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Originally Posted by bigjooba  My DS has suspected tree nut, peanut, egg and dairy allergies (I havent confirmed the egg and dairy, but I highly suspect it, the nuts he has physically reacted to - vomiting, hives, facial swelling). Have any of your children outgrown any of these allergens? I am particularly concerned, as every doctor I go to doesnt seem to take this issue seriously. The main consensus of health care professionals is that food does not cause eczema, asthma or behavioural problems. My DS has all three. I was referred to a skin specialist to treat my sons excessive eczema, and he was the only professional to take food allergies seriously, although he went on to say that allergy testing is unreliable and not recommended for children under 7 years of age. (My son is 2 years old).
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Okay -- I did a quick search and just pulled these articles. There are a million, so if you do a search, you're going to find a lot.
Asthma & Food allergies
http://foodallergies.about.com/od/di...aallergies.htmhttp://www.webmd.com/asthma/guide/food-allergies-asthma
Food allergies and eczema:
http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body...ff/eczema.html
I'm not even going to do a search on food allergies and behavior problems, but it just seems to be common sense that if you are eating foods that make you feel crappy, you'll likely not be at your best. (and I have personal experience with my ds that once we removed soy, which we found out that he was allergic to, he had a turn around in behavior.)
As far as outgrowing allergies, of the ones you listed, tree nuts and peanuts are likely to be life long allergies. But he *may* outgrow them - it's just not as likely as the other foods that you listed. One of the best things that you can do is to avoid all the foods that contain those allergens so that your ds' immune system has a chance to mature. There's no guarantee that this will be the ticket, but if you don't avoid these foods, there's a strong chance that his reactions will worsen.
We did food allergy testing at almost 2 years old to confirm a peanut allergy. It was conclusive -- and 7 years later, he's still allergic to peanuts. At this time we also tested for soy because of the food family relation (peanuts are legumes and so is soy - another common food allergy) - but soy did not show up as a problem. The dr. did not want to test for more foods because it seemed unnecessary since ds was not reacting to any other foods at the time. We were told to avoid tree nuts to avoid cross contamination issues with the peanuts.
We waited until he was 5 to do a full allergy panel - environmental as well as foods. We found out that he was also anaphylactic to cashews, highly allergic to most tree nuts, and had a few environmental allergies - dogs & cats and dust mites. I got a lot of flack from the dr. for wanting to do this full testing, but when he came up positive for tree nuts including another ana. allergy, the dr. had to take it all back. At this point, the dr. did tell me that since ds' peanut allergy had not diminished in severity, it was highly unlikely that he would outgrow it.
By the time ds was 7, we moved cross country, and I thought ds had developed additional envirnonmental allergies, but it turns out that he had developed an allergy to soy sometime between when we did the testing at 5 and when he was tested again at 7.
So - there is some truth in waiting to test for allergies - because some can be outgrown and some can develop, but given the severity of your ds' reaction to peanuts and your suspicion about the other food allergies, I would say that testing would be important for you.
Do you have an Epi pen?
