Health Blog

ALLERGY TO DIFFERENT foods and chemicals is a well recognized phenomenon. Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician who lived in fifth century BC, and is generally regarded as the ‘father of medicine’, was, perhaps, the first to record a case of stomach upset and skin urticaria in a person who had taken milk. Another Greek physician and medical writer, Galen, in the second century A.D., described a case of allergy to goat’s milk. Numerous reports of allergy to different foods are available. The ingestion of foods to which the child is sensitive may produce a variety of symptoms, which include itching and swelling of the lips, sores in the mouth, vomiting, gaseous distention, diarrhoea, urticaria and headache. The same food may produce symptoms in a particular season, while it may not in other seasons. A lot depends on the combination with other allergenic factors.

Symptoms of allergy to food may appear either immediately, or several hours after the food is consumed. In the latter case, it becomes difficult to identify the allergen.

Food allergy is more common in infants and children. As the child grows older, he is exposed to many more environmental factors, and it may be that he is sensitive not only to foods, but also to pollens, dusts and moulds.

*36\260\8*