Unknown food allergy. Anyone had this too?

Question

About once or twice a year, I get an extreme allergic reaction to food - but I'm not sure which food causes it.

After eating, my stomach will feel like a pit of acid, and then I begin to get a horrible rash all over my body. The rash will start under my arms, between my legs, and on my chest - and it'll eventually go all over. It is unbearably itchy - even in my throat and eyes. My heart will begin to beat extrodinarily fast, and I will become very nauseus. It feels like there is swelling under my chin and that my throat is closing up.

The only thing that stops the allergy is two Benadryl tablets.

The symptoms are incredibly awful, and I honestly think that without an antihistamine I would probably die.

I've recorded the foods that have given me the allergy, and they seem unrelated: macaroni & cheese, chicken burger, cocoa powder... so I figure it must be some contaminant.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Thanks for the excellent replies so far! To answer one of the questions, no the allergies don't seem to occur at a certain time of year.

One thing to note though, I had macaroni & cheese before with no allergic reaction.
But after the time it gave me the allergic reaction, I stopped having it.

Answer 1

Hi, flawless51. That's a pretty scary reaction, and I agree with the other people that you should look into getting an epi-pen, because at some point you may find that the Benadryl doesn't work.

Since the Benadryl does work, though, it is almost certainly a true allergic reaction, and the first thing you should do is see an allergist and describe what happens. Most likely, for food allergies, he or she will recommend a skin test or a RAST blood test to begin with. While these tests usually provide accurate results, the only sure way to diagnose a food allergy is through a double-blind, placebo-controlled challenge test, where you actually consume the suspected allergen (usually an extract of it in a capsule) under close medical supervision. See this page for a brief overview:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/990115ap/415.html (scroll down a bit to the Diagnosis section)

There are several other allergy tests, but they're scientifically unproven, and they tend to diagnose people with allergies that they don't really have. We had an interesting discussion on allergy testing in the WEGO Health allergy and asthma forums (I'm a community moderator there), and several of our community members have had experience with both conventional and unconventional allergy testing, so there's a ton of good information in this thread:

http://forums.wegohealth.com/forums/viewthread/87_25/

Someone else recommended you keep a food diary, but I disagree. Food diaries are very useful for people with frequent allergic reactions, but if you only get this once or twice a year, you'll be spending a lot of time recording all your food for nothing. It's really not practical in your case, especially since you've already noted the foods that you seem to react to.

Speaking of these foods, they do seem pretty unrelated, and if indeed your reaction is to one of these foods, you're probably reacting not to the food but to some contaminant. I also suspect the true allergy may be to something other than the foods you listed. The ingredients in mac and cheese, for example, are found in a ton of other stuff, so if you have a gluten or wheat allergy, or a dairy allergy, you'd be having these reactions a lot more often. The same can be said for chicken and cocoa powder. I'm assuming you probably eat these foods far more than once or twice a year, and if you're allergic to them, you would expect to get at least some reaction every time you eat them -- which doesn't sound like it's happening. All those foods are also foods which are rarely eaten by themselves. It may be hard to remember, but is there some other food that you might have eaten around the same time that you had the reactions? Peanut allergies, for instance, can often be triggered by incredibly small contaminations of peanut that aren't supposed to be in a food, and baked goods or chocolate containing cocoa powder are one of the more often contaminated foods.

Further complicating the matter is that your allergy may not even be to a food. You could be reacting to some environmental allergen. Try to think not only what you ate when you had these reactions, but also where you were and if anything else was unusual about the circumstances.

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded response. The most important thing to take away from this, though, is that your allergy does indeed seem serious or even life-threatening, so it's very important to see a board-certified allergist without delay to try to figure out what's causing the problem. Even if they're not able to figure it out immediately, they will likely prescribe an Epi Pen, which may save your life.

Answer 2

I have that reaction to a lot of things - and no one can help you figure it out, except maybe an allergist. My allergist got me started, but what I found REALLY helped was a food diary.

Go buy something cheap, and small enough to carry with you. Every time you eat something, write it down, in detail, including time and date. Try to inspect your food for what might be in it (this has cheese, pepperoni, tomatoes, black olives, flour - that would, of course, be a pizza). I even write down where I bought it (which restaurant, deli, etc.)

It's hard, at first, but it gets a lot easier with practice. Even write down what you drink (water, diet Pepsi, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi with Splenda instead of Nutrasweet, etc).

Remember, sometimes an allergic reaction will be quick (when I ate sunflower seed butter last week, it took 5 minutes for me to have the reaction you described), but sometimes, it it's less severe, it'll be an hour, and for just a rash/hives, it could be three days.

Whenever you have a reaction, check your food diary - soon your start to see patterns of things that you know you can't eat. If you have trouble seeing a pattern, this is a great tool to take to your allergist - sometimes they'll see patterns that you can't, because they're trained to do this kind of thing.

Now that I've done this for about two years, I've stopped keeping the diary (I found most of my triggers), but I find that if I have a reaction to something, my mind is still keeping this food diary, even though I have no paper diary, and I can figure out what caused it).

Oh, and by the way, the symptoms you described verge on anaphylactic shock. You should see a doctor about an epi-pen (epinephrine-pen) in case your throat closes - the epinephrine will help to remedy that and is what they would administer in an ambulance for anaphylactic shock.

Answer 3

Maybe MSG? I know it's in mac & cheese, but I'm not sure about the others. Is it around the same two times every year, or does it vary? That could be important.

Oh, and you might want to see about getting an Epi pen. I don't imagine you'd have a hard time getting a prescription for one. It might be a good idea to get allergy tested anyway. It's really not so bad.

Answer 4

You can be alleric to the most innocuous thing possible. Maybe it's a food coloring in all three of those items. Or a preservative. First thing into my head is possibly a filler or a chemical that holds that food together. Your allergy is dangerous and I think you should consider getting not the usual "scratch" allergy testing, but the bloodwork allergy testing. If it is as bad as you are describing, you need to get some epinephrine shots to keep with you. Please see a doc. I have tons of food allergies and it's not something to be taken lightly.

Answer 5

Oh dear..

I've not experienced what you describe. But I do know people and critters who have.

It could be that you are reacting to some additive. Or you could have multiple food allergies.

One of my friends has exhibited allergies to most meats and a number of fruits, so she has had to adopt a vegan diet.

Have you talked with an allergist about this?

Good luck!