Cybele Pascal has been studying food allergies ever since she learned that her son had problems with them. Food allergies should not be taken lightly. They tell you your body can't handle the foods you are feeding it, and your body is having adverse reactions on a multi-system level.

Cybele Pascal would be the first to tell you to pay attention to what your body is saying. Feed it well and protect it from harm.

(Transcribed from interview)

What are the common food allergy symptoms?

Cybele Pascal:
Good question and I think again, this is where the issue of it’s like food allergy versus food intolerance kind of comes in. I’ll start with how you diagnose it in a child and many of us come to this because our infants, our babies are experiencing food allergies and you start seeing symptoms in a baby in the first couple of months of life.

So for example, with an infant, with a child who has multiple food allergies what you are going to see in this child and what I saw in my son is he had eczema, hives, projectile vomiting, and bloody diapers. So his whole system was essentially reacting. He was having an immune system response and basically he was also having respiratory issues.

So his whole system was reacting. His whole immune system was reacting on many levels. So those are symptoms that you look for in your infant, maybe only a couple of them, maybe it’s all of them and you take that child immediately to the doctor and you say, “I think this kid maybe is having a food allergy. Can we test for that?”

A lot of people think when they have a headache that that’s a food allergy. That’s probably more likely a food intolerance. A food allergy again, is something that’s going to have; you are going to have a response within the first 30 minutes to two hours. Then there are more delayed food allergies but in terms of the really extreme reaction it’s going to happen right away after the child or you have ingested something.

I don’t want to ignore anaphylaxis, which is a total body shutdown with a drop in blood pressure and started the child often will stop breathing and they basically go into shock. So, I am going to assume that if you’ve had a child who has experienced that you have noticed it. You have unfortunately had to deal with calling 911 or taking them to the hospital and but for a more subtle reaction, again it’s the skin, it’s hives, it’s their respiratory and the intestinal. But there are also… I don’t want to diminish food intolerances. You may have a food intolerance as opposed to the histamine reaction, the immune system reaction of a food allergy.

Having a food intolerance is equally uncomfortable. You are probably going to end up having digestive problems, you know, bloating, gurgling, a very difficult time digesting those foods because again, you don’t have the enzymes. So the symptoms of the food intolerance I think from my understanding are more sort of gastro and then headaches. The migraine headaches – I had a lot of food intolerances like for things like MSG and I don’t react well to anything that’s fermented. I am intolerant to those things. I am not allergic. I have my own food allergies to other things. You just have to pay attention to your body and note what’s happening.

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