Have you ever been to a restaurant and overheard someone telling the waiter not to include a particular food ingredient because he or she has allergies? How about you? How have you had any experience when you ate something and suddenly you sneezed or you felt itchy in some parts of your body?
Under normal circumstances, people will automatically say that you have food allergies. And so from that moment on, you begin to avoid eating such food or foods to avoid the allergic reaction.
Now here’s the question: are you really sure it’s food allergy?
Some Facts on Food Allergy
- Did you know that only about 5% of children have clinically proven allergic reactions to foods?
- Did you know that in teens and adults, food allergies occur in only about 4% of the total population?
Could this statistic be true? If only 5% of children and only 4% of all the teens and adults have clinically proven allergic reactions, how do we explain the itchiness or the unpleasant reaction people feel after eating something?
Now here’s the explanation: Not all the “unpleasant reaction” to food can be considered allergic reaction. More often than not, they are food intolerances.
What is Food Allergy?
A food allergy or hypersensitivity is an unusual response triggered by the immune system to a food.
The symptoms of both food allergy or hypersensitivity and food intolerance are almost the same, but the latter is not triggered by the immune system.
Let’s take for example milk. Some people refrain from drinking milk because they believe that they have milk allergies. Then there are also those who do not drink milk because they are lactose intolerant. Where’s the difference? Lactose intolerance means a person is unable to digest milk properly, whereas milk allergy is simply that – a hypersensitivity to milk.
What Next?
If you are experiencing “unpleasant reactions” from food, consult your doctor. It is crucial that you know what you have, whether it’s an allergy or a simple food intolerance. Why? Be advised that allergic reaction to food can be, at its worst, life threatening, unlike food intolerance which is generally less serious with symptoms limited to digestive problems.
So when you visit your doctor, prepare to be able to provide him with information that will help him diagnose what you have. You doctor may ask you questions to find out whether you have anybody else in the family experiencing the same ‘unpleasant feelings” right after eating the food. He also would be interested to find out about your family’s allergy history. Then he might as you wow often does this “unpleasant feelings” happen and what kinds of foods trigger this “unpleasant feelings”.
As a sayings goes, knowing is already half way towards solving the problem. Thus, it is highly recommended that you find out if what you have is really an allergy to something or it’s just food intolerance.
