It used to be that if you wanted to know what you were allergic to you had to go through many tests that would take weeks, or even months to get the results. If your allergy was an uncommon one or out of the ordinary, it would perhaps take years, or you will just not ever find out.

If your allergies tend to be seasonal, then most likely they vanished before the tests even determined what the matter was, and you would give up on the clinic testing and go on living as before. This whole process has been sped up these days, and it is more focused, however if you are being tested for allergies you will likely still go through a series of tests to find out what allergies you may have.

Of course this also depends on what medical history you bring to bear in the equation. There are three basic ways that a clinic or hospital can use to test you for allergies. These include a skin test, elimination test and a blood test. of course each of these has it’s pros and cons and a competent doctor will be able to surmise which one you need to start with for maximum effectiveness.

Skin Test

The most generally used test, is a skin test. A small amount of allergen, which is what may be causing your allergy, is put on the skin. Much of the time, the allergen is put on your forearm however; it can also be applied on your back or upper arm. The skin in that area is then pricked or scratched to irritate it so that the substance gets under your skin. If you are allergic to it, there will most often be a reaction to it within 10 to 15 minutes. Commonly the reaction includes redness, itching and swelling or the skin however, testers have to take care with skin tests because sometimes in rare cases, a person has a severe allergic reaction that involved respiratory problems.

Another type of skin test is the intradermal allergy test. This test involves using a small needle to inject the allergen just under the skin. Skin tests are commonly used to discover a variety of material in the air that you breathe in that may be causing your allergy to anything from insect or animal bites as well.

Elimination Test

Another type of allergy testing is called elimination testing This is most frequently used method to find food and diet allergies. In controlled surroundings, several foods are either added or taken out of your daily meals and your reaction is observed. Often the food is camouflaged in some way to stop psychological determinants from interrupting the test. It may be that if you think you are allergic to something you somehow influence the result, and therefore the test would not be accurate. Certainly, this technique takes up much time and can only be done if the reactions are mild.

Blood Test

The third and most ideal way to test for allergies is the blood test. This involves drawing a small amount of your blood and testing it in a laboratory. The lab procedure is complex, but overall they will expose your blood to a bunch of allergens. If you are allergic, your blood will produce IgE antibodies to combat the allergen. The severity will be determined by what kind or IgE antibodies are created and how many are created as well. The lab can help to identify your allergy and tell you how severe it is.

RAST and UniCAP are the two standard kinds of modern blood testing for allergies. UniCAP is nearly an entirely automated process that can search for several 100 allergens and will even assign a number from 1 to 6 to distinguish the severity of the allergic reaction. The main downfall of blood testing is it requires specialized equipment. Normally your clinic or hospital will have to send your blood sample away and will not get results back for many weeks.