Talk to me about food intolerances/allergies and vaccination.

[ChesapeakeBorn]

(X-posted)

Is there a connection? I have come across some information that suggests this.

DS is almost 7 months old and has numerous food intolerances (allergy skin tests were normal). He is exclusively breastfed and I cannot eat wheat because it produces bloody stools in him. I also cannot eat dairy or peanuts because he breaks out in a horrible eczema rash. We tried introducing rice cereal, pears, peach, and avocado - all produced copious amounts of blood in his stool and left him in pain.

He has not yet been vaccinated.

Here's the thing. If 80% of the immune system is in the gut, and he has a strong immune reaction to the most benign of foods, then what will his body do when it is injected with tetanus toxoid (in HIB, Pc, DTaP), germ components, aluminum, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, and 2-phenoxyethanol? I am concerned he would fall into the minority that has a severe, life-altering reaction. I am also concerned that vaccination would throw his system into a hyperactive state and he could over-produce antibodies to food proteins that he is exposed to after the shots -- leading to food allergies. I was going to have him vaccinated for HIB and Pc today, but I am delaying until I see some improvement in his response to foods. What are your thoughts on this controversial issue?

[tanyalynn]

Search the forum for the word vaccination, you'll get a good sampling of other peoples' experiences. Several folks feel that vaccines were the final straw that pushed their kids into severely allergic states. Personally I feel that vaccination for kids who are already showing signs of inappropriate immune function, whether overreaction or underreaction, is risky.

Filling a toolbox with ideas for how to treat illness, when it occurs, has been extraordinarily helpful to me. My son gets sick a lot more than normal, and by now I've had a lot of practice supporting his body through illness. There are so many things we can do to support ourselves and our kids through illness, I know I've just scratched the surface, but this has given me a significant measure of comfort in my decision. My son is not vaccinated and will not be, at least not with any of the vaccines that are available now (don't want to say never for things that don't exist, but I don't foresee it happening).

[WuWei]

Well, there are many variables related to immune health. Vaccination is only one of them. Antibiotics at birth is another huge variable. And about 30+% of babies are delivered by C-section, receiving antibiotics which impact what the body 'learns' is "foreign", thus reacting to healthy variables as an assault. Another variable is heavy metal and toxin exposure. These come from mama, grandma, greatgrandma, environment, etc. Those impact the immune system further.

For food intolerances, generally baby is reacting to undigested proteins in breastmilk, from mama's impaired (leaky) gut. Inadequate stomach acid is another variable leading to blocked detox pathways. If mama is nutrient deficient, the milk is less nourishing, thus baby can't detox as well. Formula is deficient in many immune support and nutrients, further. The issue is complex.

There are things you can control and things you can't control. I wouldn't add assaults to the immune system unnecessarily. We didn't vaccinate. Ds still had leaky gut and food intolerances. NOW, I realize those were cues about MY leaky gut. We are both improved with improved diets. The SAD doesn't provide adequate digestion, absorption and detox nutrients. There are many things you CAN DO to improve YOUR nutrients, thus baby's nutrients. Thus his digestion, absorption, and detox are optimized. Environmental issues can be managed also. I don't want to inject toxins into my baby or child, nor myself. I trust the body to heal itself with nutrients. I don't want to make the job harder, nor impair it from healing, by adding toxins to the work load. Vaccine Ingredients info: http://www.mothering.com/discussions...e#post12876102

Here is more information on gut healing for nursing mamas: Where to start? Help 101

Here is more information about the lack of science in vaccinations: http://www.mothering.com/show-us-science

Here is more information about our decision making process related to examining the actual incident of diseases, risks of vaccination, and the difficulty in Vaccine Choice.


Best wishes,


Pat

[WC_hapamama]

Both of my food allergic children were showing signs of food allergy BEFORE their first vaccinations, and I wasn't not antibiotics during labor and delivery, nor were they on antibiotics after birth.

[Gitti]

Originally Posted by WC_hapamama

Both of my food allergic children were showing signs of food allergy BEFORE their first vaccinations, and I wasn't not antibiotics during labor and delivery, nor were they on antibiotics after birth.

My 3rd grandson had/has food allergies and was never vaccinated, nor did his mom have any medicine during pregnancy or delivery.

He is 3 yrs old now and has outgrown most of it. He's had absolutely no signs of eczema for over a year. Thank heavens my dd did not vaccinate him. Who knows how severe he would be now and whether he would have outgrown it.

We know a family with two kids that had very severe food allergies for years. The mother never took medicine, neither were vaccinated ever...each girl outgrew all food allergies by the time she was 12.

What causes food allergies? Who knows? But one thing is clear to me, vaccinating a child with known allergens is not going to improve his chance of outgrowing them.

[delightedbutterfly]

We feel that the few vaccines our child did get contributed to the multiple allergies she has as an infant. For a couple years her diet consisted only ofbreastmilk rice, veggies and some fruits. We only gave her the 2,4 and 6 month vaxes and at 5 months is when we noticed the eczema.

Since stopping all vaxes her numbers and allergens have improved dramatically.

She is now downto peanut, egg and slightly to soy and dairy. We are considering a selective delayed a schedual once she enters school. Our youngest has no been vax'd yet and will not be until school when we will decide a possible selective delayed schedual. She has had some eczema herself but has not yet reacted to any food on the limited diet we are putting her on. Our ped agrees with the limited allergen diet but does not agree that the vaxes have anything to do with it.

I still believe they do.

[Gitti]

Off Topic:

Originally Posted by brymommy

Our youngest has no been vax'd yet and will not be until school when we will decide a possible selective delayed schedual.

I've read of two separate moms who had their vaccine-free, school-age children tested and it turned out that they had about the same immunity as their fully vaccinated peers. At least according to the titer draw.


Children may not show symptoms to a specific infection and yet build immunity. Once a child has immunity it may be very dangerous to inject them with the virus, bypassing all natural defense the body has in place.

I am just saying, read up first and be very careful.

[ChesapeakeBorn]

This is an interesting discussion, mamas. Thank you for your insight. Our DD was vaccinated and she was diagnosed as being allergic to corn and wheat when she was about 18 months old. Not a severe allergy, but one that gave her eczema, diarrhea, dark circles under her eyes. She outgrew this by 3 years old. Was it the vaccines? Was it the Zantac she was on for a year? Who knows. But her little brother and his bloody stools and eczema? Even though he is presently allergy-free (according to the skin tests), we are concerned that vaccines could launch his intolerances into full on allergies. We are also concerned about the link between autism, food sensitivities, and vaccinations, especially given that there are 3 autistic children in my extended family. I've read The Vaccine Book cover to cover several times now, I know the stats, and I still do worry a bit about some of the illnesses. But severe allergies and vaccine injuries are also scary. Sigh.

Originally Posted by Gitti

I've read of two separate moms who had their vaccine-free, school-age children tested and it turned out that they had about the same immunity as their fully vaccinated peers. At least according to the titer draw.


Children may not show symptoms to a specific infection and yet build immunity. Once a child has immunity it may be very dangerous to inject them with the virus, bypassing all natural defense the body has in place.

I am just saying, read up first and be very careful.

Whoa. Soooo glad you shared this off-topic tidbit. I will definitely be looking into this too.

Keep it comin' mamas. We are all learning from each other.

[tanyalynn]

Have you read Kenneth Bock's book, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics, Autism, ADHD, Asthma and Allergies (or approximately that title)? Discusses toxic load and gut health and how our genes influence how these things present differently in all of us. Useful book for me because the whole issue of toxic load is why the kids and I are here, in this forum. I think causality is often complex and it intertwines a lot of different issues, I see a lot of interesting stuff in my family.

[annep]

I don't usually read or post here on Mothering very often, and have never been to this section until today, but allergies I know about and I have a few things to add to this discussion.

Intollerances cannot turn into allergies. It is possible to have both an allergy and an intolerance to the same food at the same time, so one is not a lighter version of the other, they are entirely different.

Intollerances are the ones that are "in the gut", allergies have to do with white blood cells and an overactive immune system that has nothing better to do. So yes, immunizations can kick start allergies, but they will not turn intollerances into allergies.

Allergies are hereditary. Allergies, eczema, and asthma are all the same gene and can be passed down in any form. If one parents has one of these, the child has a 50% chance of inheriting the gene. If both parents have it, the child has a 70% chance of inheriting it (in any form).

A few people mentioned some symptoms of an allergy, but testing negative on tests. I'm going to assume that these were skin prick tests and/or blood tests for IgE antibodies. Those tests are great to have but not very accurate. They are 50% accurate for positive and 95% for negative, which means that if they test negative, they are probably not IgE allergic, which is why most GOOD allergists will do both and compare. It's also important to have these tests done by an allergist that specializes in food allergies since the testing has to be interpreted and they don't read the same as environmental and seasonal allergies.

That said, there is a new find in allergies that some experts call "slow" allergies. The traditional allergies that we all are used to hearing and talking about are sometimes referred to as "fast" allergies. You will see a reaction within two hours, and often times involve hives, vomiting, wheezing, swelling of the face, things like that. The symptoms of slow allergies take anywhere from a couple of hours to several days to show up and involve more GI symptoms and eczema, and they show up negative on blood and skin tests.

The symptoms the the OP mentioned sounded less like intollerances and more like 'slow' allergies also know as EOS disorders.
An intolerance usually only involves bloating and diarrhea.

Here is a website that talks all about EOS, including symptoms.
http://www.apfed.org/

If you think it may be one of these disorders, you need to see a GOOD pediatric GI that is familiar with EOS for an accurate diagnosis.

And if you want, (I'm not sure of the rules here about it) I know of a really good online support group for families dealing with food allergies.

[ChesapeakeBorn]

Thank you so much for this information. Yes, it does indeed sound like DS is dealing with "slow" allergies. I have read that proctocolitis is something he should outgrow by 9-12 months. I wonder if this is true of eosinophilic proctocolitis too.

On the subject of vaccines and allergies, I found some very interesting information here. This comment at the bottom of the page is particularly striking:

"On my son’s 6th month well baby checkup, he had a full food allergy blood test, for all common allergen (we did this because he was having threads of blood in his stool, and doc wanted to rule out allergy). All his results came back negative for everything– no allergies.

After his blood was drawn, he was also given his full battery of six-month vaccines.

One month later, my wife served him milk for the first time, in the form of baby yogurt. My son turned red wherever the milk touched him. The next allergy test showed him with fairly high numbers for EVERYTHING– he literally reacted to everything except shrimp in that blood test. Milk especially, though.

I am fairly convinced it was the six-month vaccines that did it. We hadn’t been giving him milk beforehand, and we know for a fact that he’d never had peanuts at all. For him to suddenly turn up allergic to both, when his tests were negative the DAY OF the vaccines is too much coincidence for us to ignore."

I believe the theory is that vaccination throws the immune system into such a heightened state that the infants also over-produce antibodies to proteins they are exposed to around the time they received the shots, whether it is through breastmilk or solids. All of these antibodies = food allergy.

There is so much we don't know, so much research yet to be done, but I really think there is something here, even if it is just for certain predisposed individuals. I was watching a lecture that was given by Jon Poling, MD at the Maine Autism Conference and in it he states that we need to start finding a way to screen and identify individuals who are likely to have a life-altering reaction to vaccination. I think that someday this will be the normal protocol prior to giving shots.

[annep]

Great link! Thank you for posting it.
There was one statement that I disagree with.
"Now stop to consider that the same industry producing these vaccines is working hard to develop a vaccine that “cures” peanut allergies. "
Drug companies develop and sell vaccines. Currently the only people looking for a cure to food allergies are allergists. There are no major companies or government groups or chemists working on it. I'm convinced that they don't care yet. Plus there are no grants out there for the research. My son's allergist is working on it, Dr Wood (who has food allergies himself) from that article is working on it. I have not yet heard of anyone outside of working allergists that are trying to find a cure. And it's not a vaccine that they are looking for, it's a cure. My son's doctor's group found an herb that did cure food allergies in mice, they are now testing it on people. Fingers crossed.