How to Detect and Diagnose A Shellfish Allergy

What are the symptoms of a food allergy? When asked, most people will respond that food allergy symptoms generally include reactions like being unable to breathe, breaking out into hives, having your throat swell up, and going into anaphylactic shock. These are all certainly symptoms, but if you have a subtler allergy to something like shellfish, you might not experience any of these. But eating shellfish when you have a subtler allergy to it still is not the best idea - especially when there are so many other delicious wild, Alaska fish that you could be eating instead. So if you feel like you may have a slight allergy, next time you are scarfing down some delicious Alaska crab or oysters with your friends and family, look for the following symptoms.

One sign of a subtle shellfish allergy is feeling a tingling sensation on your tongue. This can be accompanied by your tongue, month, throat and teeth beginning to itch or swell. You might look for other skin symptoms, like feeling super-flushed, blushing, or experiencing varying degrees of swelling, blushing, or hives. If your eyes become red, swollen, or start to itch, this is something to watch out for as well, along with scratchy throat and shortness of breath or wheezing. There are also lots of internal symptoms relating to the digestive tract. Obviously, if you experience diarrhea or you vomit, this is a sign of an allergy! But subtler symptoms like nausea, bloating, and gas, these might be the signs of a slight allergy.

The one thing to keep in mind here before you swear off eating all shellfish ever again - because the good stuff from the oceans of Alaska can be pretty hard to resist - is that some symptoms of allergies can also be symptoms that the food was not prepared well. You should ask yourself a few questions before self-diagnosing a shellfish allergy. How long after you ate the shellfish did the symptoms start? If it was 6 hours after you ate those clams, then it very well could have been something else that caused your symptoms. Similarly, ask yourself if anyone else who ate the food had a similar reaction - in this case it is likely that the culprit was the food itself as opposed to as a category of food.