Parenting Pointers: How to determine if your child has an allergy (guest post)

How to determine if your child has an allergy.

We don’t want our children to have any allergies because that can really make their (and our) lives a lot more difficult. Parents are scared from allergies and that is why they often think that their child has an allergic reaction to something when in reality he hasn’t and is simply suffering from some kind of an illness. There are many cases when a child suffers from a stomach ache or a rash because he has a virus but parents may put it down to allergy. The problem is that it is sometimes hard to determine whether your kid has an allergy or just a simple childhood illness because the symptoms are often very similar. Here are a few tips on how to do it.

• Antihistamine. If it is an allergic reaction then some antihistamine will relieve the symptoms. Giving your child a correct dosage of this drug is a safe way to distinguish allergy from illness because it won’t do any harm even if it turns out that your child isn’t suffering from any kind of allergy and therefore doesn’t need any antihistamine.

• Symptoms. Remember that allergic symptoms can appear very shortly after your child has eaten even a small amount of the food which he is allergic to. In severe cases the symptoms are so obvious that it is very difficult to confuse them with anything else.

• Temperature. Check your child’s body temperature! A lot of illnesses are accompanied with high body temperature but allergies are not so if his temperature is higher than it should be then he is probably just ill.

• Doctor. Don’t try to do too much yourself. Contacting your doctor is always a good option because you will get answers to all of your questions without any unnecessary worries.

This is guest post by Mike Brown. You can check out Mike’s blog about complementary medicine if you are interested in acupuncture, herbal therapies or other types of alternative treatments.