Dear Ali-W, You may have lactose intolerance. This is not an allergy but food intolerance due to lack of the enzyme lactase in the gut which breaks down the sugar lactose in cow's milk. Lactose intolerance is more common in adulthood and certain ethnic groups, including Asian, African and South Amer...

Dear Mark, There is actually data which suggests that drinking unpasteurised cow's milk may be associated with a lower risk of allergy (Perkin et al. Which aspects of the farming lifestyle explain the inverse association with childhood allergy?, JACI 2006). However this was thought to be in the cont...

Dear Peedee, Difficult to say what the linking factor is; there may have been contamination of the salad buffet with some thing you are allergic to. Regarding the sweet , there are reports of allergy to artificial colouring azo-dyes such as Tartrazine (E102) and Sunset yellow (E110) but these are ve...

Dear AliT, You have a classic example of oral allergy syndrome (OAS) to birch tree pollen cross-reactive fruits (stoned fruits and apples). The allergy antibodies in your blood which respond to birch pollen are cross-reacting with proteins in these raw fruits. Thank-fully these proteins are broken d...

Dear Vicky, The main worrying feature in the reaction you described was the lump in your throat. If you felt that this was causing difficulty breathing then yes you should have used your Jext pen, however if it was not affecting your breathing then you did not need to use it yet. In addition if you ...

Dear Mark, Goat's milk has 80-90% homology to cow's milk so we don't recommend this in cow's milk allergic individuals as they are likely to react. In children this is also not considered nutritionally adequate as a cow's milk substitute. Raw unpasteurised milk is not recommended in general due to t...

Dear All, There is data to support that artificial colourings increase hyperactivity in children which was published in the Lancet Journal in 2007 by Prof. Stevenson's Group. They concluded that artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactiv...

Dear AliT, You have a classic example of oral allergy syndrome (OAS) to birch tree pollen cross-reactive fruits (stoned fruits and apples). The allergy antibodies in your blood which respond to birch pollen are cross-reacting with proteins in these raw fruits. Thank-fully these proteins are broken d...

Dear Flower allergy sufferers, Pollen allergy is usually to pollens that pollinate by wind (such as birch, many grasses, ragweed) rather pollens that pollinate by insects (most flowers). This is because the pollen is quite heavy and in lilies for example sits on the stamen of the flower waiting to b...

Dear Talkallergy forum users: Recent studies have shown that the resolution of cow's milk protein allergy in children is unfortunately not as quick as we used to think. We previously stated that 85% of children grew out of their cow's milk allergy by the age of 3-5 years. A recent study in America l...