It may surprise you to hear that there’s a connection between eczema and allergies. The two may seem like two completely different issues, but there is a solid connection between them. This has prompted experts to wonder if allergy testing could help those suffering from eczema.
There’s a current conversation about the connection between eczema and food allergies. The question being, “does having eczema make developing food allergies more common than those without food allergies? Can food allergies cause eczema? Does one worsen the other with time?
Evidence suggests that those who suffer from the disease are more likely to develop food allergies than those without. Those who have a food allergy are also more likely to have eczema, in moderate to severe cases.
Allergy Testing’s Role
The idea with allergy testing and eczema is that having an allergy test could help sufferers to alleviate their symptoms. Allergy testing tests for the IgE antibody – If you have an allergic reaction, IgE will be present. This could also help understand if the patient is suffering from eczema as a result of the food allergy.
Identifying and avoiding a food allergy has been known to help clear up cases of eczema. Most people imagine an allergic reaction to cause symptoms like anaphylaxis and swelling rather than skin conditions, but there is a wide range of symptoms which can arise from an allergic reaction. And eczema is one of these.
If you’re experiencing a bout of eczema, you should first figure out which topical problems could be causing it. Is it new hygiene products or laundry detergent? Maybe something in the local environment? It doesn’t make sense to get an allergy test until these are all ruled out as possibilities.
The research shows that food allergy testing could lead to curing eczema and that, when used early in the diagnostic process, it could save lots of time and effort. Not to mention that it can pinpoint an unknown food allergy. Only time and experience will tell whether or not allergy testing can help cure eczema. But it’s exciting to imagine such a cure exists, especially with those who are regularly dealing with severe cases of eczema and seeing no real results from traditional treatment.
While some are trying to connect the dots between eczema and food allergies — and which comes first — it’s clear that food allergy testing could be the key to the dealing with eczema.
