Allergy testing

Kaelyn was allergy tested at 16 months old so it’s not quite the same, but it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be. In her case, they had allergy done a RAST (blood) test, so they knew that she was allergic to wheat and milk and didn’t test for those. They only tested for foods that she had already eaten. They had me hold her face down on my lap. Dh sat in front of her so she could see him. Then they wrote on her back to mark what each test would be and then use a little plastic thing to do a little scratch for each allergen. It wasn’t pleasant, but it also wasn’t horrible. Then they waited (maybe 20 minutes) and then checked her back for red welts.

It’s interesting to me that they are testing so young. Typically it’s considered to be really inaccurate in someone that little. It took me forever to convince them to test Kaelyn. With Alex they agreed to a RAST at 9 months, but don’t want to do any skin testing until at least a year.

Oh, one other thought, I know it sounds strange, but if there is something that you are really worried about, you might want to make sure that you eat it in the days before the test (if the side effects aren’t totally horrible). They are more likely to react to an allergen if their body has fought it recently. (If they aren’t allergic, then it won’t show as positive because the body didn’t have to “fight” it). Of course, that’s just one school of thought. I”m sure that others have heard differently.

I don’t know of any way that tests for intolerances. Kaelyn’s allergist said that if a child seems to react to a food that showed up as negative on an allergy test than it was probably an intolerance rather than an allergy. That was the closest he came to helping us determine intolerances. After we removed all of Kaelyn’s “allergic” foods, we noticed that she still seemed to react to oranges and strawberries. We removed them from her diet for about 6 months and tried again and she did fine with them the second time around.

Isaac has had skin testing 2x now. Really it is not accurate at this age so just from me hearing the allergist tell me that I would probably not do it until he was older. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. I hope it goes well

If I remember correctly zantac is not allowed b/c of the histamine blocker but ppi’s are fine

ugh, we have him on pepcid right now.. is that a histamine blocker too??

If I remember right, Carson was on Zantac and Prilosec at the time. He does well with Dimetap and was also on that before bed. We only had to stop the Dimetap due to the antihistamine. I would call the allergist’s office. I really don’t think the Pepcid will cause any problems. Let me know, though!

As Natalia said, allergy testing is highly inaccurate before the age of 5. However, there is still definitely some benefit to doing the testing if your child is having problems. We had tried eliminating several foods with Kaelyn before doing testing, but I’m not sure if it would ever have occurred to me to eliminate everything containing all four of her allergens at the same time. So… without testing she never would have gotten relief. (and her poor little body would still be covered in boil-like hives)

Also, while it doesn’t test for intolerances, in our case, once we figured out the foods that were allergy problems, it was a lot easier to identify her intolerances.