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I was diagnosed in February with around 25 adult-onset food allergies, some random chemical allergies, and histamine intolerance after about a year of misery. I'm still getting used to being careful about food, as is my family. I used to be a vegetarian, and then I became allergic to legumes. The allergies all came on me overnight after working on a cabin... I'm not sure if I'll ever know why, but it looks like I'm stuck with being creative with everything. It's nice to find a place where other people understand what I'm going through!
That's quite an unusual situation you're in. It must be challenging having to avoid so much. Can you tell us a little about your reactions and how you were diagnosed?
I was diagnosed after going to an allergist. I was first sent to a neurologist ( I had mild neuropathy), then a rheumatologist who sent me to an allergist. I had really swollen joints, tongue abrasions, thrush, migraines, nosebleeds, hives, rashes and nobody really put the pieces together until I went to the allergist. Dr. Pienkowski said he suspected that I had a lot of food allergies, and the test confirmed it. I had a hard time with the allergy shots because I had to redo each vial at least once, but they really helped up to the point that I started having anaphylactic reactions from them. Now I have bona fide reactions like hives, redness, and mouth swelling from most of my problem foods, which to me is an improvement. The serious ones are beans, peanuts, and curry powder, so I have my Epipen and Benadryl handy. Gotta go now. I'll put up a total list of everything later.
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” Scott Peck
I didn't have the RAST test done, I didn't know about that when I was first Dxed. I didn't know anything about food allergies back then. I'm supposed to go back to the Dr soon to retest a few food allergies soon though. I'm crossing my fingers that I get to have coffee or cruciferous veggies back!
You shouldn't avoid a food based on testing alone since the rate of false positives on skin testing is about 50%. Hopefully you can narrow down what you're actually reacting to so your diet won't be so limited.
I know with my DS it was a challenge to figure out what exactly he was reacting to and which results were false positives. We did the skin prick test and then also a RAST test, so we could compare results. We eliminated the foods he had a reaction history to and then used the results from the tests to choose which other foods were likely causing his reactions. We used the results that were the same from both tests as our starting point - so if he was higly reactive on both tests we did a two week trial elimination. Most of those double positive foods turned out to be the ones to which he had a true allergy. The only food he consistently tested highly positive to on both tests that he didn't react to was milk, so even though he tested highly allergic we never avoided it. Once we had eliminated those allergens, it was pretty easy to pinpoint the cause of any other reactions.
We also used the tests to determine if we should avoid other foods in the same family as foods he had a reaction history to. For example, he had a reaction history to peanuts, soy and green beans, so when he tested positive for other beans and peas we were advised to avoid all legumes. Of course, we were going through all this reacting/testing/eliminating 11 or 12 years ago so the advice to avoid the entire group might be different now.
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Posted: Aug 30th, 2011 at 10:08 am
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