Identify your Food Allergies

Many foods are known to cause allergic reactions in people. If you can identify the foods that affect you and remove them from your diet, you’ll be much more likely to live a longer, healthier life.

Food allergies come in several forms. A clinical allergy is one you just can’t ignore, an obvious cause-and-effect relationship of a food you’ve just eaten to your body’s response: Each time you eat a tomato, you break out in hives. Another form of allergy is a sub-clinical allergy. Sub-clinical allergies are not so obvious, which is why they can be more dangerous. You eat a tomato, and a while later you feel jittery or fatigued, or you come down with a headache, or your blood pressure rises. You might or might not notice the symptoms, and you’re unlikely to make a direct cause-and-effect connection. Sub-clinical allergies can go on for a long time unnoticed; meanwhile, your health suffers.

Food allergies can manifest in many ways. Headaches, fatigue, muscle and joint pains, stomach problems, attention-deficit disorder, panic attacks, insomnia, depression, chest pain, nausea, rashes, dry mouth, increasing or decreasing blood pressure, and blurred vision—all of these can be symptoms of allergic reactions to foods. If you constantly eat foods you’re allergic to, your body remains in a state of alarm, focused on fighting your food.

This is only a partial list of possible allergic reactions. Because such symptoms are often mild, continuous, or caused by other health problems, food allergies are often overlooked because many of these symptoms are treated with drugs to alleviate the symptom itself; the cause is not explored. Identification of food allergies and elimination of the offending foods from the diet can sometimes save you from the ill effects of drug treatment for symptoms attributed to other health problems.

Take a close look at your diet. If you’re tired, don’t feel as well as you’d like to, or have health problems that you’ve never fully resolved, food allergies may be the cause. A skilled allergist can assist you in assessing your diet, as can a nutritionist. Many alternative healthcare practitioners are experienced in working with food allergies. The route you take to discover which foods you are allergic to will depend on what type of practitioner you go to. An MD may use skin-sensitivity or blood tests; a nutritionist is more likely to use a diet diary and an elimination-diet protocol. Alternative practitioners may use both. Choose the approach you’re most comfortable with.

Knowing your family history may help you determine if you have food allergies, and, if so, to identify which food or foods you’re allergic to. In many cases, your relatives may not know they suffered from food allergies, but they may be able to tell you what foods “didn’t sit right with them.” If you recall that Uncle Leroy suffered from hives whenever he ate strawberries, then there’s a chance you might be allergic to them as well, though your symptoms might not be as obvious. In your case, the allergy might manifest not as hives, but as increased blood pressure.

But once you find out what you’re allergic to, you must eliminate it from your diet. This can be a challenge. For instance, wheat is a very common allergen. If you’re allergic to wheat, you must avoid anything with wheat flour in it. Obviously, this means bread, cakes, cookies, pancakes, pasta, wheat cereals, and the like. But things get more complicated when you realize that many processed foods also contain wheat. You have to learn how to read labels and identify what is in your food. Wheat can be found in products ranging from hotdogs to gravy to beer.

Once you eliminate from your diet the foods you’re allergic to, you must give your body time to adapt. Symptoms such as fatigue may take some time to dissipate. In many cases, a person is allergic to more than one food, and a series of tests or food eliminations must be done before the person can regain their health—if you don’t see immediate results, don’t be discouraged. Check to be sure that you’ve identified all the foods you’re allergic to, that you’re no longer eating any of those foods in hard-to-identify forms (read the labels!), and hang in there. Elimination of offending foods can make a huge difference in your health. Congratulations for being strong enough to make a change that matters.