Allergy or intolerance?
Going through life feeling like food is your enemy is unproductive and unsettling when you are trying to go about your day to day life as normally as possible. If you’re looking at learning how to better our life when it comes specifically to food, it might be helpful to take a look at determining whether you are living with a food allergy or a food intolerance.
Allergy or intolerance?
Here are the key differences that you need to know between a food allergy and a food intolerance. There are more differences to be aware of, but these are the main ones that you can expect to see when you’re trying to figure out which of the two it is.
- Allergy: When you have a food allergy, your reactions are going to be more extreme. Not only can they happen from a small, tiny amount of the food, the reaction itself will also be more extreme. For example, you’ll have issues with your heartbeat speeding up, your mouth feeling funny and more. The reaction will be severe even when just a tiny bite of the food in question. Food allergies can also be life-threatening.
Common food allergens include peanuts, eggs, sulphates and more. The reaction doesn’t necessarily have to be life-threatening for it to be an allergy. Even a simple rash in reaction to a bite of the suspected food is enough to tell you which one it is.
- Intolerance: A food intolerance means that your reaction is going to be tied to how much of the food you actually ingest. For instance, having a bit of cheese, if you’re lactose intolerant, is not going to upset you much, if at all. If you eat a large plate of cheese or something with ice cream, you’ll have a bigger reaction for it. The reaction itself can is often discomfort in your stomach, increased acid, or bathroom issues.
It’s important to note that food intolerances and food allergies are both important to understand. Just because an intolerance isn’t life-threatening, doesn’t make it any less serious. You just need to understand what foods are making you react that way so that you can restrict them and help keep your body in full working order.
What to do about it
If you’re still not sure if you want to have your suspicions confirmed — always a good idea — you’ll want to look at professional and accurate allergy testing. Not only will you be able to have everything on record about your food allergies issues, it will also help you to detect any other sensitivity or intolerance issues that you may or may not know that you have.
Getting back to your regular life means that you are going to have to be ready to take on your food-related challenges. By putting time and focus into allergy testing, you’ll be able to get back in the driver’s seat for your life. Even if you didn’t think it was possible, allergy testing could be just the helping hand you need.
To purchase your test please visit our tests.
