When did your kids grow out of their allergies?

[goatvillegirl]

I recently learned that my 13-month old has allergies to milk, soy, spinach, sesame, peas, garlic, and dogs. Phew.  I know many of you face larger lists but this seems overwhelming already.  

Her reactions so far have just involved splotchy skin and hives on her face and neck (no issues with BM, vomiting, breathing, etc.).

I know she will likely grow out of these someday (crossing fingers!) but I was wondering how long it typically took your kids to grow out of them.  Did you get tested again at the allergist's office or did you try the foods at home?

Also, was there anything you did that you think helped along the healing process? I'm still nursing my daughter and the allergist told me that as long as she's not having any visible reactions to my milk when I eat her allergens, I should just keep eating them.  Have any of you received similar advice?

Thanks so much for your thoughts on all of this!  I know in the larger realm of problems, allergies aren't that big, but I still find them overwhelming.

[scsigrl]

How were these found out? Were you given epipens?  If you haven't seen a reaction and she has eaten it in the past, you may not have to take it out of her diet.

Sesame is a tough one. (Any that are not Top 8 can be) and involves a lot of phone calls to be sure they aren't in "seasonings".  I would also ask your allergist about other nuts as well cause I think some suggest not doing seeds if there is a sesame allergy.

I had to eliminate my DS and DD's allergies when I was nursing.  It depends on the kid and the allergen.

My DS has not outgrown his allergies at 4.5.  Well, not all of them.  So far we have passe 3 food challenges so he's down to 8 allergens.  DD outgrew her intolerances by 2 though we haven't actually given her any that she did react to through my milk because we have chosen to not feed her things my DS can't have at this time for safety reasons.

[goatvillegirl]

We found out about the allergies after she ate the foods directly in the form of purees and yogurt.  The only thing she's ever visibly reacted to through breast milk was soy.  We then had a blood test that proved that she was allergic to these.  The test said she wasn't allergic to peas, but when I reintroduced it she broke out in splotches again, so we figure the test was mistaken.  

When you describe your daughter's reactions as intolerances, do you mean they were allergies-lite or do you mean they were more gut-based (gas, diarrhea, etc)? Did she have to do food challenges like your son?

[scsigrl]

Great!  Just making sure as allergy testing is only 50% accurate for a positive result and the only "true" way to know is through food trials.  That's why I said "may not need to remove" because you can react to a lot on tests but not actually be allergic.  Reactions ALWAYS trump results so I totally get the pea thing!  My DS tests - to banana and while he isn't allergic (IgE allergic anyway) he has something called FPIES which is similar in that we have to avoid.  Took us 4 allergists to dx that one!  

I sure hope you were give epi pens.  2 of them!

My daughter was a poor sleeper and a general grump with GI issues when I ate eggs or dairy and to a lesser extent soy (though we are not heavy on the soy intake anyway).  She tested negative to everything on SPT (skin prick tests) and that's about 90% accurate.  We have not given her the things she seemed to react to as a baby (which as I said she stopped reacting to at about 18ish months) because of my son.  It's just easier to have them on the same diet for now for my sake and safety (she's a mess ;) ).  We keep talking about giving her egg and dairy but then something else always comes up and we hold off.  (We are dealing with a few issues with DS so the time never seems good.)

[SweetSilver]

Milk allergies commonly fade or lessen around 5yo, but not for us.  My oldest daughter added to her allergies around 3yo, including a really severe wheat allergy.  At your dd's age, I would expect your allergist to want to retest in a couple of years.  I'm really glad this happened, because I never connected my dd's rages and foul moods to a wheat allergy, but eliminating it solved the problem.

      "Challenges" are the gold standard, despite what the numbers say.  If the numbers are high, and the allergen a high anaphylactic risk, the doc might want to challenge in the office.  Our allergist never settles on the numbers, though because dd's shellfish allergy numbers are sky high he's not ready to challenge that yet and when it comes time, we will do that in office.  She has never had contact with shellfish, but I'm sure it was there in my milk on rare occasions.  Her dairy allergy is too scary, and wheat?  Devil child!  Devil child!  Not gonna go there yet, thank you!  We have been able to relax with corn, and she seemed to do well with a small piece of corn-on-the-cob.  She is 6.5yo.  

     Not all her positive allergens need to be swept clean from her diet.  Her soy ice cream has rice syrup in it, though she can't have rice, etc.  Others are kept out for now due to their being scary allergens-- nuts and peanuts etc-- not because her reactions are severe. Peanut challenge is scheduled with the doc in October.  A few are up for home challenges-- rice, buckwheat, fish (low numbers, otherwise it would be in office).  New ones keep arising.... turkey? or just the smoke flavoring?  raw carrots?  It goes on and on.  I relate all this to you to give you an idea of what a typical highly-allergic childhood might look like. 

[goatvillegirl]

Thanks!! This allergist wouldn't run the bloodtest for anything that she hadn't been exposed to and reacted to, so it still leaves a ton of unknowns every time we introduce a new food.  So frustrating!  

Allergies require a lot of creativity (and constant fear)!

[scsigrl]

Originally Posted by goatvillegirl 

Thanks!! This allergist wouldn't run the bloodtest for anything that she hadn't been exposed to and reacted to, so it still leaves a ton of unknowns every time we introduce a new food.  So frustrating!  

Allergies require a lot of creativity (and constant fear)!

THAT is actually a good thing.  It can be scary but it will prevent you from tossing foods that you don't need to!  

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by goatvillegirl 

 This allergist wouldn't run the bloodtest for anything that she hadn't been exposed to and reacted to, so it still leaves a ton of unknowns every time we introduce a new food.  So frustrating!  

I think this is a mistake if a child has been breastfed.  If YOU have eaten anything, even if she has not, then she has had a "first contact" with the food.  Shellfish is such a dangerous allergen that unless you have never eaten that yourself, your dd will have had contact with it.  My dd never, ever had shellfish when she tested positive for the allergy, nearly as severe as dairy.  I suppose she might have had oyster sauce on broccoli?  I don't order things with oyster sauce, but I have eaten gumbo.  I would request the big ones, just in case.

[scsigrl]

Originally Posted by SweetSilver 

I think this is a mistake if a child has been breastfed.  If YOU have eaten anything, even if she has not, then she has had a "first contact" with the food.  Shellfish is such a dangerous allergen that unless you have never eaten that yourself, your dd will have had contact with it.  My dd never, ever had shellfish when she tested positive for the allergy, nearly as severe as dairy.  I suppose she might have had oyster sauce on broccoli?  I don't order things with oyster sauce, but I have eaten gumbo.  I would request the big ones, just in case.

Clinically, it is NOT an good idea to blind test regardless of being breastfed.  There is a 50% FALSE + on blood and skin tests.  Casting a wide net gets a lot of kids and parents into a trap of avoiding things there is no reason to.  It isn't a matter of "first exposure", it's a matter of a high false positive rate.
 

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by scsigrl 

Clinically, it is NOT an good idea to blind test regardless of being breastfed.  There is a 50% FALSE + on blood and skin tests.  Casting a wide net gets a lot of kids and parents into a trap of avoiding things there is no reason to.  It isn't a matter of "first exposure", it's a matter of a high false positive rate.

Is it a trap, or is it reasonable caution?  My daughter's test results were huge for shellfish as big as her life-threatening dairy allergy, yet her only exposure would have been in BM or in a small amount of oyster sauce.  Our allergist tested for the more common allergens, and the dangerous ones.  Her first skin test was at 2.  Our allergist asked that we avoid the Big Allergens for a time for two reasons: she had a severe, confirmed allergy already.  Her numbers were sky high for an extremely dangerous allergen.  He believed that this kind of kid is likely to add more allergies, and he was right.  Wheat was never a problem until around 3yo, then it became a huge problem, a miserable one until she was retested at almost 5 and we figured out the connection after she improved after eliminating it.  

     At 4, she tested positive for a huge array of foods, many more than at 2. This could have been in part from imperfect results.  I know in retrospect that almond should have shown up the first time, but it might not have been included in the "nut mix" in the first round.  Or these new results could have been from new allergies, which I also believe.  

    At 6.5, the doc is wanting to do more food challenges.  Corn seems to be better now, so that's a "go" in small amounts.  Next is buckwheat and rice. We have the green light to do a home challenge for fish again.  Her tests were positive, and I halted the first challenge after she complained of tingly skin when we smeared some salmon on her forearm.  Peanuts, a mild allergen on her test, he wants to challenge in office.  Shellfish he is still uncomfortable challenging, even in a clinical setting.

     I have a bazillion allergies as well, and my skin test numbers match very well with my experiences for the most part.  Reactions for each food is so different, I can tell you with a fair degree of accuracy what it was I accidently ingested just by the symptoms.  Nothing but peanuts cause my eyelids to feel fat.  Soy does something weird to my jaw: some odd, indescribable tingling sensation in some glands there.  Rice feels like a really crappy sugar rush.  Corn is a fat tongue.  Oats cause confusion and elevated heart rate.  That one's the worst.  And even though "the numbers" for sesame and hazelnuts are the same, I cannot have even small amounts of the hazelnuts.  That one is a bit tricky, I admit. 

     I do not feel we were "entrapped".  I had seen my daughter struggle with a scary dairy allergy, and have been close to grabbing the EpiPen Jr. twice for accidental ingestion.  I am glad we tested the big ones.  I know challenges are the real test, but I am totally at ease with avoiding shellfish, even though it's possible that her shellfish allergy is a false positive.  I trust in my allergist's caution, it mirrors my own.  Now that he wants us to start challenges again, I trust him there, too. 

     I think it was a good idea to test in our case.  I understand the other viewpoint.  I understand the vagaries of testing.  I understand allergies because I struggle with them, too.  I do think parents can relax somewhat and advise that regularly.  I have relaxed a lot in the last 6 years.  But testing?  I have no regrets.

[scsigrl]

Every family has to make choices that are right for them!

Current recommendations are that Dr's NOT test for things there have not been reactions to.  I have seen people putting kids on unhealthy diets based on bad allergy testing that turns out to be  totally incorrect.  I have lived it as well.  It is not common to have more than one or two allergies so casting a wide net on a kid who obviously has some allergy (meaning they already have a hyperactive immune response) is likely to net a bigger result but that result is only accurate 50% of the time on a positive test.  Again, this is the CURRENT recommendation to allergists (though many aren't current on the research).

[SweetSilver]

Personally, I am happy that neither dd's doc nor mine followed those recommendations.  

     I have already written about her shellfish allergy, but there is also the question: what does an allergic reaction look like?  We all know the scary anaphylactic reactions, the hives, severe GI distress, etc.  But what about lethargy?  Frequent urination?  Confusion, panic attacks and elevated heart rate?  Mood swings, rage and (what seems like) depression?  All of these lesser-known allergic responses either I or my daughter have experienced.  

     It was my lack of understanding of what a food reaction is that led me to be undiagnosed for 40 years.  Since I had no dramatic throat swelling or hives, I assumed I had no food allergies.  But I did have severe grass allergies, so I tested for environmental allergens.  After ridding our home as best as possible, I realized that eliminating these sources was difficult without hermetically sealing the house!  Because I was allergic to EVERYTHING nearly, I decided to ask if I could be tested for food as well, since I could control these.  Sure enough, I was allergic to a lot.  Oats was off the chart.  I eliminated as much as I could, some foods took a while to get rid of entirely.  Once these were gone, I finally noticed the odd sensations I hadn't noticed.  I called my previous state an "allergic fog".  Plus, my energy came roaring back, I wasn't a zombie any more.  I thought this was just being tired.  Nope.  My deep meltdowns never happened again.  Just as my daughter's rages disappeared, so my mood swings vanished.

     I had noticed something was not right.  I had these odd episodes where I couldn't think, my heart raced, hands sweated, I got jitters.  I kept thinking this could be a blood sugar problem.  It wasn't, tested for that, but for a time I ate a bowl of oatmeal and an egg each morning instead of cereal.  Oats and eggs.  Great.... the problem didn't go away.  No wonder!  Plus my dermographism got worse, and if I dared to scratch one little itch on my back, it would break out in one huge itch, complete with welts and skin the color of a lobster.  Something was clearly wrong somewhere, but, where in this would an uninformed person assume that she definitively had an allergy?  

     Yes, I am more comfortable with the courses that our doctors have taken.

[scsigrl]

Is your Dr. an allergist or NP?

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by scsigrl 

Is your Dr. an allergist or NP?

Both mine and my daughter's are allergists.  My allergist: nice and I trust her.  DD's allergist: love him, would want to marry the guy if I was 65 instead of 42!    He is very relaxed, doesn't sweat the big stuff, cautious but not an alarmist.  He's pretty amazed by the sheer number of allergens she tested positive for, but always wants challenges, except for dairy (that was a no brainer) and shellfish.  I've been to an NP for myself and was underwhelmed.  I personally am a raging skeptic, and muscle testing and NAET just don't quite pass muster with me, and these were the techniques she recommended.  I sure there are others out there, and I keep my ear open, but my particular insurance doesn't cover it so every new trial with a new NP sets me back $$$.  My dd is 6.5 and adding other things back into her diet.  She CAN eat a ton of stuff, but until recently has been a typically picky eater.  We are seeing the end of that phase.  And, yea!  Corn doesn't seem to be giving her the trouble it used to.  It was always mild, and never totally banned, but apparently has retreated enough that we are relaxing even more.  Corn-on-the-cob!