Friday, May 13, 2011

Food allergies *updated*

Finished with round 2 and updating...

A while back I had food allergy testing done (back in 2005/2006)... around that time, i was reacting to everything.. hives all over my lips, rashing/bumps, feeling generally fatigued, body just felt irritated... (eventually if i have a few days of bad allergy, it triggers a migraine) so i had testing done... i came out highly allergic to a whole bunch of foods.. which made it impossible to figure out which ones to avoid... eventually over the last 5 years, i've been slowly feeling food allergies return, foods i'm avoiding don't seem to matter, and it's hard for me to figure out again what i'm reacting to (it's hard when what you're eating has like 10 ingredients)... So i got allergy testing again and got some interesting results.

The whole allergy testing process is simple. Over 2 visits, they took 120 different foods and pin pricked it on my back in addition to a histamine and control to compare it to. They score it from 0-4. A 4 pretty much looks like a large mosquito bite.
0 no reaction
1-2 mild/moderate allergy (don't eat alot of, but OK)
3-4 highly allergic.. avoid...

Here's my list:
Highly allergic: cucumber++, peanut, tomato, sunflower seeds, squash, asparagus (no matter, i dont like them anyway), black walnuts, cabbage, currant, beans (kidney++, lima, mung, navy, pinto), raspberry, cayenne pepper, malt (no more beer :/ ), paprika, parsley, and safflower seed
Moderate: barley, string bean, almond, lime, mustard greens, plum, bell pepper, caraway seed, cumin
Mild: (i dont have to worry about these, but i find it amusing that my body reacted to them mildly) lettuce, onion, pecan, rice, rye, english walnut, hops, carrot, pumpkin
Nonreactive: cantaloupe, cashew, chicken, celery+, chocolate, crab, egg white/yolk, yeast, lobster, milk, orange, pork, potato, shrimp, soy bean, wheat, apple, banana, beef, brazilnut, buck wheat, cod fish, corn+, grape, crapefruit, lake perch, lamb, mackerel, mushroom, oat, oyster, pea, peach+, pear, pineapple, salmon, scallops, strawberry, sweet potato, tuna, watermelon, apricot, avocado, beet, broccoli, cherry, date, duck, hazelnut, goat milk, honeydew+, lemon, radish, spinach, sugar beet, tapioca, turkey, turnip, blueberry+, cranberry, olive, clam, coconut, cinnamon, clove, coffee, garlic+, ginger, mustard, nutmeg, black pepper, sesame+, tea, thyme, vanilla.
**I put a plus next to foods i used to be highly allergic to in 2005/6 in the first testing.. i may want to be careful with these foods..

I'm glad i can at least eat cashews, which are my favorite nut.. i thought i was allergic to all nuts... it's a bit confusing tho seeing that i'm allergic to some and not all of them.. there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to the list.. other than avoiding beans (but then soy beans are OK)... and i dont seem to be allergic to any meat products...

Comparing to my old list.. seems like there's been a few switcheroos... 24 foods i was either highly or moderately allergic to are now in my nonreactive list... however, 20 foods i was not allergic to before have jumped into both my moderate and highly allergic list.. i lost 6 in my highly allergic list, but gained 5... so i haven't really "improved"... oh well..

0 blah blahs: