Preventative Tips For Avoiding Food Allergic Reactions
September 8th, 2010

Prevention is the best medicine when it comes to preventing an allergic reaction from the food you eat. In order to do so, you must know which foods to avoid which will cause symptoms and other signs of a negative reaction. For people with mild allergies, this may be a minor nuisance. However, for those with life-threatening food allergies, meal times have become a lot harder to work out.

There are risks of cross contamination and even mislabeled food items. In addition, there are foods which may have trace amounts of the allergen that you may not have realized. This happens quite a bit in restaurants as well as dining in other people's homes. If your food allergy has been properly diagnosed, here are a few things to practice in order to prevent allergic reactions from what you eat:

1. Be a diligent food label reader and know what you are putting in your mouth. And when in doubt, ask the food server or chef in a restaurant what the ingredients are in a dish or ask the hostess at the party you are attending what is in the food.

2. Learn to recognize the word derivatives of the food items you are allergic to. For instance, while a product may say dairy-free, it still could contain milk proteins like casein that can trigger a reaction. Eggs will often show up in ingredients listing as albumin or a host of words that start with "ovo" which comes from the Latin form of the word "egg."

3. If your food allergy has already caused severe reactions, you might want to consider wearing a medic alert necklace or bracelet. If you have a reaction and cannot communicate your allergies, the medic bracelet or necklace can alert helpful bystanders and medical personnel of your health issues.

4. Talk with your friends, neighbors, co-workers and anyone else you spend a lot of time with about your food allergies. By informing them, they will turn into your best ally if you have a food reaction in their presence. They would know what was happening and get the proper medical care for you.

5. Create a plan of action should you experience a food reaction. Give the plan to your supervisor at work, administrative staff at school and store it in a central location at home.

6. When your child has the food allergy, be sure to talk with all adults who factor into their life such as daycare workers, teachers, school staff, coaches, neighborhood friends and more so they are all aware of it. Let them know what to do should an allergic reaction occur.

7. Talk with your doctor about carrying epinephrine in anticipation of any future food allergic reactions. If you carry it on your person, you could both self-administer it and possibly save your own life or someone else can do it if you are too incapacitated.

Basically, you need to play the "what if" game with yourself in regards to your food allergies. What if this happens? What should I do? By being able to answer these questions and more, you can actively prevent food allergic reactions.

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