An allergic reaction to a food is a two-step process. The first time you\u2019re exposed to a food allergen, your immune system makes specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies to that allergen. The IgE antibodies circulate through your blood and attach to immune cells called mast cells and basophils. Mast cells are found in all body tissues, but especially your nose, throat, lungs, skin and\u00a0gastrointestinal tract. Basophils are found in your blood and also\u00a0in tissues that have become inflamed because of the allergic reaction.<\/p>\n
The next time you\u2019re exposed to the same food allergen, the allergen binds to the IgE antibodies that are attached the mast cells and basophils. The binding signals the cells to release massive amounts of chemicals such as histamine. Depending on the tissue in which they are released, the chemicals will cause you to have various symptoms of a food allergy\u2014ranging from mild (itching) to severe and life-threatening (anaphylaxis).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(source: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious\u00a0Diseases\/National Institutes of Health)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An allergic reaction to a food is a two-step process. The first time you\u2019re exposed to a food allergen, your immune system makes specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies to that allergen. The IgE antibodies circulate through your blood and attach to immune cells called mast cells and basophils. Mast cells are found in all body…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-related-content","category-vm-summer-2014"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-4J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3192,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/3192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}