You might want to ask your allergist whether or not to try an elimination diet followed by food "challenges."  First, you would eliminate all foods that tested positive on your RAST tests and anything else you know that causes you to react.  

This is a link that explains the principles of elimination diets and using "challenges" to test individual foods to see if something is causing symptoms:  

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=diet&dbid=7

 After the elimination phase, a challenge can be done.  A challenge is adding a new food, several times during the day, after having been on a strict elimination diet.  It can take up to 3 days to react, so only add one new food every 3 days.  There are many websites that give specific instructions on elimination diets and food challenges, but your doctor will have suggestions on this.

Starflower has posted the elimination diet that Dr. Castells gave her.  This is part of what she posted:

"For the first four weeks I ate:

- Fresh meat (beef, buffalo, chicken, turkey)
- Sweet potatoes
- Blueberries
- Dates
- Clarified butter (ghee)
- White rice

After that I started adding other foods back in, with the exception of  seafood, grains, foods related to latex, foods related to ragweed, and foods that are high in histamine (aged cheese, canned tuna, etc...).  I added foods back in a little quicker than I probably should have, but that initial four-week diet was soooooo boring!"

When my daughter was put on an elimination diet by her allergist, she could have lamb, rabbit, any type of squash, rice (which obviously you shouldn't eat), pears, blueberries, carrots, and sweet potatoes.  We did it for 10 days, then started adding back one food at a time.

As for what you can safely eat, hopefully something else safe will turn up on your RAST tests.  Generally, foods that you haven't eaten often might be the least allergenic.  There are lists you can Google ("least allergenic foods"), or you can look at the low histamine diet that Deb just posted.  These lists and diets are only suggestions, though, as everybody reacts differently to different foods.

Some people do best on a rotation diet.  Foods that seem to be safe to eat are rotated, so no food is eaten on consecutive days.

Have you asked your doctor about taking more Zantac or adding Pepcid?  If it helps some, more might help more.  Some allergists will refer a patient to a nutritionist who can help plan a healthy diet.  With as much as you're reacting right now, I wouldn't try anything new without asking the allergist.

It would be nice if we could say, "Eat this.  Don't eat that.", but it's all so individual.  Just remember that a food can be a trigger even if it's not an allergen, so if you have a problem with a food that appeared to be safe on RAST testing, it might be a trigger and needs to be avoided.

Thank you so much Joan and Pam. Excellent suggestions. My Immunologist wrote me that he wants me to see a dietician at this point so I will do so...he also wants to test me on more foods. At least he is trying to help me.At some point, maybe I will try the elimination diet, later on.I will also go up on the Zantac and see what happens.

Pam, I do think I have a problem with Salicylates and will look more into that as well. Grateful to both of you for your help.

I completely support an elimination diet, but just remember that we are all different.  While there are clear "likely food triggers"  that are common among us, one person's neutral food can be another's nightmare.  Even within a category and from day to day, my tolerance shifts.  For instance, I am definitely salicylate sensitive but I can tolerate certain medium- to high salicylate foods on certain days, but then not on others.  

I have about 25 foods that are pretty much always ok--mostly meats, cabbage, rice and potatoes.  I carefully rotate them.  Gluten, dairy, soy, chocolate, caffeine, and alcohol are always terrible.   I discovered these using the Failsafe Elimination Diet and personal experience with close tracking in a diary.   The RAST, IgE and IgG tests only came back positive for some of these, not all.  They also showed reactivity to some things that I have now added back into my diet and seem ok.    (That said, if you decide to play around with testing these things, definitely do it with a doctor's supervision!)

Good luck!

http://mastocytosis.posterous.com/the-dietary-paradox-in-food-allergies-yesterd
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726112#

Curr Pharm Des. 2012 Jun 21, Badina L, Barbi E, Berti I, Radillo O, Matarazzo L, Ventura A, Longo G, SS di Allergologia e Trattamento dell'Asma- SCU Clinica Pediatrica Institute for Maternal and Child Health-IRCCS "Burlo Garofolo", Italy



During the last decades the prevalence of food allergies has significantly increased among children and antigen avoidance still remains the standard care for the management of this condition. Most reactions are IgE-mediated with a high risk of anaphylaxis requiring emergency medications in case of inadvertent ingestion. Recent studies showed that continuous administration of the offending food, rather than an elimination diet, could promote the development and maintenance of oral tolerance. Indeed, intestinal transit of food proteins and their interaction with gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) is the essential prerequisite for oral tolerance. On the contrary, low-dose cutaneous exposure to environmental foods in children with atopic dermatitis and altered skin barrier facilitates allergic sensitization. The timing and the amount of cutaneous and oral exposure determine whether a child will have allergy or tolerance. Furthermore, previous preventive strategies such as the elimination diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding, prolonged exclusive breastfeeding and delayed weaning to solid foods did not succeed in preventing the development of food allergy. On the other hand, there could be an early narrow window of immunological opportunity to expose children to allergenic foods and induce natural tolerance. Finally, the gradual exposure to the offending food through special protocols of specific oral tolerance induction (SOTI) may be a promising approach to a proactive treatment of food allergy.