been advised to avoid all the above because of #1′s allergies, but I can’t help but wonder about that. I’ve thought of trying a skin test with him (just putting some peanut butter on the skin, which is enough to make my elder son break out in hives) and going from there, but of course I don’t want to make our doctor mad. What to do?
I agree with Sabrina. When you see your kid vomiting violently after eating yogurt, you don’t really need anyone else to tell you that she shouldnt be eating it. All the blood tests did was substantiate what we had already witnessed.
As a part of the food allergy community we’ve been saying for years “Reaction trumps results”, meaning the test could say they’re allergic, but they’re really not, OR the test could say their not when they are. It’s common sense, and I’m glad to see doctors trying to figure ways to keep allergic children from unnecessarily limiting their (already limited) diets.