Do you get a migraine, rashes, itchiness or even experience excessive bloating after an hour or two of eating a meal? If you do, chances are that you have a food allergy. According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, food allergies happen when the immune system of the body has a reaction to a certain food. In many cases, the reaction is mild and not life threatening—but should be treated nevertheless. In others, the reaction can be severe and lead to anaphylaxis shocks and even death.
So, taking a food allergy for granted is something you should never do. However, the problem here is that identifying what exactly causes food allergy is quite difficult. After all, our meals are never made with a single ingredient. For example, if you have a Soyabean Poha for breakfast and got an allergic reaction, was your allergy because of the soy or the peanuts? So, to identify the foods you are allergic to, the first thing you need to do is see a doctor.
Your doctor is likely to conduct food allergy tests like the skin prick test, the Radio Allergo Sorbent Test (RAST) and the Vega Test. But the most accurate test your doctor will recommend to identify and eliminate your food allergies are the exclusion and challenge diets. Simply put, these diet tests require a patient to exclude suspected foods that cause allergic reactions. If there are any improvements in food allergy symptoms after excluding suspected foods, then these are automatically identified as the food allergy culprits.
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This dietary investigation method for food allergies is very effective and also helps identify if you have allergy from one food or many. But, as with any diagnostic and treatment method that involves something as elaborate as food, there is more than one way to follow exclusion and challenge diets. Here are five easy-to-follow exclusion and challenge diet methods you can use to identify and eliminate food allergies.
Simple Exclusion Diet
As the name suggests, this diet is effective in identifying food allergies when you already have some idea about what cause it. It isn’t too elaborate or complicated, because it only requires you to eliminate the most common culprits for food allergies, which are milk, eggs, shellfish and peanuts. The time period recommended for this one is usually three weeks, after which the foods that don’t cause allergy are added back to your regular diet one by one with a gap of a few days at a time.
Multiple Food Exclusion Diet
If your doctor suspects that the common culprits aren’t causing your food allergy, or your diet is too elaborate and includes all food groups, then this one is recommended for two to three weeks. The foods you may be asked to exclude from your diet include milk and dairy products, eggs, shellfish, wheat, citrus fruits, nuts, coffee, chocolate, corn, soya and yeast. The foods are introduced back with intervals of several days to ensure the right culprit is caught.
Strict Elimination Diet
As the name suggests, this is the strictest of food elimination diets for allergies and is usually done if simple exclusion diet and multiple food exclusion diet don’t identify the cause of allergy. During this diet, you are supposed to eat very limited foods based on the few ingredients in the world that don’t cause any allergy at all, like potatoes, turkey, rice, pears, cauliflower, broccoli, sunflower oil and olive oil. Because it is extremely limiting, it is only recommended in severe cases for two to three weeks, after which regular food groups are reintroduced one by one.
Rare Foods Diet
This diet for food allergies is quite like a strict elimination diet but may be the one that’s most fun for foodies and cooks. In this diet, foods that you rarely ever eat are also recommended for consumption for two to three weeks. The idea is that people are least likely to have allergic reactions to rare or exotic foods that they don’t eat generally. This is also considered the ultimate test for food allergies, as if this diet also doesn’t work then it is likely that you don’t have a food allergy at all but an immunological issue at the root of your allergic symptoms.
Fasting
Fasting is considered to be the least advised dietary method for eliminating food allergies because it is drastic and can have negative impacts on your health if not done properly. It is very important that this fasting is done with the recommendation of experts and under the guidance of medical and culinary experts at a health retreat or facility. In India, the Ayurvedic method of shifting to a sattvik fasting diet is followed to identify and eliminate food allergies as it is a safer method that does not lead to severe nutritional disorders.