In many cases, allergies are quickly diagnosed by a trusted family physician after only a few questions. This happens for many reasons, not the least of which is that some allergies are easy to spot. For instance, if it’s hay fever season and your child is sneezing and rubbing those itchy, watery eyes - the answer is pretty clear.
However, not all allergies are so obvious. Many of us (myself included) have been diagnosed with allergies, when the more accurate diagnosis was food intolerance. While this may seem like splitting hairs, it’s not. The long-term issues and disease development of allergies can be very different from other auto-immune issues.
Which brings me to the reason why I’m thinking about this: I’ve been having all kinds of immediate reactions after certain foods. I’m tired within a an hour or two of eating. Sometimes things aren’t digesting well. I’m craving certain items. It’s started just recently, after I received a “treatment” at a local medical clinic to which I reacted very poorly. However, I know that I’m clear of all allergies - I just had a full run of RAST blood tests and I didn’t react to any of the substances tested.
This had led me to wonder: is it possible that I never had allergies?
Yes, it is. And that’s more common than you might think. Allergies are a complex set of immune system reactions. Each person’s unique symptom profile can be very different. So, while anyone could diagnose my son’s sneezing fits as hay fever bouts, other allergy symptoms can be tougher to pin. For instance, my son also can have a strange, hollow sounding cough - and no other sign of a problem. Turns out that this is an indicator of a low grade but constant sinus inflammation for him, caused by pollen. The inflamed sinuses create a post-nasal drip that is so subtle, he doesn’t even know that it’s happening. However, that same post-nasal drip is actually the cause of the sleep-disrupting bark that we’ve nicknamed the “harp seal” cough.
The moral of the story? If you have a chronic symptom that is affecting your life, it’s worth it to be tested. You might even want to push your doctor or health professional a little - especially if you suspect something yourself. My son’s cough (which we’d been simply putting up with for a long time) has been largely resolved with good management of his allergies - including his sinuses. Our naturopathic doctor recommended that. If we hadn’t found out that his cough was related coming from his sinuses and was allergy-related, we would not be doing the right things for it.
