Looking for opinions

[sbgrace]

I'm looking for opinions.
Would you abandon the four day rotation diet in this particular child at some point--if so when?

Alternatively, do you think I should keep doing it just in case he might sensitize to something.


He's six. There are many foods (carrots, rice, chicken, pears) he ate day in and out for years and never reacted to.

Known allergens:
tree nuts, sesame, sunflower, hemp, orange, cantaloupe, mango (sunflower the only new allergy and it happened on the rotation diet).
I think he's allergic to maple syrup or, perhaps, has OAS to that. He outgrew a dairy allergy around age three. Despite eating yogurt daily for almost two years he was negative on skin prick and RAST and hasn't shown any issues with it in rotation either.

I started the rotation diet to try to identify what foods might be causing GI issues (beyond the tree nuts and sesame which, at cross contamination levels, were solely causing GI stuff). He was healthy when we removed those and then wasn't. I figure it was something I added to his diet when we lost so much due to cross contamination so we did a rotation.

I finally figured it out--it was cinnamon. He had been spt positive (and would get hives w/ingestion) to cinnamon before but the was negative on a recent skin prick so we reintroduced. If this is an allergy he re-sensitized on the rotation diet (once every four days). Alternatively, it could be an intolerance--I never saw a skin reaction to it.

He's had no GI issues for a month. GI (diarrhea, reflux, pain) was all I was seeing and only on the day of cinnamon or, in the case of the reflux, sometimes the next day as well.

[tanyalynn]

Just as a reminder, most of the allergies are IgE, right?

So the cinnamon and the tree nut & sesame x-con match up to the GI issues? And you've made the GI issues go away for a month by making those changes.

Then yeah, I'd ditch the 4-day rotation. Those seem really hard to maintain long term (still in awe of you Kathy, still in awe). My best guess (and you know that none of our food issues has been IgE, so that's my perspective) is that you had a question, you've found answers, it seems, and to me, I'd think that any potential risk, which seems pretty small, is outweighed by the reduced stress. It really sounds like you've solved the problem; the rotation was a useful tool for a time, but now its' work is done.

How do you feel about it? It sounds like you're just wanting to make sure that there's nothing you're overlooking, make sure you've done your due diligence. It sounds like you have.

[mamafish9]

I agree with Tanya, I think you've thoroughly thought this through. There's no 100% guaranteed right answer, but I think there's some big upsides to moving off the rotation diet at this point, and not a lot of evidence it's prevented sensitization. If it were me, I'd be looking to make my life easier - stay vigilant, but with all the food limitations you have, it's still going to feel a lot freer to be able to have any safe food on any day!

[kjbrown92]

For us, almost 2 years out, we rotate anything that was mild or moderate that the kids got back. Anything that was safe gets free rein. But ours were intolerances, not allergies. I've just found for us, that if we forget to rotate on the previously mild ones, we lose them, which isn't fun.