Get a pulse on your food allergies today...

For those suffering from food allergies, the only way to prevent a reaction is to steer clear from offending foods. This means being knowledgeable of what foods you're able to eat. Read on to discover an effective method you can use to get a handle on your food allergies.

Did you know that food allergies will affect nearly everyone at some point?

That’s why “it is extremely important for people who have food allergies to identify them and prevent allergic reactions to food because these reactions can cause devastating illness and in some cases be fatal,” cautions WebMD.

Luckily, Dr Jonathan Wright of Nutrition & Healing has just the solution.

According to Dr Wright, years ago, Dr Arthur Coca popularised the “pulse test” for food allergy. He found that some (but definitely not all) allergic individuals have a significant increase in their resting pulse after eating a particular food allergen.

This means curbing your allergies starts with observing certain trigger foods that you eat. And the good thing is, you can make these observations on your own, at home.

Here’s how to control your food allergies

“To get started, get a notebook you can use to record each day’s measurements and make sure you have an accurate bathroom scale,” says Dr Wright.

Weigh yourself each morning and evening for several days (a week if possible) and record those numbers in the notebook.

During that same week, take your resting pulse just before and again one hour after your largest meal of the day (and if possible before and one hour after other meals too).

At the end of the week, take a look at your measurements.

“A person’s pulse might increase as much as eight to 20 beats or more per minute after certain meals. It’s also not unusual to see a 1 to 3 kilos (or more) weight gain in one day. And the added “weight” can persist for two or more days,” explains Dr Wright.

If you notice that either situation occurred in your observations, it may mean that you have some form of food allergy. Once you’ve determined that you may have food allergies, make an appointment to have complete clinical testing done to determine what specific foods are causing problems for you.

These clinical tests are available at Dischem and in laboratories.

Two important factors to note about allergy tests

Two cautions: While either a ‘positive’ pulse or water weight test (or both) almost always signals food allergies, ‘negative’ tests don’t necessarily mean you don’t have them.

“Any body system can react to food allergy. Some allergies may affect your pulse or weight, while other allergies don’t affect pulse or weight at all,” says Dr Wright. Also, if you just happen to not eat any of the things you’re allergic to, your self-observation will be ‘negative’.

“If you have persistent health issues that don’t seem to get better no matter what you do, you should still consider having thorough screening done even if you get a negative result on your self-test,’ advises Dr Wright.

Tags: food allergies, how to test for food allergies, managing food allergies