Nut, Milk, & Egg Allergies

R.,

I am sorry that your son suffers from ezcema. Ezcema is a listed side effect on many vaccines. If your son has a high allergy to egg and or milk he should not be recieving vaccines at all, esp the MMR. It is clearly a contraindication listed on the package insert.

I have a daughter with a nut allergy and she has to have the item in her mouth or on her skin (nut oils) to produce her reaction. We eat things that have it declared on the packaging that it is made in a facility that packages nuts, soy ect.. and she has not had a reaction yet. So far so good.

Good luck!

I would avoid just those ingredients for now...unless he doesn't seem to get better. My DD had allergies as an infant as well and she seems to have outgrown them for the most party by 11 months. Are you BF? If so, I would do a very basic diet an eliminate all potential allergens. If you are not BF, we put our DD on Elecare at 3 months and it worked great for her. It is pretty frustrating and can be scary, but now she can eat almost anything! Good luck!

Hi:

You might want to explore having his allergies cured via a technique referred to as NAET. There are thousands of NAET certified practitioners world wide and my grandchildren and I go to Dr. David Karaba at East West Medical Group in Fullerton. We love him and have obtained freedom from many allergies.

Best wishes,

M.

mommywood.com is a great source for allergy information as well as many other topics of concern and interest to moms.

I don't have an allergenic child, but my best friend and my neighbor both do. My best friends child is allergic to EVERYTHING, and he only eats meat, rice and a couple of vegetables. He drinks only rice milk and water. My best friend buys everything organic to feed him and cooks all whole foods, nothing prepackaged or processed. The boy is three, and his numbers are looking better on some categories of food, so she has done a good job keeping him away from everything long enough for his body to outgrow some of his allergies, but they are going to keep up his regimen for another year before "challenging" him with some of the foods (in a controlled hospital setting).

My neighbor's child is allergic to all nuts, so he eats very few packaged foods, as many of them "are manufactured in a facility that processes nuts". He is not allowed to eat granola bars, most cookies, very few chocolate candies. His mom cooks most foods from scratch using fresh veggies and meats, but not always organic.

I would do a lot of research on this if I were you. Especially during his young years, feed him organic and be sure to feed each new food more than 7 times before trying another food (it takes 7 times for the allergy to create a response in most cases). Be sure to train him to never eat something that someone else gives him. Only food that you prepare is OK for him.

http://www.foodallergybooks.com/

I promise - this lady knows her stuff!

M.

Your son is having a bad time with all of this probably because of vaccinations. Please do not do anymore shots until you become fully aware of how they work on the immune system. I am not saying this to scare you but then you have to know that autism runs very high in boys and even higher in twins.

Check out Dr. Kenneth Bock's book Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies

Also look at Dr. Robert Sears, The Vaccine Book. If you want to learn even more about vaccines, Evidence of Harm, by David Kirby and What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Childhood Vaccinations, by Dr. Stephanie Cave are great reads.

Your son has all the classic symptoms of immune system going haywire from the shots. Does he have ear infections yet or has he been on any antibiotics yet?

With the level of allergy reaction I would stay away from all of those in the house. If you want, you may contact me offlist for how to handle food allergies as we had the same problem with 21 foods for my daughter. This is serious stuff.

____@____.com

R., OH! I have been there! Both of my boys have the same allergies, dairy, eggs and nuts/peanuts. (also started with eczema)I did for the longest time avoid all foods even PROCESSED in the same factory. That IS the safest way to go and is recommended. However my boys are now 5 and 8 (still allergic but the older one has grown out of eggs and can eat certain dairy prod. now)and over the years I have gotten more brave about giving them things that are manufactured/processed in the same factory. Aside from that, you will need to become an expert label reader and learn all the different terms for "dairy" and "eggs". There are lots of ways to say it on a label! Here are 2 books that helped me so much in the beginning: "The Parent's Guide to Food Allergies" by Marianne S. Barber and a cookbook: "What's to Eat? - The milk free, egg free, Nut free food allergy cookbook" by Linda Marienhoff Coss. Also here is a website that was recommended by our allergist: It's for the food allergy and anaphylaxis network... http://www.foodallergy.org/about.html
I could go on and on here with the things I have had to learn over the years, so PLEASE contact me for questions or support! I had nobody to talk to when I found out with my first one and I would love to be there for someone like you just getting thrown into this world! There are bound to be questions that come up, so anytime! I'm happy to email back and forth if you want. Contact me and I'll give you my regular email address. If I don't hear from you, I wish you all the best with this journey! :-)J

R.,

My son was tested at 8 weeks of age when we had an allergic episode to dairy formula that sent us to the ER when he was 6 weeks old. It turned out to be a dairy allergy. Since then I have kept him away from all dairy and he was just retested at 18 months. Instead of him growing out of it, he is now allergic to dairy, eggs, nuts and wheat. It is tough to avoid all those foods, but manageable. The upswing is that most kids do grow out of these food allergies so be patient. Those results you mention, where those from a blood test or a skin test? The blood test still has some problems with specificity and reliability and the skin test is the best method. If you want to email me directly, please do. I did find some help on this web site as well from other moms who either had allergies themselves or who have kids with multiple food allergies.

I can share some of my recipes with you too. :-)

Good luck,

L.

I agree that vaccines (eggs are a ingredient and some, not to mention whatever else is inside them - nasty stuff) could be part of the problem here.

NAET is a great thing. It's non-invasive (no shots) and it does eliminate allergies. It did so for my newborn (wheat) and my children for other things. I have lots of friends who swear by it. One friend had a newborn who was allergic to COTTON. Can you imagine? Her poor newborn was all red and blotchy. Once it was cleared, she was fine.

http://www.naet.com/

It sounds fishy, but it works IMO similarly to acupuncture and that has been used in China successfully for thousands of years.

I have a friend who used to get her daughter treated (respiratory issues that were so bad, she had to be rushed to the ped for emergency oxygen) and whatever allergy her daughter (then 2-3 yrs old) were cleared thanks to NAET. My friend was so impressed, she became an NAET practioner. Only people with a medical background and training can become one. She was physical therapist.

R.,

I think it depends entirely on how sensitive your child is and what the potential consequences of exposure are. You really should consult an allergist because allergy testing of infants is notoriously unreliable.

My son is now 2 and he's highly allergic to both dairy and soy proteins. As an infant, he had eczema, bad reflux and didn't sleep until I eliminated all dairy and soy from my diet (both obvious and hidden in other foods - I was nursing). Now that he's older, he still doesn't tolerate either food and has issues on and off with the eczema. Soy will give him diarrhea and hives. Milk gives him diarrhea (gray area between intolerance and allergy). When we had him tested for food allergies all of the tests were negative - they said he's not allergic to anything. But I can tell you from hard experience both dairy and soy make him pretty sick. We are still avoiding all obvious and hidden dairy and soy in his diet. He's sensitive enough that he can't tolerate even small amounts of dairy or soy cooked into other foods. BUT, we've never had an issue with cross-contamination. He eats things processed in factories where dairy and soy are used and there doesn't seem to be any issue.

That said, nut allergies can be deadly. I'd definitely talk to the doctor. Although diarrhea and hives are unpleasant, I'm not concerned about anaphalactic shock and my son dying if he gets exposed to dairy or soy. If my son had a nut allergy, I'd go out of my way to make sure he wasn't getting even trace amounts of nuts in anything he eats.

I don't know what kind of products you are using on your son but I've been using California Baby super-sensitive baby wash and it works really well. I use either Eucerin cream or Aquaphor on him. I've found that in addition to the food issues, the products I use on him make a big difference to his eczema. Some other things that have really helped him: getting a HEPA air filter for his room and running it all the time (I got it at home depot for about $130), washing his bedding once or twice a week (I replaced my washer with an HE -high efficiency- maching and that has REALLY helped), keeping our pets out of his bedroom and minimizing the use or strong chemical cleaners in our house. I've found that my sensitive child is sensitive to many things.

Just in general, I've found the easiest way to deal with a dairy and soy allergic child is to go to a primarily "whole" food diet. We eat lots of meat, veggies, fruit, potatoes and rice. The more processed the food, the more likely there is something in it that will make him sick. Since convenience foods are pretty much out I tend to cook bigger dinners and then we eat it twice in a row or I'll freeze half and use it later (I'll do chicken kabobs one night and then serve the same thing the following night with tortillas, refried beans and call it fajitas!). He also tends to get whatever we have tonight for lunch tomorrow. In my experience, reading labels will make you crazy because they reformulate stuff all the time. What is okay this time may not be okay next time.

:-)T.

Hi R.,

When my son was 2 he developed excema and I thought that applying the steroid cream would resolve it. Boy was I mistaken, it turned into even more severe allergies. I have come to think what when the skin is showing something like a rash or excema that it is the body getting rid of things and the worst thing I could have done was push it back into the body by the steroid cream. I was given a false sense that it was all better.

When my son was 4 he went into anaphalactic shock from 1 single macademia nut. That was when I took it very seriously and researched all sorts of methods for clearing allergies. I was determined to not live in fear that he would be exposed to something while I wasn't there to help. I learned a lot about allergies that I would be happy to share with you.

Let me know if you would like to chat about it. I would love to help a mom sidestep the frustrations I had about allergies and finding a solution that works. My son is now pretty much allergy fee except for nuts, but with that said he can now eat peanuts where before he would get really sick.

warm regards,

M.