Allergy tests ordered, or results in hand?
What a positive test can and cannot show, component tests, food challenges, and IgG panels.
4 guides, about 16 minutes in all
Read this first
Allergy tests, and why IgG panels do not diagnose allergy
How allergy is diagnosed, the difference between being sensitized and being allergic, what component tests add, and what allergy societies say about IgG food panels.
Then, in this order
- Food allergy: the basics
What researchers mean by a food allergy, how often it is real, what can look like one, and what studies report about outgrowing it.
- Cross-reactivity
Why an allergy to one food or pollen can bring reactions to related foods, and where research finds that this is common and where it is rare.
- Pollen, dust mite, pets and mold
What allergic rhinitis is, how it is diagnosed, the treatments guidelines describe, and what the research shows, and does not show, about mold.
The allergist visit checklist
What to note, bring and ask, on one printable page.
Other places to start
Food allergy just diagnosed?
What a food allergy is, how labels work, which foods travel together, and the emergency plan.
6 guides
Worried about a severe reaction?
Anaphylaxis and epinephrine, hives, alpha-gal, and reactions during anesthesia.
4 guides
Starting solid foods with a baby?
Peanut and egg in infancy, eczema, and reactions that look different in babies.
4 guides
Sneezing every spring?
Pollen, dust mite, pets and mold, pollen and food together, and treatments that change the allergy.
4 guides
