can food sensitivities be tested?

[colsxjack]

Our DD is having food intolerance issues. We know for sure some of the foods (tomatoes, strawberries, lemon, citric acid, other berries, etc). The intolerance shows up in a rash either on her skin where food touched her to almost constant diaper rashes and redness where her poo touches her.

We have cut a lot of things out, but she still has some rash issues but it better than before. She also has fussiness and sleep problems, but that could be related to teething. I just think that if it feels that bad outside of her it must feel bad inside of her too. We are now keeping a journal of food intake and bowel movements to see if we can figure out other intolerance's.

Anyway. We are taking her to see a pediatric nautropath to see if we can get it figured out. We are hoping that there is some type of testing, like allergy testing, that will give us answers to sensitivities. Is there such a thing or do we have to just keep doing elimination of things and food journals? I also would prefer not to just pay a doctor a lot of money to just keep trying new things. And I'd prefer not to fill her full of homeopaths (or any medications).

(she gets plenty of "breathing" time for her bum and wears cloth).

Thanks.

[belove]

I did the ALCAT panal on my child (through a natureopath) and found out that his food intolerances (he had bad ezcama as a baby) were things like bananas,mushroons,spinach and other common stuff you would never suspect. Kiddo was eating 2 bananas a day.

Once I removed these foods from his diet,his ezcema cleared up.

Only catch is that the test is costly. I paid about 500 bucks.

[JaneS]

If it's food chemical intolerance to salicylates... and from that list of foods it seems like it probably is... there is no test that you could do on a young child for that. Only an elimination/provocation diet. I'd recommend FAILSAFE diet.

http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.in...actallergy.htm
http://failsafediet.wordpress.com/

[colsxjack]

Well, we took her in today to get her tested by a Registered Homeopathic Nutritionist. They did a "Computerized Electro Dermal Test" to test for food sensitivities.
It showed that she was sensitive to all of the things we already knew about and some things we didn't know about.
So now we are going to try out eliminating all of the things she scored sensitive to and see if that makes a difference.
Some of it is confusing. Like she scored sensitive to cow and sheep yogurt but not sensitive to organic cow yogurt. And she scored sensitive to all sheep dairy except cheese but the only cheese she scored not sensitive to was sheep cheese. So it is weird to me that she can have organic cow yogurt but not organic cow milk or cheese. And that she can have sheep cheese but not sheep milk or yogurt.

She also showed highly sensitive to peanuts and almonds. We have been giving her peanut butter and almond milk. I do not like to see peanuts on the list. Nut allergies and sensitivities are scary.

Anyway. It is a good start. We are specifically going to stop dairy and apples and carrots from her diet and see if the rashes, diaper rashes and itchy ears go away. We are thinking of doing it for 3-4 weeks and then reintroducing a couple of things and see what happens.

Do you think 3-4 weeks is long enough?
We are going to do this for all of us. Basically because baby and mama have to abstain...so I shall abstain as well for support.

[JaneS]

Yes it is my understanding that 3-4 weeks is enough for those foods you list to start to see improvement... veggies first, then dairy, but gluten can be longer.