ALLERGIES TO FOOD – CONCLUSION
Most of the substances are salicylates or their derivatives. Dr Feingold listed 13 groups of additives which contain more than 2500 different chemicals.
One of the most common is called tartrazine and is a yellow dye. It is a salicylate and related to aspirin and is also known by a variety of other names or codes. It is widely used, not only in food, but also to color medicines and tablets.
One of the difficulties of the allergist investigating his patients is that so few foods are labelled with all of the ingredients. This also poses a problem for parents in choosing foods for their allergic children.
At the moment, the most reliable method of determining if a person is allergic to a particular food is to eliminate it from the diet and see if this relieves the allergy. The suspected food should then be re-introduced to see if the allergy recurs. This procedure may need to be repeated on two or more occasions.
Sodium cromoglycate is a drug widely used in allergic asthma and hay fever. It is produced in powder form made up into capsules. The capsule is inserted in a special inhaler, punctured to release the powder which is inhaled into the lungs or the nose.
It does not relieve the acute symptoms but acts to prevent the onset of the allergy by blocking the action of the allergen from acting on cells in the tissues known as mast cells.
The allergen causes these cells to rupture and release histamine-like substances which act on the tissues and produce the allergic response.
Recently, this drug has been used by mouth to block the action of food allergens in the digestive system. Food allergies only go to show that “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
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