Consumer Reports: Food allergies are not rampant, and they can change over time

This article essentially states that all the people who think they have allergies are wrong. It goes on to say that tests that actually measure that which defines allergy are not to be trusted.

Doctors need to stop ignoring measureable facts - immune system reactions to food are common and can cause a wide variety of symptoms. Life threatening food allergies ARE relatively rare, but the other reactions - that are immune system reactions, are allergies too and discounting their importance is both a blatant scientific fallacy and a disservice to those people who have these reactions.

Also, food allergies generally do not change over time. Symptoms change over time, but the inherent problem with a food remains.

If these so called experts are so smart, then why do so many people react in so many different ways to so many foods?

From Washington Post:

Living with a food allergy or intolerance can be a huge hassle. So it’s surprising how many people think they have sensitivities to certain foods — and alter their lives accordingly — when they really don’t.

“Research shows that as many as 20 percent of people claim to have food allergies when the number is actually around 3 to 4 percent,” says Hugh Sampson, director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. He concedes that the number of people with milder reactions — nonallergic symptoms that flare up when they eat certain foods — is higher, but he thinks the problem is still generally overestimated. That’s partly because reactions to food can change over time. And various symptoms are sometimes mistakenly attributed to food when they really stem from something else.

On the other hand, some very real and potentially life-threatening food allergies appear to be on the rise. For example, a 2010 report comparing surveys of U.S. households in 1997, 2002 and 2008 found a steady increase in allergies to peanuts and tree nuts in children. The reasons for the trend aren’t clear.

It continues...

Diagnosing food allergies

If you suspect you have a food allergy, it’s important to see a specialist who is board-certified in allergy and immunology. And if a doctor diagnosed an allergy years ago, it makes sense to check again. Your allergy may have subsided or you may have received an incorrect diagnosis based on outdated testing methods.

Because of the shortcomings of lab tests, they shouldn’t be used alone to diagnose a food allergy, according to recommendations by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Instead, a doctor should give you a physical examination and take a detailed medical history first. He or she might also ask you to record everything you eat as well as any symptoms. Identifying the culprit is made slightly easier by the fact that in the United States, 90 percent of food-allergy reactions stem from just eight items: eggs, fish, milk, peanuts, shellfish, soy, tree nuts (including almonds, cashews, pecans, pistachios and walnuts) and wheat.

The gold standard for confirming an allergy is a placebo-controlled food challenge, in which the patient receives increasing doses of the potential allergen during one test and a placebo in another. To avoid potential bias, the test is double-blind, meaning that neither the tester nor the patient will know which dose is the placebo until it’s over. Because of the risk of a severe reaction, the test should be done only in a doctor’s office.

Currently, the only treatment for food allergies is to avoid the food that causes them. People at risk of anaphylaxis should also carry at least one prescription self-injector of epinephrine (EpiPen and others). It’s also a good idea to program cellphones with an “in case of emergency” (ICE) contact and allergy information in the “notes” area.

Copyright 2011. Consumers Union of United States Inc.

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