Dining out with food allergies can be difficult and frightening. Here are 5 tips to help you enjoy your eating out experience.

Try to view the menu in advance
Many restaurants now have their menus online. If you know where you are going, try to take a look at the menu to see if the restaurant has appropriate choices for you. Consider calling the restaurant to get a feel for whether they are used to dealing with food allergies and whether they are happy to accommodate you.

Bring your EpiPen
Most reactions happen outside of the home and most deaths occur because the individual did not have their EpiPen on hand. Make sure to keep your EpiPen with you at all times and teach those around you how to use it should you be unable to do so yourself.

Notify the hostess and wait staff of your allergy immediately
It helps to let the hostess and/or wait staff know about your allergies immediately. This gives them ample time to plan and to get the chef or manager if necessary. If your allergy list is long or you are uncomfortable sharing your information because you are at a business lunch or on a date, consider getting allergy business cards. These cards can list what you are allergic to and what you need to ensure your meal is made safely.

Never assume
Never assume that a particular menu item is safe based on the description. Chefs sometimes come up with unique ideas or throw garnishes in for flair. Always find out what is in the dish and how it is made.

Do a double check when your food arrives
When your food arrives make sure you confirm with your waiter that it is the right dish and that they remembered your allergies. Before diving in, give the dish a once over to make sure there are no obvious mistakes like a nut garnish.

These five tips will get you off to a safe start when dining out with food allergies.

The only true diagnosis of a food allergy is whether an individual has had an allergic reaction to a food. Sometimes this can be difficult as not all foods are eaten in isolation of one another. The next best step is to discuss allergy testing with a medical professional. Following are some things you should know about allergy testing.

There are two types of tests
A skin prick test and a blood test. Some doctors will choose to do one or the other and some will do both. Both tests can give false positive or negative results, so it is important to weigh the results with your reaction history.

An allergic reaction prior to testing can cause mixed, poor or false results
If an individual has experienced a reaction, the body is in a heightened sense or state and can cause the testing results to appear higher than they might normally be. Most allergists recommend waiting several days to a week after a reaction before testing is done.

Be careful with your medications
Antihistamines should not be taken for up to a week before testing as they too can interfere with testing results. Discuss with your allergist any other medications that might be problematic.

Consider a food challenge
If there is no definite history of reaction to a food, yet testing results come back positive--you may want to discuss scheduling a food challenge with your allergist.

Food allergies and testing are a tricky thing. One must balance the pros and cons of allergy testing, results and potential food avoidance (depending on those results) in combination with a history of reaction—so that a food in not avoided unnecessarily.

Imagine my horror one morning when we woke up to find that the kitchen sink had leaked and water was running into the basement.

That's not the horrifying part.

Water was, of course, everywhere. When we got the leak fixed, we turned out attention to clean-up. Our heating and air conditioning ducts had water in them. Concerned about mold, we immediately set out to clean them.

Here's where the horrifying part comes in...

When we began to take apart the duct work, we found peanut shells! Lots of them...as well as candy bar and granola bar wrappers in the ducts. At that point, our house was nearly 8 years old and we believe the construction workers, eight years prior, were using the duct openings as a garbage chute.

We read labels and avoid any foods that "may contain peanuts", but we never thought to protect our peanut allergic child by cleaning our heating ducts.

Peanuts do turn up in the darnedest places!

One of the difficulties in peanut allergy research is replicating human symptoms in animals. Animals are not normally allergic to food. The trick has been in creating an allergic reaction in a test animal that is the same as an allergic reaction in a person. Scientists need to do this in order to study ways to prevent and treat reactions in people.

Recently, researchers at Northwestern University, Chicago, fed mice a mixture of whole peanut extract and a toxin from the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus to simulate the human anaphylactic reaction to peanuts in mice. This specific bacteria was chosen because is commonly found on the skin of people with eczema and in the nasal cavities of people with sinusitis.

This combination worked. The mice began to experience swelling around the eyes and mouth. They had trouble breathing and their blood tests revealed high amounts of histamine. These are all characteristics of an anaphylactic reaction in a person.

Scientists believe the results from this study will aid future research projects in the search for a cause and cure for peanut allergy.

The National Institute Report can be Peanut Allergyviewed here.

Probiotics, that "good bacteria" found in yogurt, may aid in peanut allergy therapy. In a recent study, reported by Dr. Xiu-Min Li, peanut allergic mice who were fed a probiotic for four weeks, showed a decrease in allergic symptoms, or no reaction at all, when challenged with peanuts at the end of the study. The probiotics appeared to suppress anaphylactic symptoms.

There have been no human tests with probiotics and peanut allergy and this is not something that should be tried at home. Many times effects in animal studies cannot be duplicated in humans, but the exciting news of this study is that probiotics are considered safe and low in cost, which will encourage further research.

We'll keep you posted here.