Allergy Testing

Supercell

Hi ,

I suffer from exzema, which in the last six months has gotten steadily worse and worse. I've tried changing all my clothing to 100% pure cotton, I've given up smoking and drinking, but nothing makes a difference it's just getting worse and worse.
I haven't changed jobs in about 18 months and have been living in the same place about a year now, so dont think its enviornment or work/stress related.

Only conclusion i can draw is that perhaps i've become allergic to certain foods i may not have been before. I have always been allergic to fish and nuts, so wouldn't be suprised at all if my exzema was somehow food related.

Looking on the web i see many DIY allergy testing kits whereby you take a small same of blood yourself and send off to a lab for analysis, but would really prefer to speak to a human and have the test done professionally.

Is this something I can ask my gp to do or are there any specialised skin clinics in the Dublin area that would be better making an appointment with that anyone here may know of or used themselves?

Victor

Yeah, talk to your GP, he can either give direct advice or refer you on.

jamsterboy

Ya man go to your GP and get an I.G.E and I.G.G blood test test done, these will tell you wether if you have an allergy to common food allergens like dairy, egg etc or dustmite, cat, dog, mould etc. I did and discovered all the years id been missing full health,after learning how to manage em, as a matter a fact i would say everybody should be tested for allergies at least once a year to keep records straight! hope it goes well for you.

Fionnanc

A lot fo these labs that advertise to send in your own samples are bullsh1t.
The test results invariably find u allergic to a whole range of foodstuffs and then try to sell you "nutritional supplement"

kelle

I would suggest going to a Kinesiologist. They use muscle testing to check which foods you are allergic to. My mother (now sadly RIP) was a Kinesiologist and I know she helped a lot of eczema sufferers. Information here

DrIndy

please go to a consultant immunologist at an allergy clinic for any diagnosis of allergy - there is a lot of quackery around and people searching for a quick buck

kelle

DrIndy wrote: »

please go to a consultant immunologist at an allergy clinic for any diagnosis of allergy - there is a lot of quackery around and people searching for a quick buck

I hate when alternative medicine is dismissed as quackery. Dr. Indy, please don't knock it if you haven't tried it. I'm not exactly a big fan of it myself, but I know people who have benefitted from it when doctors were not able to help.

My mother suffered from Agoraphobia for 20 years. She attended different doctors, each only able to offer her more and more tablets which did her no good. Then, in 1991, somebody suggested she visit a Kinesiologist. This Kinesiologist did tests on her and advised her to stop eating about 20 different foods. She followed her new diet with great difficulty, she was very weak for a few days then she noticed a turnaround - she no longer suffered Agoraphobia and never looked back. As a result, she trained to be a Kinesiologist and practised as one for 10 years, before she sadly got cancer and died. At her funeral, so many prople I never met before came up to me and told me how my mother helped them. And she didn't do it to make a fast buck, she charged a hell of a lot less than a GP visit.

DrIndy

Without triggering another alternative medicine debate - there are areas of alternative therapy which do have scientific basis - acupuncture is one example - but people who purport to be alternative allergy diagnosticians use murky means of assessment including hair analysis.

This is expensive and unhelpful because the resulting usually erroneous conclusion mean people have a huge range of foods banned from their diet and the ensuing unhappiness that results from not being able to eat foods you want.

Allergy testing can be done formally and conclusively in an immunology/allergy clinic and specific allergens can be directly detected.

AtomicHorror

Kelle, I consider the matter of alternative medicines and evidence to be very important and so I hope you will not take this personally. It is of course sad to hear of the loss of your mother and pleasing to hear that she was held in such high regard. However, there's no evidence that applied kinesiology works (I assume you meant this and not the field of kinesiology which does not involve allergy tests). Anecdotal evidence is worthless for many reasons that we've discussed here before. Subjective assessments of efficacy and causality cannot be trusted at all (this has been proven time and again in a great many psychology studies), that is why statistics were invented in the first place.

kelle wrote: »

I hate when alternative medicine is dismissed as quackery. Dr. Indy, please don't knock it if you haven't tried it. I'm not exactly a big fan of it myself, but I know people who have benefitted from it when doctors were not able to help.

Dr Indy is displaying appropriate scepticism. "Don't knock it till you try it" is bad advice in most situations. But when it comes to our health, it is terrible advice. We have clinical trials so that people don't have to take risks themselves every time they want to test the efficacy of a thing. And risk there is. If alternative treatments have the same potential to help as conventional medicines then it would be foolish to assume that they do not also have the same potential to harm. And if they have neither, then we need to know that too.

kelle wrote: »

My mother suffered from Agoraphobia for 20 years. She attended different doctors, each only able to offer her more and more tablets which did her no good. Then, in 1991, somebody suggested she visit a Kinesiologist. This Kinesiologist did tests on her and advised her to stop eating about 20 different foods. She followed her new diet with great difficulty, she was very weak for a few days then she noticed a turnaround - she no longer suffered Agoraphobia and never looked back. As a result, she trained to be a Kinesiologist and practised as one for 10 years, before she sadly got cancer and died.

With respect, anecdotes are not evidence of anything. When you tease applied kinesiology apart and look at its ability to detect allergy, it's just not there. At all. When you blind the patient and kinesiologist to what substance is being tested, muscle twitch results cannot differentiate between allergen and placebo. There's no correlation between the results they get and any other measure of allergy. So maybe it's measuring something, but it sure isn't allergy. What people may feel about it is one thing, what it does is something else.

kelle wrote: »

At her funeral, so many prople I never met before came up to me and told me how my mother helped them. And she didn't do it to make a fast buck, she charged a hell of a lot less than a GP visit.

I'm sure she wasn't interested in a "fast buck", but was basing her belief in AK on personal experience. As to what she charged versus a GP- I do find GPs very pricey myself, but they train for some 10 years to get to their position. How long does AK training take?

AtomicHorror

DrIndy wrote: »

Without triggering another alternative medicine debate - there are areas of alternative therapy which do have scientific basis - acupuncture is one example...

Wasn't that shown to be only as effective as sham acupuncture?

g.quagmire

Hi Supercell

I also suffer from exzema all my life but twice in the last 12 months went into anafilactic shock for some reason.My GP told me whether it true or not that there's only 1 person in the country worth getting an allergy test from a consultant in Dublin.I have asked my doc to make an appointment with him/her for me as soon as I get the letter with details I'll post up his/her name if thats aloud.

aidan.connolly

Hi,
From my experience, having a daugther with a serious allergy and also has a high risk of Anaphylaxis. I found Prof Mary Keogan in Beaumont hospital excellent. My daugthers condition is triggered by a serious allergy to nuts or even nuts traces.
Good luck with it.