Allergy testing? [S/O]

[Mama_Rana]

The thread about adults not believing in allergies got me thinking about my sons' reactions to .... something.

 

Both of them have had redness around their mouths or anu5e5. I know the younger has reacted to apples and possibly carrots, but not always.

 

Recently the younger ate some chocolate ice cream at a party and his mouth was red for a week!

 

Last night both of them got red mouths after dinner [chicken sausages, cabbage, & ratatouille].

 

The elder has had blood testing for food allergies [we were drawing blood for something else and I had her take extra] but reacted to nothing. I don't think the younger has had that done yet...

 

What would you suggest? Getting them both scratch tested? Taking better notes about what they eat and what happens [i suck at that, even when it's for myself]? Letting sleeping dogs lie?

 

TIA

[MomatHWTK]

I'd get testing and keep a food diary. But, I have a kid with very severe allergies so it would stand to reason that I'd err on the side of testing. ;)

[sbgrace]

I'd keep a food diary. Once you have suspects from that get tested for those things. The problem with testing first is there is a high incidence of false positives on allergy tests (skin and blood). It's better to use them to confirm or track allergies in my opinion and experience. It could be a localized irritation type reaction too in which case the skin/scratch might be more helpful than the blood I'd think. All the allergist my son has seen start with skin testing anyway.

Edited September 27, 2012 by sbgrace

[Tap]

Do keep a food journal.

 

I have a tomato allergy that doesn't show up for 12 hours after I eat it and lingers for days afterward. It took me almost a year to figure it out! The smallest amount of ketchup or a single bite of tomato will cause it to flare.

[Mrs Mungo]

Also think about Oral Allergy Syndrome. My son reacted to raw apples and pears because he had issues with birch trees. So, they need to test for more than food.

[Mama_Rana]

Thanks everyone!

 

I will try to food diary, but I struggle to see patterns in that type of data [or to note reactions in a timely manner :( ] But maybe my doc could make some sense of it.

 

I also need to make ped. appts. for well checks, so I'll talk to her more about it then.

 

Thank goo no severe reactions, and hopefully it'll stay that way.

[walkermamaof4]

I have to tell you - we tried the food diary and eliminated all gluten and dairy and just couldn't figure it out. I was going to go to a chiropractic nutritionist guy but decided to try my pediatrician first. This was 2 weeks ago after a loooong time trying on my own. He suggested a blood test to see how her body's immune system responded to foods. He had them draw 2 vials of blood. Just 2 days later they called and said dd is allergic to egg whites and to sesame. Well, I would have never guessed the sesame but it is the big culprit and is even in cosmetics. For ds we did an IGG (not by the pediatrician). Pediatrician said that is a whole different test and wouldn't show the same thing. I didn't totally understand. But for ds he can't eat eggs, dairy, mustard, sunflower seeds or oil, SPINACH??!!!! (We eat it all of the time!) and grapes!

 

So, my suggestion is to go to a normal pediatrician and ask for food immune response testing. So quick. So informative. Why oh why did I wait so long?

[Mama_Rana]

I have to tell you - we tried the food diary and eliminated all gluten and dairy and just couldn't figure it out. I was going to go to a chiropractic nutritionist guy but decided to try my pediatrician first. This was 2 weeks ago after a loooong time trying on my own. He suggested a blood test to see how her body's immune system responded to foods. He had them draw 2 vials of blood. Just 2 days later they called and said dd is allergic to egg whites and to sesame. Well, I would have never guessed the sesame but it is the big culprit and is even in cosmetics. For ds we did an IGG (not by the pediatrician). Pediatrician said that is a whole different test and wouldn't show the same thing. I didn't totally understand. But for ds he can't eat eggs, dairy, mustard, sunflower seeds or oil, SPINACH??!!!! (We eat it all of the time!) and grapes!

 

So, my suggestion is to go to a normal pediatrician and ask for food immune response testing. So quick. So informative. Why oh why did I wait so long?

 

Thanks! I do plan to make an appt. with the ped.

 

As I said, my elder son has had some sort of blood test for food allergies, but it showed nothing. I don't know exactly what it was though. Wonder if I can get my hands on it in my mess of a house. *sigh*

[sbgrace]

Thanks everyone!

 

I will try to food diary, but I struggle to see patterns in that type of data [or to note reactions in a timely manner :( ] But maybe my doc could make some sense of it.

 

I also need to make ped. appts. for well checks, so I'll talk to her more about it then.

 

Thank goo no severe reactions, and hopefully it'll stay that way.

 

This is a lot of work but I'll share.

 

My son has some serious food allergies, including the anaphylactic kind, that present with hives or worse. So there was no question those were allergies and testing was just used to confirm and, in the case of the anaphylactic ones, try to track whether he might get less sensitive over time.

 

However, he was having rash type skin reactions to something and I just had no idea what it might be. The allergist did run a standard panel but they all came back clean except the allergies we already knew.

 

So what we did was put him on a rotation diet so we could narrow down what might be causing the skin issues. This meant he didn't eat anything except the "known safe" stuff more often than every 4 days. Sure enough we narrowed it down--to cinnamon in his case and I never would have thought to test that.

 

It's possible, also, that the skin reactions you're seeing are something that an allergy test won't pick up. They could be oral allergy syndrome or a reaction not mediated by IgE reactions. I am not at all convinced the science is there to do accurate testing outside of IgE. So in those cases I'd say food tracking is the best way to figure out a culprit rather than possibly pulling a bunch of foods from false positives that you didn't need to pull.