Danielle Z
The biggest thing I found was that a food allergy can get worse with each exposure to an allergen. Over time your reactions to food allergies can change and in some cases people can even grow out of them. People should get tested as soon as they have their first reaction to a food to find out for sure if they are allergic to that certain food. The reaction could include itching in your month, swelling in your lips, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, hives, rash, closing of the throat, or a drop in blood pressure. There are no drugs or treatments available to prevent food allergies, people should just have an epipen with them at all times and be careful of what they are eating. The ways you can get tested for a food allergy are by a oral food challenge (OFC), skin prick test (SPT), allergen-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) blood test, or an immunoglobulin G (IgG) blood test. Smoking, pollution, and genetics are the three factors that contribute the most in someone developing a food allergy. Nuts are the most common food allergy and if you are allergic to one you have a higher chance of becoming allergic to another. There is a process that a food allergic patient can get desensitized. This means that small amounts of the allergen are given to patients orally and the increments will gradually increase. This helps the patients tolerance. The patient will then have to maintain eating four grams of the allergen a day. Long term tolerance has not been fully assessed yet.
Sources:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/spring11/articles/spring11pg24-25.html
http://foodallergies.stanford.edu/learn/food-allergy-faq.html
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