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There is a distinction between food allergy testing and food allergy treatments. In a way, the food allergy testing process can be more trying and difficult than the food allergy treatment part of your recovery process. But testing is crucial because the only way you and your doctor can devise a plan to deal with your food allergies is if you know exactly what you are up against.
With only a few exceptions, there is no cure for allergies. That is because allergies are not like an illness and they are not caused by a virus or a bug. An allergy is a malfunction of the immune system that reacts to a certain toxic level of allergen in your system. The allergen may be something that is perfectly normal and healthy to most people like milk or eggs. But because your immune system has decided that substance is dangerous, it attacks the allergen when it enters your system. The symptoms you suffer from are actually from the defensive things your immune system does to "fight" the allergen.
So there is really no way to cure that. But there are several different approaches to food allergy treatments that can help you learn to live with your allergy more successfully and avoid more allergy problems in the future.
Run Away!
The most common way to approach food allergy treatments is avoidance. Briefly said, you rearrange your life so you do not come in contact whatever it is you are allergic to. By eliminating the food from your diet that is setting off your allergy, this kind of food allergy treatment eliminates the potential of an allergic reaction entirely.
There is also some encouragement coming from the medical community about the value of avoidance as a food allergy treatment. In some cases by avoiding the allergen entirely, the immune system has a chance to recover from the allergy, which means that the allergy may simply go away over time. That is hopeful news indeed.
Mix It Up in There!
A rotation diet is a food allergy treatment designed to reduce the amount and the frequency that problem foods enter your system. The idea is to have a four day rotation where you cycle key food out of your diet every fourth day. When you do include a food that is part of the food allergy treatment, it is introduced in very small quantities so that the immune system has less to react to and it reacts to the food less frequently. In a way, this is a way of "teaching:" your immune system to get used to the problem food. The rotation diet can be an effective food allergy treatment but you should work with this
Is There a Pill for This?
A similar food allergy treatment to the rotation diet seeks to introduce low levels of the allergen to the system with the objective of helping the immune system adapt to that food allergen. But instead of using a food allergy treatment that uses diet to introduce food allergens in a controlled way, food injections or food drops accomplish the same goal.
This approach to food allergy treatment is also helpful with dealing with cravings for the foods that have become an allergy for you. The low dosage of the food can reduce those cravings by giving you a small dosage of the food you desire while staying under the level that would set off a severe allergic reaction.
Food injections of food drops are often very effective food allergy treatments because they are very carefully customized to each patient by your allergist. As medical science continues to research new and innovative food allergy treatments, we can expect even more effective ways to cure food allergies in the near future.
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