Soy Milk Allergy

When the immune system has a bad response to the protein in the soy and believes it’s harmful, the body creates antibodies; after this happens whenever the person eats soy from then on; the immune system releases huge amounts of antibodies and histamine. The body sends this out to protect itself and an allergic reaction is then created.

The reaction may vary from slight to bad such as not being able to breathe and or heart palpitations. Unfortunately, soy milk allergy is not at all uncommon. The chemicals causing the allergic reaction can affect the respiratory system, such as not being able to breathe or the skin, which might be either a rash or hives or just plain itching. The itching might be either slight or severe. The soy milk allergy might cause a slight amount of excess gas or in the worse cases chest pain. Although most of the reactions are not that severe, not all soy products cause this type of reaction. The fermented soy foods are less inclined and usually cause less of a reaction than whole soybeans, which is what is in the soymilk. Something in the fermentation process seems to lessen allergic reactions.

Some of the symptoms of the soy milk allergy, which is actually the reaction to the soy in it, are colitis, asthma and diarrhea, which may vary from mild to severe, depending on how bad the reaction to the soy milk was. Itching, hypotension or just a hyper feeling of being ill at ease, headache, vision being not quite as clear as it should be, becoming a little crabby, wheezing, coughing and lethargy would be the most common signs of allergy. These feelings may gradually disappear in a few hours. On the other hand the reaction might take quite a bit longer to wear off especially if there is a cross reaction to other foods that were eaten at the same time. Because the individual is also allergic to them. If at the first occurrence the soy milk was taken and if the allergic reaction was slight it might not be easy to define it as an allergic reaction at all; such as just a slight headache or a little feeling of being little annoyed but there is no knowledge of what caused the annoyance. If this is repeated every time, soy milk is taken you can about know for sure that it is the soy milk that is causing the disturbance. If you think the good points that soy products have are very worth while and you have an infant in the house and you do not want it to become allergic to soy, they say if you breast feed the baby for the first year of its life it will not become allergic.

Soy is one of the most common allergies in both adults and children; the usual treatment is to just avoid soy. The worse severe food allergy to the soy milk has the medical term of anaphylaxis and would be classified as an emergency, which may require a careful treatment with Epinephrine. Since soy is put in many commercial foods, especially salad dressings if you do have a bad reaction to the soy milk allergy or just soy in general I would suggest reading food labels to avoid it completely.

Tags: allergy, soy milk