For Emily
We discovered our oldest daughter was allergic to milk when she was 7-8 months old. She had been an extremely "spitty" baby but there were odd days when she was not. In retrospect, those were days when I did not drink milk. She was completely breastfed and I was a big milk drinker at the time. She also had eczema. It was suggested to me that her problems might go away if I eliminated dairy in my diet and it did. Immediately. If I had any milk at all in my diet, she would start spitting. As she grew older, if she were given milk products she would vomit to dry heaves and then have diarrhea. She also gets terrific headaches if she has milk products. She is fine with goat milk.
Our third daughter was also apparently sensitive to milk. She is one of my Ezzo babies and went to formula at 9-10 months and could only tolerate a certain soy formula (can't remember what it was called now). As she grew older she could tolerate raw cow milk but not any milk products from the store. When she was about 4 years old she had extremely painful stomach cramping and diarrhea from an ice cream cone. At that point we were getting goat milk for our first daughter so we just put daughter #3 on a goat milk only diet also. She had other incidents similar to the ice cream cone one in that she manifests her allergy with severe cramps and diahrrea.
Dairy is in nearly all processed food. We had to read labels and understand what those scientific words in labels meant. We bought a book about dairy allergies that had word lists for milk ingredients and also food lists that are potential hazzards. For instance: milk is used as a filler in supplements, hot dogs, sausages, and it is in nearly all bakery items. This is what started our trip on the road to eating healthy. Up to this point we were SAD (Standard American Diet).
From what I understand, doing an elimination diet is the best way to determine what food is a problem. I have read that for it to be accurate, the food must be eliminated for two months so that the body is cleared of all antigens (that might not be the correct word) to that food.
I once did an elimination diet for just one week. I eliminated the common allergens and ate lots of veggies. The most common allergens or foods that people are senitive to are: dairy, eggs, wheat, corn, citrus fruits, gluten, yeast and related products, tomatoes and the rest of the nightshade family, peanuts. If you search it out you will probably find more complete lists.
A couple of days into the elimination diet I felt so much better. I didn't even know that I felt bad until I started feeling so great! I felt so good that I didn't want to stop the elimination diet so I did another week. At the end of the second week I had some dairy and I immediately bloated up and felt horrible.
From what I have read, as people age they lose the "whatever it is" ability to digest the lactose in dairy. Lactose is the milk sugar and it is present in all milks whereas the protein makeups are different in different breeds of milk. That is why our girls can have goat milk but not cow. The process of cheese making discharges the lactose from milk and is therefore more tolerable for those that are lactose intolerant. The more aged the cheese is, the less lactose remaining.
I love dairy so avoiding it has been hard. Especially because we have this beautiful Jersey cow that gives wonderful cream and it is so tasty in a cup of good coffee. mmmm I love cheesecake and my oldest son makes delicious mouth watering cheesecakes. Commercial soft serve ice cream is especially bad for bloating and the yuck feeling.
After my elimination diet I discovered that corn also bothers me. I knew that I always put on weight during sweet corn season. It's like gorging on a simple carb and it turns immediately to fat on the body. But as an Iowa corn raised girl it didn't bother me that bad. : ) I could lose it afterwards. I love sweet corn. What I discovered though in my elimination diet is that corn also makes me bloat. So sad. Now I try not to eat too much and pay more attention to how I feel.
Those are my experiences with food allergies and sensitivities. I suggest everyone do an elimination diet and record results. Like I said, I didn't know that I had a problem with milk or corn until I did the diet. I became more aware of how food makes me feel.
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14 comments:
Another food diet/plan is Eat Right for your Type. Alot of the foods you eliminated are commonly eliminated in his book, depending on the type. For mine, A, vegetarian/soy is preferred, and everytime I followed it, I got pregnant, and I was told I could never get pregnant years ago. I have 3 bio children and have had 4 miscarriages. Maybe there is something to it.
Kim - Thanks for sharing your experience! We are at the beginning of a celiac's journey with at least one of our children. While we eat similarly to you (raw, whole, Nourishing Traditions, etc.), it's still a bit daunting. Knowing that you've done it (with a few more children than us in tow) is encouraging. We ARE looking forward to seeing if all of us feel better with this change. Do you know if there's any "better" way than elimination to determine food sensitivities? Our celiac's diagnosis had a circutious (sp?!) start, so I am a bit overwhelmed at figuring out "everything" that has milk in it that might cause a problem...for 2 months at a time, to only figure out "nope, that's not a problem" and learn all there is to learn about "X" to do that process all over again, etc, etc, etc....Do you have any faith in medical allergy testing, or naturopaths that test for sensitivities and such? Thanks for letting me pick your brain!
I don't know of a better way. I do think it's important to get "expert's" opinions, I think they might direct you down a path in the right direction and get ideas in how to handle an allergy and get appropriate nutrition in spite of an allergy. But in the end, I bet you'll learn the most by eliminating, food diaries--including reactions and interviewing the sick kids, and then going with your gut instincts (pun intended). : ) You're the mom, you know your kids best, what they eat, how they feel,and you'll know when you're going in the right direction.
This is a great post. We have also had bouts with food allergies. It is no wonder now that I look at the food sources. GMO foods, industrialized dairy... The elimination diet takes much patience, good for you for sticking with it:)
I have also used a Certified Natural Health Professional to determine our family's sensitivities. She does muscle testing to determine which foods to avoid and which are nourishing. It has been very helpful. Muscle testing is commonly done by chiropractors, but other alternative md's also do it. Thanks for sharing your journey!
My son is also allergic to milk and has eczema. I think the two go hand in hand. He is allergic to soy and peanuts as well. Dairy and soy are in everything! We give him enriched rice milk to drink.
He was diagnosed when we noticed him getting puffy in the face when he ate. This was when he was a bit over a year old. He was breastfed until he was about 9 months old.
Today, we still give him rice milk and no peanut butter. But we do not limit his exposure to other things like ice cream, cheese and items with soy in them. His eczema has gotten better as he has aged. His eczema is also dependent on the weather. Winter is dry here in CO and summer humid. His skin fares better in summer, and when we go to Kansas :D
Kim,
Thanks sooo much for this post. We just started buying raw cow's milk. Do you think that people who are lactose-intolerant can still drink raw milk? Do you think this sort of allergy is usually outgrown?
In response to other mothers out there wondering about allergy testing, we heard amazing things about the accuracy of MSA allergy testing and had a very good experience with it ourselves. So far, the results seem very accurate. It involves no needles, no poking. The child simply holds a metal rod in their hand while the doctor takes a probe and makes contact with the patient’s acupressure points, sending specific electromagnetic frequencies of allergens through the probe and measurements are recorded that determine if the patient is allergic to a variety of items. Honestly, I don't completely understand how it works (the concept of biomeridians is mysterious to me) - I've just heard from docs we trust promise that it does. :)
Kim, do you have any dairy-free or gluten-free cookbooks to recommend, or did you just collect recipes over the years?
Thanks again so much for your help! I really feel the Lord urging me to get over my fears and overhaul our family's diet. One step at a time, right?! Blessings,
Emily
Emily,
I know I knew at one time but can recall now. That means the info is out there somewhere but not at the top of my brain. ; ) I know that there are enzymes in raw milk that make it more digestible but I don't know if it's the lactose or the protein that it digests. I suspect it is the protein since that is what we experienced with one of our daughters. What I'm not sure of is if our daughter has both a protein and a lactose problem. Because she drinks goat milk with no problem and goat milk has lactose, I suspect that her problem is protein. The whole thing is like a mystery or putting puzzle pieces together.
I have read two things 1) that milk allergies are outgrown and 2) that they aren't truly outgrown but manifest the reaction in a different way that may be hidden for a long time.
We have a dairy free cookbook but the recipes were kind of silly. They were your standard recipes but called for dairy-free margarine or soy/ rice milk in place of butter or milk.
Personally, we substitute butter with coconut oil, milk with goat milk or water. My girls live without whipped cream. So sad. Ice cream--we have a little ice cream freezer that they make their own with using goat milk. They live without butter. You can buy goat butter but it's $7 a pound. They use it occasionally on really yummy bread as a treat. Butter freezes fine, so if I buy it in bulk we keep it in the freezer.
We don't have a gluten problem here so I can't answer that but it seems to me that there are more gluten-free recipes flying around than dairy-free.
One step at a time. We started the path toward more healthy eating 13 years ago when we figured out Bridg was allergic to cow milk. It started with reading labels and has been a slow process. When I first read Nourishing Traditions, I tried to change too many things too fast on our family and we were all overwhelmed. Since then, it has been two steps forward, one step back. In busy seasons, it's harder for me to keep things healthy (soaking, fermenting, brewing, simmering). I do buy Oreos and frozen pizza on occasion. But it's not our lifestyle. I think the easiest thing is to simply look at food and ask--Is this a whole food? Is this the closest to the way God made it?
I think that keeping fresh fruit around is the simplest way to have snack food. Talk to your grocer and buy it in bulk for less. Buy seasonal fruit.
Change out one thing at a time when switching sugar, bread, oil, peanut butter, and the rest. Move slow on your family and they won't notice too bad. But also educate them on healthy eating. Assign it as school to study, write a report or give an oral presentation to the family on water, sugar, fat, pesticides, etc. My kids still bring up stuff they learned from each others reports years ago.
Gotta run now.
Yes, for what its worth, being allergic to cow milk and being lactose intolerant are two completely different problems. Basically, if you are truly allergic to the proteins in milk, you will be allergic to milk in all its forms, raw or cheese or whatever, and all the milk proteins added in other foods. From what I've heard, giving an allergic person what they are allergic to makes the problem worse, not better, so I've never heard about giving someone allergic to milk things like ice cream etc and having it be okay.
Thanks for your website, its helped me a lot. I wish I could make use of your great breakfast recipes, however besides milk, my son is also allergic to eggs (and goat milk, peanut butter, tomato, walnuts, pistachios, pecans....)! Friends gave us duck eggs for my son to try, but he isn't feeling very experimental. And since he's allergic to goat milk as well as cow, I have doubts too.
What I have found is truly a plague about allergies is that the allergy is to good food, not usually preservatives and all the things we perceive as trash additives in food. I think its a plague on our society. On the other hand, factory food COULD potentially be such a blessing for busy moms, but instead it becomes another problem. Well, thanks for letting me input my two cents since I don't usually have many people with whom to talk/read about these things. I really didn't add too much to this thread, I'm afraid.
Eventually, with allergies you just have to be thankful that you are able to eat SOMETHING and live! :-)
My children used to have horrible food allergies--they were allergic to gluten (wheat, barley, rye, most oats, and all derivatives of those three), casein (both cow and goat and other animals including human), soy, corn, chocolate, coffee (not that they were allowed to actually drink it anyhow), and even caffeine. I felt completely trapped by our diet. We couldn't trust anyone but ourselves to make our own foods, and we were on a downward spiral where the children were acquiring new allergies every few months.
We found a wonderful doctor (chiropractic) who utilizes Neurolink and NAET to eliminate not only the allergies, but the underlying cause of the allergies. It was interesting to me because my two oldest children had the exact same allergies for two totally different reasons.
They are now completely and totally normal, and enjoying raw cow milk and real bread for the first time in their lives.
I'm not convinced that all allergies can be eliminated in all people all of the time, but for families like ours that were truly in bondage to the allergies, these advances in treatment are a true blessing, even though they are extremely expensive.
Thanks for this post. My fourth son also gets awful eczema from cow's milk and cow's milk products. Fortunately he doesn't seem to have a soy allergy so we've been giving him soy milk as well as rice milk to drink. :)
We've had to read A LOT of labels, primarily for sugar ingredients. Sugar, like milk and soy, seems to be in EVERYTHING, including chips and hot dogs. Hot dogs, I believe are just awful things to eat anyway. LOL So we've been doing most of our shopping for our 4th son at Trader Joe's. It's a long learning process, but well worth the results! Keep up the great work!
My second and third children were allergic to dairy as well. They were nursing, and when I cut the dairy out of my diet, their symptoms (eczema, vomitting, reed ring around eye) all went away within a week. I kept them completely off dairy until they were 3 years old. They are now 3.5 and 6, and they can have yogurt twice a week (daily gives them tummy aches and the little one gets diarrhea when she's had too much). I no longer have to worry about them having a donut after church, or birthday cake at a party (I used to bring my own for them when they were little). I use soy milk to bake with, and rice milk for cereal/to drink. When I had my fourth, he projectile vomitted daily, and his cheeks were often bright red. My family joked at Christmas that I dressed him in his little santa suit to match his cheeks.... they were that red! He was exclusively breastfed. I cut dairy out, and it didn't help. So I started the elimination diet that you talked about. I highly recommend "Is This Your Child" by Doris Rapp. She describes the diet in detail. I started adding in the allergins one at a time, and found out that he is allergic to dairy in all forms (even sheep's cheese!), corn, citrus (specifically oranges), pecans and almonds, and strawberries. As you said, the most amazing thing for me was that I felt better on the diet. I was hungry all the time and eating all the time, but I was eating fresh fruits and veggies, and not what I normally snacked on, mainly wheat (pretzels, bread, crackers). It was labor intensive, especially making two meals all the time (my family was not enthusiastic about following same diet), but it was worth it for my son and for myself! I recommend searching "food allergy cookbook" at your library... ours had over a dozen! I can especially recommend several:
The Self-Help Allergy Cookbook
The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook
The Color Coded Allergy Cookbook
There's also a group called POFAK (Parents of Food Allergic Kids). Don't know if they'd be helpful for you or not. Hope that helps! God bless you all in your perseverance to find what works for your family!
Kim~ It is always bittersweet to find another allergy family, great resource but a struggle for the family. We found out our 3rd child was allergic when she was miserable, itchy, and not gaining weight at 7 months old. I was bf exclusively and her testing showed allergic to casein, whey, egg, nuts, beef, pork, tuna, chicken, carrots and garlic. WHAT!! Needless to say, she went on Alimentum formula (or I was to eat cardboard and water) and we have attemted to treat her severe eczema/chronic uticaria as natural as possible. She can now eat chicken and peanut butter but all others are a no-go. Label reading does become habit and I'm surprised at how easy we transitioned all of this into our lives. We also know what topical products are no good as she can not have any cream based products and reacts to any of said allergens contacting her skin (i.e cocoa butter) We have not tried Goats milk due to her whey/casein allergy but would like to try as it probably bakes better than soy/rice :) Thanks for sharing, I enjoy your blog!
My son was very sensitive to the milk in MY diet when I was nursing him....I finally figured out it was milk products because we got pizza every Friday and every weekend he was SO colicky. When I got strict about eliminating dairy, he was a totally different baby. I wish more new moms of colicky babies knew this!
Ah.. Thank you. I had just asked you to share this. Did not know you already had. Thanks.
My Charlotte developed symptoms that were different to your daughters. Except for the Spitty and Excema.
I guess in hind sight she might have cramped. But at 13 months ( when she weaned) she would refuse to " go" in her diaper. So she trained early. She would cry and it would "hurt" and it would be smeared with blood - just like if she had hemorrhoids.
I figured out the " milk" connection as Cow Milk was the only NEW thing that had been added to her diet. Her excema went away too. The docs wanted to medicate her for constipation. They thought I was nuts. It was NOT constipation. "it" looked "normal" cept for the smears of blood. Finally one of the docs told me ( 5 yrs later) that it was text book Milk Protein.
Your explanation about the Cheese maybe why Cheese did not seem to bother her. Ice cream has just started to. She is 9. But .. its not something we usually have everyday.
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