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You may recall that some time back my OH had, what appeared to be, an allergic reaction to strawberries or strawberry jam. It was really strange and really rather scary at the time as he’d never had an issue before and the first time it happened we were miles away from home when he was taken ill. At the time when we’d got him home, we spoke to our GP and the local chemist and we resolved the issue.  But perhaps we could have looked at home allergy testing too.

Apart from the strawberry incident, we’ve been very lucky as a family and have not personally experienced allergy issues other than me being allergic to penicillin from birth.  But we know plenty of people who can’t say the same, one of my son’s school friends has a severe peanut allergy so the children have known from a very young age to be aware of what food is being taken into school and what could happen to the child if the worst happened.

My oldest friend’s daughter suffered from a range of food allergies from a very young age and had all sorts of tests to ascertain what exactly she was allergic to when she was little.  We always had to be so mindful on days out to make sure we didn’t accidentally give her something that would make her poorly.  I remember it being such a minefield at times.

When we think of allergies we often think of food or milk allergies, but often overlook pollen, mites and even our beloved pets.  My best friend’s partner was hugely allergic to my old cats, even though they had cats and a dog at home.  He always had to take antihistamine tablets before setting foot in our house or he’d have been sneezing constantly and his eyes would run and he’d just be generally uncomfortable.

With pollen, you could end up having a reaction to various grass pollen, tree pollen and weed pollen and all too often we blame random sneezing episodes on a slight cold rather than realising that we might actually be having an allergic reaction.

It’s a minefield and klarify.me have the issue covered with their Home Allergy testing kits which offer a home to lab test covering 294 known allergen extracts and allergen components from foods, various milk, mites, pollen, pets and some venoms too. Once you receive the kit you take a small blood sample and send it to their partner lab team and within two weeks you receive a comprehensive report of their findings.

Have you looked at home allergy testing before?