The food challenge test

The food challenge test can help validate the continuing existence and severity of a food allergy.

Food allergies can evolve over time. Many food allergies noted during childhood disappear or decrease in adulthood. But foods causing allergic reactions are immediately eliminated from diets, so there is little opportunity to discover if you still have the allergy. In the meantime, you may have completely changed your lifestyle to work around a restrictive diet. So if you noted a food allergy years ago and haven’t eaten that food since, a food challenge test can give you a definite answer to whether you still have that allergy.

Even if your food allergy is minor and not life altering, the food challenge can be key in a future diagnosis. Just like some allergies disappear, we also develop new ones. If you no longer have an allergic reaction to a food, it can be ruled out as a cause for similar symptoms.

Food allergies are hard to diagnose, and even harder when they disappear or develop over the course of our lives. Even the first line of allergy diagnosis, the skin prick and blood prick tests, give somewhat ambiguous results because they only test if there is a chance of allergy to a food. They do not offer definite answers on existence and severity of the food allergy.

The food challenge test takes several hours and occurs under medical staff supervision with immediate treatment if there is an allergic reaction. The patient is given a small amount of the suspected food, monitored for reaction, and then given another larger dose of the food, and again monitored for reaction. During the course of this test, your reactions or lack of to certain doses of the suspected food help determine if you are allergic to that food and how much of that food you have to ingest before you have an allergic reaction.

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Stuff you should always admit to your doctor

1. Bad eating habits: Many people don’t keep track of their eating habits and do not realize how much unhealthy food they are consuming. Some do and still do not admit that they are eating too much fried foods or high sodium take out food to their doctors.

An unhealthy diet is far too easy to deprioritize during a doctor’s office visit. But this is an important detail to share with your doctor so that blood work can be ordered with annual physicals to track and manage lipids and cholesterol. If there are issues, they can be a great wake up call to change diet habits asap and make an informed decision about what you eat daily. A healthy diet is an important basic for a healthy life.

2. Alcohol or Drug use, recreational or addiction: Many more young adults are smoking recreationally marijuana these days and it’s often not disclosed during doctors visits. But even importantly, addiction to alcohol or other drugs is often not disclosed, especially if the addiction is not acknowledged.

Alcohol and drugs affect your body in a multitude of ways, and can help explain certain illnesses, appetite or energy issues, etc. Knowing that a patient uses alcohol or drugs, recreationally or abusively, can provide a whole new lens on your medical care. Even at the most basic level, many medications should not be taken in conjunction with alcohol and drugs.

3. Severe Constipation or blood in stool: It could be embarrassing to talk about this with anyone, including your doctor. Some people even accept constipation as a way of life or ignore blood in stool if it only happens once.

But either could indicate severe gut bacterial problems or an even more severe and life threatening illness. It is important to mention these issues to your doctor in case they could be evidence of a larger health problem.

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