You can only be allergic to something that you’ve had before! So, you’ll never be allergic to something that you’ve only been exposed to once.

However, you can suddenly develop an allergy to something that you’ve been exposed to thousands of times without a reaction. In fact, according to Amin Kanani of the allergy and clinical immunology division at UBC, it’s becoming more common to see allergies arise in adulthood.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a theory that explains this upward trend in allergies, nor does the field of medicine have a “silver bullet” treatment. Medical researchers hypothesize that our modern life is too clean and that we get allergies because our bodies are not exposed frequently enough to real invaders, so our immune system begins to become over-reactive to common everyday substances.  Those common substances could include your favorite food.

At this point in time, the best medical advice for food allergies is to avoid the allergen! While alternative medicine does offer some treatments for food allergies, you’ll have to keep a couple of disadvantages in mind: these treatments may or may not be covered by your health insurance and these treatments may or may not work in your particular circumstance.