which foods to eliminate in an elimination diet?

[flowmom]

I have seen a lot of different versions of what to eliminate in an elimination diet to identify what foods are causing problems. I'm looking for advice on how to proceed.

We have no family history of allergies that I know of except that dh is sensitive to milk protein. I don't have symptoms except for breastmilk oversupply (supposedly this is often caused by food sensitivities), dark circles under eyes, and tendency towards slight constipation (but have one BM per day).

Ds (2.5 yo) was a colicky baby and was very slow to start solids. He's always been an ultra-picky eater and got iron deficiency at 2 yo (gradually improving). He is prone to meltdowns and very intense periods of engaging in inappropriate behaviours or just being "hyper". Someone says he has "allergy cheeks" but I'm not sure.

Ds and I would both go on the diet as ds is still breastfeeding. I'm also tandem nursing a newborn so this will be very hard for and I want to avoid wasting time going down the wrong track.

[LaLa]

We opted to do blood antibody testing from ImmunoLab to get right to the triggor foods and skip the guessing game. You can also be tested for Candida with this same lab and the same blood draw. It was very helpful in getting us started.

Another route that works well for many is the Specific Carb Diet, but if you didn't know what your triggor foods were, that could be bad because they recommend eating nuts, dairy, eggs, beans. We were able to do a SCDiet in the final stages without dairy, eggs, or beans and we did well with that, but we knew which foods to avoid because of our ImmunoLab results.

A DAN doctor should be able to order this for you, as should any doctor. You may have to provide the info for your doctor if they are not familiar with the lab. I'm sure there are others too, this is just the one we used.

[Pauli]

Hi, I'm new here and am still finding my way around but I noticed your post and wanted to say that elimination diets are the best way to identify offending foods but you have to keep an open mind. Eliminating the top eight allergens is a good place to start but you have to keep in mind that ANY food can be an allergen, so if you don't get results you have to take a hard look at what you ARE eating.
I did elimination in every way and ended up eating turkey, chicken, rice and several veggies for a few weeks. I finally figured out that my daughter was allergic to RICE (among many other things) which is why the diet helped but never totally got rid of her symptoms.
I found this site useful: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/4/t041800.asp

A blood test can help you narrow down the possibilites and maybe rule out a few things. What we did was and ImmunoCap RAST for the 20 most common allergens (when dd was 9 months), then we did two rounds of skin tests for things that scored high on the blood test and things we suspected. Then we eliminated everything that came up positive and her skin finally cleared upl

Kelsey is 20 months and still almost entirely breastfed. She's allergic to eggs, dairy, wheat, rice, beef, pork, potato, pear and tomato and we also avoid nuts and shellfish. We identified all of them except beef with an elimination diet (I didn't eat beef often enough to make a connection until we went to Montana). From the elimination diet I also though she was reacting to all grains and fruit and soy, but that was probably the rice. The allergy testing ruled out those as allergens and was accurate.

Good Luck..and I also want to say that the elimination diet is HARD, but it can be done. I got frustrated and depressed and cried a lot but it was worth it to end up with a healthy kid...and you'll adjust, it's the transition and not knowing if it's doing anything that gets you. If you don't already eat it, quinoa is great thing to eat... www.quinoa.net

[agcj]

I said the top 8, but I would look for other foods, as well. My kids are allergic to soy, milk, eggs, peanuts, nuts and to carrots, peas, tomatoes, and chicken. They both reacted to these foods with hives and other obvious symptoms. And we had allergy skin tests done. So watch out for foods you eat a lot of. Really, the top 8 are food staples in our society- we eat them often.

[chasmyn]

Would you all mind posting links to the labs you used? Or did you go through a doctor? DH and I both suspect we have food sensitivities and want to know once and for all. Thanks so much

[flowmom]

We started our elimination diet a couple of days ago. We are eliminating gluten, dairy, soy, rice, almonds, oranges, and chocolate. This is based on the foods we eat a lot of (well actually we don't eat a lot of chocolate ). It's going better than I thought it would. Lotsa time meal planning but otherwise not too painful. We'll be doing it for 3 weeks. We are also taking probiotics and Houston Neutraceuticals digestive enzymes to work on gut issues...