Cross Contamination Issues Delay Diagnosis
Environmental allergies run on my father's side of the family, both my brother and father had environmental allergies from childhood. I had no know allergies as a child and developed pollen and dust mite allergies in my twenties and was was diagnosed with a severe corn allergy about 6 years ago, it took some doing to figure out exactly I was allergic to, since I was reacting to everything including the saline control solution in the skin tests. At one point, after several months of the elimination diet and food challenge testing my allergist and I thought I was allergic to:
- eggs
- wheat
- dairy
- rice
- the nightshade family
- tomatoes
- potatoes
- peppers
- eggplant
- corn
- apples
After a few years, we discovered that I am only allergic to corn and my problems with these other foods came from cross contamination from the wax on the apples, the corn starch in iodized salt that I had put on the tomatoes and other types of typical cross-contamination that make having a corn allergy much more restrictive than one would initially think. I still poison myself on a regular basis, due to cross contamination or just simple forgetfulness.