I have children with allergy issues - and yes, one of whom were made that way *purely* because of what I was eating at the time (and, it wasn't anything 'unusual' by any means, or 'easy' to eliminate). To the point one night in A&E where *I* wondered if I should stop, and that childs specialist telling me in no uncertain terms that he does not support the use of neocate, especially instead of BF because there are a *lot* of children who are allergic to it who are then left with no options at all. He always looks to, in severe severe cases, admitting the child to be intraveneously fed with clean nutrients (i.e. in a saline solution) and the mother for a period of time, whilst the mothers diet is a) cleaned down and b) balanced nutritionally for the child. He believes that this action, whilst extreme, saves time and save lives, as the giving of any formula (including 'elemental' does damage all of its own *because it is not what the body is designed to encounter at that time in its life*)... and the results of a 5 year audit of this policy has shown that this method saves the NHS here around 10 million pounds sterling *per child* to adulthood, through all the other things that they do not then need to go through, even though there will be follow up as they start to eat for themselves etc etc. But by catching allergies soon, you avoid (for the majority of children) the gut issues that lead to them becoming more widely allergic
Now he is often dealing with the sickest children of all, there are huge numbers who don't live anywhere with access to him and his clinic, or one of the other 5 specialist clinics/teams in the *whole* of the UK; and these children often cycle through the whole gamut of inadequate and wrong 'advice' and 'treatment' until at some point they die (and often then their parents get investigated!) or they grow past the worst of their issues, often having had invasive and major operations to excise tissue, put in shunts and a whole matter of other things.... We are lucky that we live in a country with the NHS - it has its problems with underknowledged staff (and a huge number of people who end up 'trained' by commercial firms and believing that what they say is correct, always), but where you find yourself somewhere with an educated and experienced set of people you can avoid so many of the outcomes that are horrendous if left untreated. It is accepted that atopic tendancies and allergies *are* genetic - it may not express itself in the same foodstuff or environmental factor as the parent or the siblings, but that it is there is a risk factor, and you can eat and live to minimise those. It isn't guaranteed to work, but then what is guaranteed in life?
My 3rd child has no allergy issues at all - his pregnancy, birth and early life were eaten well but carefully through to avoid all the issues that the previous two pregnancies/children encountered. He has never been medicated (and yes, I do believe that that is a factor to watch for) and five years in has had absolutely no issues at all, at a calculated risk factor (by the specialists team) of over a 80% likelihood of issues/allergies even with 'all precautions'... so who knows what made the difference... but it did.
The Neocate information site is flagged here in the UK (by the Dept. of Health) as an 'unreliable source' but that doesn't stop them advertising and pushing themselves as one to medical professionals :-(
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Very nicely put mom2snugbugs! An allergy site shouldn't be promoting a formula brand...wait...that's because it's not an allergy site, it's a formula commercial in disguise! And furthermore, if this is a 'medicine' than the info should come from the child's doctor, not from an advertisement.
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