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This is a series of videos by Dr. Bob Gravani, a Professor of Food Science at the Cornell University Department of Food Science. Dr. Gravani specializes in food safety. The videos are an overview of specific reactions to foods, how to deal with food allergy reactions and include how long it may take for reactions to occur, whether antihistamines will help after a reaction to a food allergen, what to do if someone you know has an allergic reaction, the treatments for anaphylaxis and an overview of epinephrine shots. You may also want to view Dr. Gravani's Tips on Avoiding Food Allergens videos and read Food Labeling for Food Allergens.
How long after eating foods do allergic reactions to the food normally occur?
Transcript
Robert B. Gravani: Hi! My name is Bob Gravani and I am a professor of Food Science at Cornell University, my area of interest is food safety and in recent months we have conducted a survey of severely food allergic consumers to better understand how they manage their food allergies. I would like to talk about now, specific allergic reactions, related to foods.
Host: How long after eating food do reactions normally occur?
Bob B. Gravani: Well food allergic reactions can occur as quickly as a few minutes after eating the offending proteins or can occur several hours after eating the offending protein and the severity of those symptoms can vary tremendously from very, very mild skin reaction or runny nose, to very severe and life threatening situations, where anaphylaxis or anaphylactic shock occurs and again, a lot of it is going to depend on the sensitivity of the individual, how much of that offending food allergen will trigger the response and also the specific allergenicity of that protein.
Will giving the food allergic person an antihistamine help?
Transcript
Host: Well, giving the allergic person an antihistamine help?
Bob B. Gravani: Well, the antihistamine will help in the mild forms of food allergic reactions and it will probably would help to reduce symptoms, such as runny nose and watery eyes and maybe a little tickle in the throat, but with severe life threatening food allergies, clearly people need to get a medical attention very, very quickly.
What should I do if I think someone’s having an allergic reaction to food?
Transcript
Host: What should I do if I think someone is having an allergic reaction?
Bob B. Gravani: If someone is having a very severe allergic reaction, the first thing to do is get medical attention immediately, calling 911 is very important to get medical help on its way. Often times people with life threatening food allergies carry an epinephrine auto-inject pen and what this does is, they administer this shot of epinephrine into their thigh and immediately the reactions will subside. Now they may need some assistance doing that, so clearly that's an important situation, this epinephrine when injected immediately will reduce the symptomolgy, also they should go to the emergency room and seek medical attention because often times, the initial symptoms will be reduced, but they may come back a little bit later on, so they need to be under observation and medical care to make sure that the reaction doesn't occur, yet again later.
What is the treatment for anaphylaxis?
Transcript
Host: What is the treatment for anaphylaxis?
Bob B. Gravani: The treatment for anaphylaxis is the administration of epinephrine is really adrenaline and it is used to regulate some portions of the nervous systems. So, clearly by administering this in the thigh with an auto -inject syringe, will allow the victim if you will, the person with the severe allergic reaction to alleviate their symptoms and reduce them right away, that's very important that epinephrine is administered as quickly as possible after the reaction occurs.
What is epinephrine?
Transcript
Host: What is epinephrine?
Bob B. Gravani: Well epinephrine is a really is adrenaline and it's produced in the adrenal glands in our body, it also regulates some portions of the nervous system and it needs to be administered rapidly and life threatening food allergies situations; when someone consumes a product, it's administered usually the injection into the thigh, so that it can be quickly absorbed by the body, children usually carry a smaller pen than adults do and basically it's very important that this be administered quickly. Physicians provide a prescription for severely food allergic consumers to carry these epinephrine pens and instruct them how to use them properly and again they need to refill these prescriptions periodically to make sure that the material is fresh etcetera and will work in the case of a life threatening allergic reaction.
This page created 15 May 2010 21:40
Last updated 21 Apr 2012 21:03
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