They are called cross allergies: they represent a dangerous pathology, and if you suffer from it, you can incur serious health risks.
You can easily define them hidden allergies: scientifically, doctors call them cross allergies. Incredibly, our body reacts with serious symptoms, we speak in particular of food ingestion, in front of raw materials with respect to which we had never noticed dangerous reactions, but which, to our surprise, can emerge at any moment, putting our health in serious trouble.
It is, in a nutshell, about dangerous attunements that our body implements, automatically creating similarities between apparently different foods, based on the aromatic compositions and some nutritional principles precisely linked to allergens, with respect to which our immune system reacts in a certain way, as if they were the same product.
A prime example would be to be famously allergic to parietaria, also called vitriola grass or common vitriola, and discovering, we repeat apparently for who knows what reason, that we begin to react with allergic symptoms even when we eat tomato and basil. Imagine the drama of depriving ourselves of the key foods of Italian cuisine!
Cross-allergies: the mystery of “affinity” as dangerous as ever for our health
Let’s take a step back for a moment and try to explain what they say medical experts in the field. Individuals who react to specific food allergens or inhalants may develop sudden new allergies. These reactions can concern different foods, containing, however, the same allergen or an allergen with a very similar protein structure. The reactions can be light or heavy and are known, precisely, as allergic cross-reactivity.
This means that someone may discover, to their surprise, that they are suffering from a new one allergic reaction, even when he avoids foods he notoriously knows to stay away from. For example, if someone is allergic to peanuts, they may react negatively to soybeans, peas, lentils or beans, foods from the same biological family, with a very similar protein structure.
They can also occur cross-allergic reactions between some fruits or vegetables and latex (known as latex food syndrome) or pollens which cause what is known as hay fever. If during the pollen period, it happens that the latter, to which we are allergic, contaminates the fruit we adore, we will find that we will not be able to eat it at least for a certain period of time.
It is clear that if a person has an allergic reaction to a specific food, and all this is certified by a clinical diagnosis, it can be it is helpful to avoid such foods which could trigger this reaction. If, for example you suffer from favism, one of the most harmful pathologies that exist in the medical world, dozens of times worse than a simple allergy, which can suddenly explode in your life, after years of eating broad beans without consequences, you will discover that you won’t even be able to ingest peas, soy, green legumes and also red wine and lots of berries. Just as those who are allergic to almonds will stay away from walnuts, peanuts and hazelnuts, we are sure.
The most well documented form of cross allergy occurs between apple and birch pollen; however, people with an apple allergy are not necessarily allergic to birch pollen. Cross-reactivity should not be assumed and important foods should not be eliminated from the diet without proper clinical testing and diagnosis.