A reaction can involve the skin, the gut, the airway, or all three at once. Hives, swelling around the eyes and lips, an itchy mouth, a rash that comes up fast — those are the signs most people recognise.
The gut symptoms are less well known and just as real: stomach pain, sudden vomit, sudden diarrhoea. A child who is repeatedly sick shortly after a particular food is reporting something, even if no rash ever appears.
The airway is the part that matters most and shows least. A cough that will not settle, a hoarse voice, a tight throat, a wheeze, trouble breathing — any of those can arrive without a single mark on the skin.
Anaphylaxis is the name for a severe reaction involving breathing or circulation. It can come with a feeling of dread, a sudden pallor, floppiness or collapse, and it can move quickly.
A first reaction is not always the worst one, and a previous mild reaction is not a promise about the next. This is the single most misunderstood thing about food allergy, and it is why families treat a small reaction as information rather than as reassurance.
Timing varies. Most reactions begin within minutes to a couple of hours of eating, some are slower, and a few return hours after the first wave has settled. That second wave is why somebody who has had a serious reaction is watched for a while afterwards.
Symptoms overlap with a great many other things. Hives can come from a virus. A stomach upset can come from almost anything. That overlap is why what caused a particular episode is worked out with testing and a history, and never from a photograph or a description alone.
Nobody in the middle of a reaction should be left to work out on their own whether it counts. That judgement belongs to the people who are actually there and, when it looks serious, to emergency services — which is what the next page is about.
This page describes what reactions can look like in general. It cannot say what is happening to a particular person in a particular room. Where a plan written by a doctor exists, that plan is the thing to follow; where one does not, the local emergency number is.
Questions this page raises
Ezzie will have a go at any of these.