Now I am curious. Why are food allergies so much more severe than they use to be?

[Lovedtodeath]

I agree that people probably just died of allergies a lot in the past.

 

When my daughter was born she had jaundice and was losing weight. My ped suggested supplimenting breastfeeding with formula. She got worse, lost more weight, actually turned orange. We added lights, no help. I started researching. I don't know why, I never had a child allergic to anything but I knew something wasnt' right. I found out about the elimination diet, and started it. Immediately she started to gain weight and her jaundice disappeared in about 3 days. I slowly added back foods for me. I went to the ped, telling him I think she is allergic to milk. He told me that is only 2-3% of the population and that it wouldn't be an issue with breastfeeding.

 

He was wrong....... she tested later with the highest reaction to cows milk, and second highest to eggs. She also has a wheat allergy but it is low.

 

Now I have heard over and over that this could have been caused by my eating massive amounts of those foods when I was pregnant with her. I have no idea if it is true, but it would fit. I had hyperemisis, 90% of the foods I ate while pregnant were cereal, milk and eggs.

 

I wonder all the time if she would have lived....... if I hadn't listened to my mommy instincts and changed my diet anyway. She was born at 7 lbs 3 oz. And at her lowest weight before I figured it out she was 4 lbs 8 ozs at 6 weeks old.

 

(The first picture is newborn, the second in pink was her lowest weight, the third is one month after stopping milk and eggs. )

Our story is similar with my first baby throwing up for most of her waking hours and my second baby almost choking to death due to anaphylactic symptoms (which I didn't know were anaphylactic until months later when nurse happened to witness them). The doctors wouldn't consider food allergies at all for my first, and only yeast for my second. It turned out to be about 12 different things, for each kid including immunizations that didn't contain any of the food allergies. If I was not pro-active enough to go on a severely limited diet and continue breastfeeding we would have never known that allergies were the culprit.

[StartingOver]

Our story is similar with my first baby throwing up for most of her waking hours and my second baby almost choking to death due to anaphylactic symptoms (which I didn't know were anaphylactic until months later when nurse happened to witness them). The doctors wouldn't consider food allergies at all for my first, and only yeast for my second. It turned out to be about 12 different things, for each kid including immunizations that didn't contain any of the food allergies. If I was not pro-active enough to go on a severely limited diet and continue breastfeeding we would have never known that allergies were the culprit.

 

We probably would have found the reason much easier, the NICU doctor wanted to keep her because she couldnt' tolerate formula. But I wouldn't allow it, she was breastfeeding like a champ. I didn't see the reason to pay $5000 a day to make her drink formula !

 

I am glad you were proactive, I am sure there are many parents who have no clue and end up with must worse results than we did.

 

I also didn't that she was anaphylactic till I fed her gerber pears....... she is not allergic to pears, but there must have been trace amount of milk. This was 5 months after I was completely milk - egg free, and her first exposure.

[Cricket]

WOW!!!! Those pictures are really telling aren't they? I'm surprised they weren't more freaked out about her weight loss!

 

My d.s. had TERRIBLE eczema from the time he was about 3 months old. His cheeks would bleed. Later on, his hands and feet would bleed too. He'd leave bloody finger and footprints around the house. He was allergic to all the things I ate most during pregnancy. Luckily he didn't have any trouble gaining weight. But he looked awful!!!

 

My dd had severe eczema as well. Her cheeks would bleed too and she had trouble gaining weight. Her muscle tone was bad and she seemed weak. She was very allergic to dairy. If I even had one bite of cheese, she would break out in eczema from head to toe. My pediatrician at least knew about allergies and told me right away to eliminate a bunch of food from my diet. We figured out it was dairy and eggs. She can eat anything now though with no reactions.

[Tap]

Ds15 was a very allergic child until 2 1/2. He had been very sick from when he was 2 weeks old and had had 76 doctors visits by this point. He had asthma and allergies and was medicated with adult doses of medication to keep him alive.

 

I was 24 at the time. I decided that while I couldn't cure him, a very healthy diet could only help him. We already ate most foods cooked from scratch but I went one step further and went to a totally holistic/natural diet. All refined products were eliminated from our house. I used honey to sweeten and bought sprouted grain breads. No white sugar or flour in anything.

 

Within 2 weeks he was off of part of his meds and at one month he was 100% well.

 

I think he was reacting to something in his food. Most likely a preservative or sugar.

 

His doctors couldn't believe his recovery, with just a diet change.

 

When he was 4 we slowly started loosing the reigns on our food and he has been fine ever since.

[Lovedtodeath]

Thanks for sharing tap. That experience is very telling.

[ElizabethB]

I used to have an allergy book that had a study that said that children who were bathed daily were 30 to 40% (I can't remember the exact number) more likely to have allergies than children who were bathed once or twice a week. That was really the only helpful piece of info in the book, so I donated it and didn't write down the book title or study it referenced.

 

Since developing food allergies, I've noticed how many of the top allergens are in any normal packaged food, I never noticed before how many ingredients were in things and how many of them were allergens.

 

The only places where I used to be able to buy any packaged food I could eat were Trader Joe's and health food stores. Now, I basically can't eat any packaged or restaurant food, although ironically I can eat Panda Express Orange Chicken about once every 2 weeks which my husband thinks is crazy (and I agree!)

 

The only other restaurants I can eat at are local restaurants that cook their food by hand. All the big chains can't make you food from scratch and they all either use soy oil or butter which I can't have. Interestingly, Outback is the one exception, they have olive oil and will make you up food from scratch if you request it.

 

I used to be able to eat McDonald's chicken salads of all things until a few years ago when they switched out their oil because of the who trans fat thing, I'm allergic to their new oil.

 

We have friends who adopted an Ethopian teenager, and she thinks it's great that I like Ethopian food, teff flour is one grain I tolerate well.

Edited March 26, 2010 by ElizabethB