Gluten/dairy sensitivity & fluid in ears....

[chlobo]

So in the past two weeks my daughter has been diagnosed with a gluten/dairy sensitivty and also with diminished hearing due to fluid in her ears.

I'm sure her pediatrician will want to use abx & possibly tubes to drain the fluid.

But I'm wondering if anyone here has run into this problem and had it clear up once the gluten/dairy was removed from the diet? I'd really like to try the holistic approach first.

[thepeach80]

Milk is especially bad for this as it causes extra mucus etc and can lead to fluid in the ears. I would definitely give the diet a try first. Do you have a list of ingredients that mean dairy? All 3 of mine have tubes so I'm not against them at all, but I think the diet will help here.

[Panserbjorne]

Oh my gosh, PLEASE go see a chiropractor! Subluxations are routinely caused by allergies and can be corrected if the subluxations are addressed. Whenever my ds gets an exposure he gets fluid build up in his ears. Off to the chiro we go and he has never developed into full blown infection and has no hearing issues. I had the same experience with all my kids.

I'm sure you can do a search here and find many mamas who treat ear stuff with chiropractic....especially when it comes to allergies.

[chlobo]

I asked the chiropractor about this and she didn't seem to think it would help. Maybe I should try another chiro?

[TripMom]

Oh my - from age 1 to 2 my triplets were constantly sick. Constant ear infections, bronchitis, and eventually bronchitis that would turn into pneumonia. I don't really think its normal for my three 1 year olds to have had pneumonia at least twice each by their second birthday?

Anyway - at a loss for what to do - and out of utter desperation, I took the advice of a couple of moms whose kids had similar problems as young children - and I took them off dairy. My kids had no seeming "reaction" to eating dairy at all - in fact they loved it. They loved milk, cheese, yogurt - it was a big part of their diet.

Once I took them off dairy - they stopped getting sick almost immediately. Literally - they are all most 3 now and we have been to the doc for a sick kid visit maybe once! The difference is amazing.

All this is to say . . . . I am a very big advocate of removing dairy from the diet of kids who have chronic ear infection, chest or bronchial illnesses. I am not sure about gluten - as we didn't remove that. Removing Gluten and Dairy is a big task - maybe try one and see how it goes. If no improvement - try removing both? If still no improvement - then you know the diet change really isn't a big factor and you can return to a non-restrictive diet . . .

Just my .02.

[Panserbjorne]

Originally Posted by chlobo

I asked the chiropractor about this and she didn't seem to think it would help. Maybe I should try another chiro?

MOST DEFINITELY. Just to be clear, this isn't in place of removing allergens, jsut supporting the body in dealing with them. You still need to stop exposure.

[chlobo]

Oh, we're definitely going to remove them. I'm hoping that the dairy is secondary to the gluten & she may be able to eat it once her gut heals some.

I just want to do all I can to make her better so she doesn't need surgery.

[Panserbjorne]

I know the head of Kentukiana Children's Center who believes that surgery can actually make it worse. Of course, she's also a chiro by training. I will say though, that everyone I know who has had the surgery still deals with chronic horrible infections. We treat structurally and have never progressed past slight inflammation. None of my kids have ever had any medication, prescription or otherwise.

[chlobo]

I feel a little behind the 8 ball here since we haven't been getting regular adjustments or doing anything else to help the congestion. So I'm sure abx & tubes will be put on the table. I plan to remove the allergens & try chiro first though.

[tallanvor]

I had chronic ear infections as a kid and they took dairy out of my diet and it didn't work, I still had them. So, it might not solve the problem. But at the same time, it's certainly healthier than automatically doing tubes. Even if the tubes solve the problem now, there's not guarantee they will keep it solved (I had 3 1/2 sets before I was 8 yrs old), whereas if the dairy is the culprit, you can monitor that.

[redpajama]

I introduced dairy when my son was about 12 months old, and he got his first ear infection within a month (in retrospect, this seems very obvious, but at the time I had never heard of a correlation). He had *constant* ear infections for the next year. Our doctor was okay with not treating all but one infection (when his ear drum looked as if it was about to rupture), but after a year, she referred us to a specialist. In the meantime, I started to hear more about a possible correlation between dairy and ear infections. I asked the ENT specialist about it, and he said there was no correlation and recommended tubes. Because his hearing appeared to be affected, we went ahead and scheduled the surgery, but decided to take him off dairy in the meantime. We took him to our doctor the day before his surgery was scheduled (about a month after we cut out dairy) and she said his ears looked good (for the first time in nearly 15 months), so I called and cancelled the surgery. It's been about 9 months now, and no ear infections.