Peanut Allergy Symptoms: What Harm Can a Little Peanut Do?
Peanut allergy symptoms derive from a bodily malfunction.When someone has a peanut allergy his or her immune systems over-reacts. Instead of treating a peanut like any other food, the body reacts as if the peanut is dangerous. In order to protect the body, the immune system creates antibodies (special chemicals designed to fight infections) against that food.
Peanut allergy symptoms are caused by these antibodies. Antibodies, called immunoglobulin E (IgE), are created to ward off the "foreign bodies." IgE antibodies start the input of chemicals into the body. One such chemical is histamine. The input of histamine can affect the gastrointestinal tract, lungs, skin, and cardiovascular system. Histamine can cause peanut allergy symptoms like wheezing, stomachache, vomiting, itchy hives, and swelling.
Peanut allergy symptoms can be very mild, or very serious. These symptoms can occur immediately or a few hours after the person eats peanut products.
Peanut allergic symptoms occur as follows:
- * Skin: Skin reactions are frequent peanut allergy symptoms. They can appear as itchy, red, bumpy rashes (hives), eczema, or redness and swelling around the mouth or face.
- * Gastrointestinal system: Symptoms can manifest themselves in belly cramps, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.
- * Respiratory system: Symptoms can run the gamut from a runny nose, itchy, watery eyes, and sneezing to severe asthma with coughing and wheezing.
- * Cardiovascular system: An individual can feel light headedness and can even faint.
Peanut allergy symptoms can also manifest themselves in anaphylaxis. This is a sudden, strong allergic reaction in which several problems occur all at the same time. Blood pressure can fall, breathing tubes can constrict, and the tongue can swell-up. Those at risk for these type of symptoms must to be very careful and need a plan for dealing with emergencies, in which they might need to use special medicine to prevent these symptoms from becoming worse.
