Alergy Test?? Any good?

fugee

Hi
I have had eczema for most of my life but nothing too serious. Just creases of arms and legs on an off. Easily treated with hydra cortizone.

Anyway in the past year I am beginning to get more rashes that i am not sure are eczema. There on the top of my legs, back of calfs, all over back.

I am not sure what it is but I am recently beginning to think that it gets worse when I drink beer. I have the same drinking habits for the past 10 years so nothing has changed.

Would it be advisable to see if I can get an allergy test? I have heard that they tell you that you are nearly allergic to everything.

Any help or advise would be great.

kittensoft1984

i had one done there recently in a health food shop.

found out i was allergic to processed sugar....as in those found in foods.

it can be useful but you do need to go to a qualified professional for it

whatthe...

where did you go to get this done?
I always thought that you had to have a referral by a doctor to have a full allergy test done. Maybe Im wrong though.

kittensoft1984

it was a health food shop......

they do them and they are fully qualified to do so...

fugee

how much did it cost and how long did you have to wait for your results?

I thought this was a blood test but obviously not if a health shop can do it. Can you explain the process

have you noticed a difference since banning the sugars from your diet?

missingtime

I have Psorasis and I got an alergy test done in a health food shop.
She took a wand and pressed it against where my thumb and my fore finger meet.
Then the device that made a whirring noice depending on which type of alergin was inserted into it.

Turned out I was alergic to fun - Dairy, Sugar, Sweets, Chocolate, Pork, MSG, and some other stuff.

It was too much to take on, I'm trying to cut back on sugar tho.

tallaght01

most of the tests in health food shops are rubbish.

You can get them done in clinics, by dermatologists/immunologists fi you think you have a genuine allergy.

Up until I finished working in the UK last august I was getting loads of parents bringing their kids into clinic with their kids. The local health food shop was sending strands of their hair to some lab in York and telling them all their kids were allergic to various bits and bobs. They claimed most of them were allergic to copper, interestingly.

DrIndy

Copper? How are you allergic to that?

tallaght01

I think copper allergy is fair enough if it's a contact allergy.

BUt they were sending these kids in, saying they were allergic to copper as a trace element in food!!

Christ knows how they worked that out.

They also do deficiency testing on the hair. So one kid rocks in, with a note from this lab saying he was both deficient in copper, and allergic to it!!

What the hell do you do about that?

Tree

but you cant' be allergic to metals! they've no epitopes for the antibodies to bind too!

allergy tests are either IgE levels in a blood sample or contact skin prick tests and these can give different results depending on the allergen/person involved. both are useful though.

tallaght01

It's very rare, but there have been a few cases of proper copper allergy reported in the literature.

Apparently.

Tree

bizzare. and it's specifically to copper and not to copper containing proteins?

tallaght01

well, I'm no immunologist. But I'm pretty sure allergy to pure copper has been demonstrated.

I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.

Like I said, though, very rare. Hence my surprise when about half the kiddies in Glasgow turned out to be allergic

The other half were copper deficient, or selenium deficient :P

2Scoops

tallaght01 wrote: »

Hence my surprise when about half the kiddies in Glasgow turned out to be allergic

The other half were copper deficient, or selenium deficient :P

It's all that IRN-BRU they drink, the mad yokes.

charlieroot

Tree wrote: »

but you cant' be allergic to metals! they've no epitopes for the antibodies to bind too!

allergy tests are either IgE levels in a blood sample or contact skin prick tests and these can give different results depending on the allergen/person involved. both are useful though.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but only type I-III hypersensivities are antibody mediated. Type IV or Delayed Type Hypersensivity (DTH ) is T-Cell mediated. In which case an antigen presenting cell for example a dendritic cell in skin tissue could present a metal[1] or some metal containing compound to activate a T-Cell releasing cytokines giving an inflammatory response. I understand this to be the etiology for nickel allergies?

Noel.

[1] Copper, nickel whatever

DrIndy

think charlieroot is onto something........