What Is a Delayed Allergic Reaction?

I have late onset egg allergy, and delayed egg allergy. It started in my 30’s. I had eaten eggs all my life, and grew up with chickens, and it was never an issue.

It started when I had a crazy egg craving -- all I wanted was eggs. So I would have 3 eggs, scrambled. The next day I had a craving for egg again, and had 2 eggs. By the fifth day, I started getting hives. A few hives turned into full body hives all over, over the course of two weeks. So I had new hives every day for two weeks, until my entire body was covered.

I knew I could have eggs, but how many before I got hives? I got down to. 2 eggs per week, and still had the delayed egg hives. ISo, no longer eat eggs. Meanwhile I developed a walnut allergy to go with it, and I’ve had a tomato allergy all my life.

I have since found out that I also have celiac disease. I believe I’ve had it all my life, with many misdiagnosis.

I read an article that it’s plausible that a late onset egg allergy or any late onset allergy is related to Crohn's disease, celiac disease, and another disease. It concerns a lack of gut microbia, causing delayed digestion, which makes complete sense with celiac disease, where someone who has been contaminated with gluten and has intestinal damage. Makes sense to and for me.

I tend to have a delayed digestion. At first it was hard to diagnose my egg allergy because it was delayed. It was about by day three of eating eggs that a few hives emerged. I thought the hives were from a new laundry soap, so I continued eating the eggs. Never had an issue with eggs before that.

I was diagnosed with multiple (over 20) both immediate and delayed allergies over 10 years ago. What I know to be true from over 10 years of experience: doctors don't know anything about our bodies and brains. They know nothing, zero, nada.

The first thing I would like to say is food allergy symptoms can not only occur in 0 to 72 hours from eating the food. They can also cause foods that one isn't particularly allergic to, to cause more severe symptoms during the next week. "Got a reaction 24h after eating parsley", "the next week strawberries are going to itch my throat a lot more than usual".

The second thing is, the symptoms can change as you grow older. In my case, they began as 10-60 minute diarrhea episodes and shock (nausea, fast and irregular heartbeat). Now, 10 years later they can last from 15 minutes to six hours, no diarrhea, but all the symptoms of shock plus far more mental aspects of shock (nonspecific/overal feelings of fear, pain, confusion etc). To describe the feeling of fear shock causes, I say it's like when you were little, you were scared by dark and your imagination caused you to be even more scared. It feels like that, only this time you are consciously aware that there is no reason to be fearful, but your body still fears.

The third thing is, food allergy can affect hormone balance. I am a man who has a high sex drive, yet sometimes among other allergy symptoms, I can temporarily lose almost all my sex drive, I will not get the morning erections and so on. What is strange is, this sort of thing is usually caused by stress and/or depression, but when it is allergy related, there doesn't need to be any stress or depression.

The fourth thing is, the amount of allergy causing food often has no relation whatsoever to the severity of the symptoms.

Fifth, there is medicine that will help allergy symptoms; you just don't think of it as medicine. A high amount of caffeine can noticeably help the symptoms, including pollen allergy symptoms, and by high I mean half a liter (16 oz) of Coke. And even eating something like a sandwich, even when you don't feel like you could eat, will help the symptoms. I think the reason is, your brain's thinking goes like this: "something is seriously wrong.. wait he/she is eating, false alarm, move on".

Sixth, the symptoms may not include any stomach ache and/or airways tightening, but still there can be breathing difficulties and problems in the circulatory system.

Last, one can live a normal life with allergies like these. you just have to avoid the problematic foods, and when symptoms occur, remind yourself that it is just an allergy and there is no need to worry about things even when your body says you should worry about things.

If you aren't sure what's causing your allergies it's definitely a good idea to go and see a specialist. There is a whole world of difference between living with an allergy and living without suffering from it all the time.

Staying away from the allergen can be difficult, but it's still better than the alternative.

@Ana1234 - It's particularly bad for food allergens because they can be much harder to test for than some of the the other kinds. And with the delay, I think the only real way to tell what is causing the problems would be an exclusion diet.

I've had to do one of those myself and it was a pain in the butt, let me tell you. Because you really have to go off of almost everything for weeks so that it will clear your system, otherwise you might contaminate the results. And most modern foods seem to have a little bit of everything mixed in. I certainly don't envy people who are allergic to several things.

This must be so very scary and frustrating for parents with allergic kids. It's hard enough sometimes to figure out what someone is allergic to, even when they have a normal allergic reaction right after exposure.

The fact that any reaction could also be a delayed reaction would really make me paranoid about paying attention to each little thing they brush past or put in their mouths.