When food allergy test come back negative

[Kelly78]

I have struggled with outbreaks of hives and stomach cramps which were worse than labor pains I finally broke down and gave a blood to test to check for fruit dairy wheat nuts all the basic allergies. Well everything came back fine. Today I ate an egg mcmuffin from mcdonalds something I have never had problems with before and here I am in severe stomach pain on the  John TMI sorry  It normally starts within an hour after eating.  I have no idea what to do since the tests say one thing and I know for a fact my body is rejecting something  It's mostly eating out where the problems occur It is causing anxiety always worrying if I will need a bathroom after an outing etc!!! Any tips please send them
Kelly

[Janelle205]

What I would start doing is keeping a food diary in conjunction with a list of your symptoms.  It may not be that certain foods are causing your problems, but even if you can't connect it to food, you will have a list of symptoms and times to take to the doctor.

Ultimately, what you may have is a food intolerance rather than an allergy, which wouldn't show up on an allergy test.  If it's not an IGE mediated allergy (the kind that the allergist would test for), at least you wouldn't have to worry about an anaphylactic reaction, but intolerances can still make you miserable - just ask me when I'm foolish enough to eat ice cream without lactaid.  Hopefully if it is food related, a diary will help you link things up so that you can try eliminating a few things at a time (do not start just cutting out major food groups completely without talking to a doc) to see if it helps.  I have a combination of life threating allergies and intolerances - my allergists viewpoint is that while I don't have to worry as much if I was to accidentally ingest something that is just an intolerance, it doesn't make sense to eat something that makes me miserable, as long as I'm getting a balanced diet.

Another thought - have you been tested for celiac?  I don't have any experience with this, but there are a few board members who do - hopefully they will chime in.

I will say that your combination of hives and stomach cramps is very much how my soy allergy presents when I've been accidentally 'soybeaned'.  While I can't compare the abdominal pain to labor pains, because I don't have experience with that, they are definitely curl up in a ball on the floor and cry pains.  The only worse thing that I can remember is getting my dry sockets packed after my wisdom tooth extraction - and I passed out and woke up on oxygen when they did that.

[YouKnowWho]

Have you had your gall bladder evaluated as well?  Looking back, I had trigger foods (and that certainly would have been one of them).

Have you been evaluated for irritable bowel syndrome?

Are your hives immediate after eating an offending food?  Could it be that the cramping and other issues are separate?

[CMdeux]

Yes, the hives and GI distress sound EXACTLY how my DH's soy allergy works.

Sometimes he doesn't get hives anymore-- just the GI distress, sometimes really severe.   


How were you tested, exactly, and what to?

Because there are some things which are much more common as adult-onset allergies than others-- and if you were blood tested, there's a reasonable chance that it was a false negative.  If you were skin tested, did your allergist do a histamine control?  Did it cause a welt?

[Jenmag7]

I got pains like that on and off for a while and suspected I had a food allergy as well.  Turns out it was gallstones.  The pain I experienced with them was far worse than labor (and I've had 3 kids!) and left me on the floor, unable to move or talk.  And high fat foods tend to trigger attacks.  I had my gallbladder removed and the pain is gone. 

[SweetandSour]

My first blood test came back negative. Just wanted to throw that out there.