Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Because my throat is inflamed and food is getting stuck and the allergist I spoke to as well as the gastroenterologist told me the skin tests wouldn't do anything. The allergist I spoke to didn't mention these blood tests I'm now referring to so I wasn't sure if it was legit or not or if others have had similar experiences.
What you're describing sounds a lot like eosinophilic esophagitis which indeed generally cannot be tested with the skin prick test (though the skin prick test can sometimes work, lack of allergens found in a skin prick test does not guarantee that your esophagus will not react to those allergens).
The best option is changing your diet to experimentally narrow down allergens. You can do it somewhat like a binary search though I don't think medical professionals will recommend that since it can lead to malnutrition. I've been recommended to sequentially eliminate common allergens by doctors, which is a safer option.
To address the original question, blood tests for allergens (assuming they work) would have the same limitations as a skin prick test (the flaw of any general test for a localised problem). Though I suspect a blood test would work a lot less well because it's no longer connected to your immune system, which is responsible for allergy response.