By Morgan Cole
Millions of us in the United States live with food allergies. We carefully balance the freedoms of living our lives and enjoying meals and food with the caution we must exhibit when acknowledging the potential danger in eating in restaurants, in friend’s homes, or even school cafeterias. Going about life with food allergies can be tricky, but there can be further complications as well. Beyond the food allergies and the life style that comes with them, there are other conditions that many with food allergies have to face:
1. Asthma – Asthma is a chronic lung disease that results in a person’s airway narrowing and swelling, which can make it hard for an asthmatic to breath. Infants with food allergies are at higher risk for developing asthma, and people with food allergies are at higher risk for severe asthma.
2. Eczema – Eczema is a skin condition that can make your skin itchy, bumpy, red, and dry. You are more at risk to have eczema if you have been diagnosed with, you guessed it, food allergies and asthma.
3. Environmental Allergies - Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS) is the most mild type of food allergy that has a reaction limited to the lips, mouth, and throat. It is usually diagnosed in people with pollen allergies who eat raw fruit (which can have similar traits to the pollen). In OAS, the body believes it is ingesting the pollen it is allergic to and reacts with an immune response.
While there are established ties between food allergies and the above-mentioned conditions, food allergies can be confused with conditions that are not related. These include autoimmune diseases like Celiac, Chron’s, and Psoriasis. It becomes complicated because these conditions are all related to our immune systems. The difference is that with autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body’s cells when it is supposed to protect them. With food allergies, the immune system mistakenly believes that an outside source - in this case, food - is dangerous, so it tries to attack the food and floods the body with an immune response.
Although all this information may seem overwhelming, the good news is that many of these diseases that arise ancillary to food allergies are treatable either with medication or careful dietary selection. We all look forward to a day when our food allergies and adjacent medical conditions are curable, but in the meantime when it comes to food allergies, forewarned is forearmed!
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