What is Food Allergy?

Food allergies occur when your immune system makes a mistake. Normally, your immune system protects you from germs and diseases. It does this by making antibodies that help you fight off bacteria, viruses, and other tiny organisms that can make you sick. But if you have a food allergy, your immune system mistakenly treats something in a certain food as if it's really dangerous to you and triggers a reaction.

What are the types of Allergies?

Food non-compatibility can be at many levels like the mild incompatibility whereby the person gets the symptoms after some days and the symptoms gradually worsen with time with the continued usage of the offending food. The symptoms of mild food allergy are very innocuous like a headache, sinus flare up, joints pains, wheezing,   and water retention. People have mild incompatibility with many foods like curd  which makes them feel heavy or exacerbates sinusitis, some people feel that eating apples gives them gas and makes them feel bloated, some get the same feeling with  boiled rice etc.  

Severe food incompatibility may also be at higher level where the body, after recognizing the foreign antigen, mounts an instantaneous, rapid overwhelming response to the trigger food. This hyper response to the trigger foods sets a chain of reactions where the person instantly feels ill, sneezing, difficulty in breathing. If the reaction is too strong it is labeled an "anaphylactic reaction" where the person has to be hospitalized in order to be treated on an emergency level. 

Diseases which are associated with food allergy are arthritis, migraine, asthma, skin allergies, weak liver and obesity of unknown cause.

What are the common trigger foods?

There can be different trigger foods but they affect the individual according to the genetic constitution, so while some get uncomfortable with rice and enjoy milk without trouble, many others find that milk triggers the symptoms. The common trigger foods include...

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