Diet taboos for urticaria

There has never been a unified list of dietary taboos for urticaria. During the attack period, you must temporarily avoid foods that are clearly allergenic and foods with high histamine/promoting histamine release. There is no need to blindly avoid foods for a long time during the remission period. The core criterion for judging all taboos is your own body reaction.

Last week, a friend who just got acute urticaria asked me to make a list of taboos. Seafood, beef, mutton, mango, eggs and even soybeans must be blacklisted. She said on the Internet that these are "fat foods" and should never be touched again if she has urticaria. As a result, she only dared to drink white porridge with pickles for dinner that day. It turned out that the pickles had been pickled for half a month. After eating, she was so itchy that she could not fall asleep for half the night. It was not worth the gain.

First, let’s talk about the most commonly heard taboo on “fabrication”. In fact, the views of Chinese and Western medicine are slightly different on this fact, but they are not contradictory at all. From a Western medicine perspective, most of the so-called hair triggers that tend to aggravate urticaria are those with a high histamine content or that promote the release of histamine in the body - such as leftover seafood that has been left out for two or three days, bacon sausages that have been marinated for several months, fermented cheese, and highly irritating foods such as alcohol and spicy hot pot. No matter what you are allergic to, eating these during an attack will most likely cause histamine levels to rise faster and make it more itchy. It is indeed recommended to stop first. The hair-raising foods mentioned by traditional Chinese medicine actually correspond to the category of foods that are pungent, irritating, and easy to induce old diseases. It is not unreasonable, but there is really no need to kill all traditional hair-raising foods at once: I met an old patient before who was fine after eating leek boxes for decades. When he had urticaria, it did not get worse. So he should eat it when he should eat it.

The biggest pitfall that many people fall into is blindly following the list of taboos on the Internet, or even relying on unreliable test reports. There was a 3-year-old child who suffered from recurring urticaria for half a year. Her mother stopped milk, eggs, and seafood. Finally, after extensive investigation, she discovered that the child was actually allergic to the fuzz on the surface of peaches. He had been on a diet for most of the year, and the child's height and weight were half a head behind his peers. One more thing to say here is that the "food intolerance IgG test" currently promoted by many institutions on the market cannot be directly used as a basis for judgment of food allergies. The current consensus among mainstream dermatologists is that it cannot be directly used as a basis for judgment of food allergy. Don't completely block the corresponding food just because there is a positive result in the report. Unless you eat the same food two or three times in a row and develop urticaria within 24 hours, then that is the allergen that really needs to be temporarily avoided.

Oh, by the way, there is another invisible trigger that many people ignore: additives in processed foods. I once had a college student who couldn't find the cause of each urticaria attack. After keeping a food diary for half a month, I discovered that the rash would occur as long as he drank a certain orange-flavored sparkling water with sunset yellow added. If he switched to freshly squeezed orange juice, he would be fine. Additives such as artificial colors, preservatives, and food flavors may trigger the release of histamine. Try to eat fresh, less processed foods during the attack period, and you will avoid many pitfalls.

As for the diet during the remission period, you really don’t need to be too strict. My own experience is that if you are not sure whether something can be eaten, just try a small amount. If there is no reaction, eat it normally. If itching or rash occurs, just stop temporarily for 3 months and then try again. Many people's sensitization is staged. They may have low immunity during this period and become allergic to mangoes. After half a year, their immunity will improve. No matter what they eat, it will be fine. There is really no need to stick to a certain food for the rest of their lives.

Finally, I would like to remind you that if an acute urticaria attack is accompanied by a tight throat, breathlessness, and dizziness, don't worry about what you can and cannot eat, and run to the hospital quickly. This is a precursor to laryngeal edema, which is dangerous, so don't delay.