Do You Really Have Food Allergies, or is it Your Hayfever?

Friday, July 3, 2009

I stopped eating my pears, but too late: before long I was having stomach pain and nausea, and that itching just wouldn't go away.
I experienced those same symptoms again.

Within the space of a year or so, I discovered that I could not eat apples, pears, nuts, coconut, lettuce, carrots, or just about any kind of raw fruit or vegetable. I suppose it was convenient on occasion, but more often than not, this problem was preventing me from eating foods that I truly enjoyed.

I got in the habit of telling people, "I'm sorry I can't eat that, I'm allergic."

It turns out that my high school biology teacher was basically correct. My problem was indeed caused by allergies - but NOT by food allergies. Food allergies are potentially very serious, even deadly reactions to foods. Most allergy experts say that the foods that people are most commonly allergic to are milk, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts and tree nuts, and seafood.

People with food allergies must avoid the food they are allergic to altogether. For some foods, this means not even touching them or being around people who are eating them. Luckily, true food allergies affect a fairly minor percentage of people:

Experts estimate that only 2 percent of adults are truly allergic to certain foods. For those few people, food allergies can extremely dangerous: tiny amounts of peanut, for example, have been known to cause life-threatening reactions and even death in very allergic individuals.

My problem, it turns out, is something called "Oral Allergy Syndrome." It is now known that people who suffer pollen-induced seasonal rhinitis, often known as "hayfever," can suffer cross-reactions to fruits, vegetables, and even certain chemicals and synthetic materials. I say "weak" meaning in comparison with what happens to people with true food allergies. Certainly when I am suffering from eating an apple slice it doesn't seem weak or minor to me!

You may have never bothered before to find out exactly which pollens cause your allergy symptoms, but if you have OAS it may finally be worthwhile to do so. There are well-documented lists of which foods and other substances correlate to which pollen allergies, so if you know exactly what pollens you are allergic to, you can predict foods and other materials that are likely to cause you problems. Go to your doctor and ask for an allergy skin test, which is the simplest way to test for common pollen allergies.

Antihistamines can help with the symptoms, the same as they help with your other symptoms. In general, however, you will simply need to identify the foods that cross-react with your pollen allergies, and avoid them.