An Overview of Food Allergy Diagnosis
After ruling out
food intolerances and other health problems, your healthcare provider will use several steps to find out if you have a
food allergy to specific foods.
These steps may include a:
-
Detailed history
-
Diet diary
-
Elimination diet
-
-
Blood test
-
Food challenge.
Food Allergy Diagnosis: Detailed History
Asking a number of questions (known as a medical history) is the most valuable way of making a food
allergy diagnosis. Your healthcare provider will ask you several questions and listen to your history of food reactions to decide if your answers are consistent with a food allergy.
Questions your healthcare provider might ask include:
- What was the timing of your reaction?
- Did your reaction come on quickly, usually within an hour after eating the food?
- Did allergy medicines help? Antihistamines should relieve hives, for example.
- Is your reaction always associated with a certain food?
- Did anyone else who ate the same food get sick? For example, if you ate fish contaminated with histamine, everyone who ate the fish should be sick.
- How much did you eat before you had a reaction? The severity of a reaction is sometimes related to the amount of food eaten.
- How was the food prepared? Some people will have a violent allergic reaction only to raw or undercooked fish. Complete cooking of the fish may destroy the allergen, and they can then eat it with no allergic reaction.
- Did you eat other foods at the same time you had the reaction? Some foods may delay digestion and thus delay the start of the allergic reaction.
