FOOD ALLERGIES

Food allergies can be defined as when the body’s immune system mistakenly identifies a specific food as harmful and attempts to fight it off, triggering an allergic reaction. Eight food causes up to 90% of all food allergic reactions and these foods include; peanut, treenuts, fish, shell fish, eggs, soy bean, wheat and milk. The first four foods are most likely to cause anaphylatic shock.ÂAnaphylatic shock is a life threatening allergic reactions that involves in any body systems with symptoms such as sudden severe itching of the tongue, throat or skin, tissue swelling in the air passage causing difficulty in breathing, falling blood pressure, unconsciousness and death.

To identify food allergies, though a tendency towards allergies is inherited. For example if one of the parent gas an allergy, the risk of having one is two times higher than it will be if neither of the parent have an history of allergic disease. If both parent have allergies such person’s risk is times four higher. Ways of identifying food allergies include; through food elimination diet (by removing food most commonly known to cause allergic reactions and then introducing it back one at a time), Oral food challenges, skin prick testing and anti body testing.

Food allergies are usually managed by eliminating all dietary sources of an allergen. Although most young children out grow allergies to milk, egg, wheat or soy by five years of age whereas allergies to peanut, treenut and sea foods tends to persist for longer period. Successful management depends in the part of the patient’s ability to identify hidden sources of allergy in food with multiple ingredients.

Persistence in adult may be less clear because it is often unknown whether the allergies result from sensitization during childhood ot if they develop during adulthood.

 

Read more on ; THE EFFECT OF DIETARY FIBRES ON THE RISK OF TYPE 2 DIABETES

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