how useful is allergy testing for an infant?

[Minoh]

DD has had digestive discomfort since my milk came in at day 3. We assumed she just had a sensitive, immature gut that would improve with time. But she's 16wks old now and still seems to have lots of pain that wakes her up from sleep frequently. She'll wake crying, writhing, passing gas and just miserable. She also goes many days between any sizable poops, and has been like that since she was just a couple of weeks old. I know that can be normal but she is just always uncomfortable.

We've wondered about allergy testing but I wasn't sure how effective or useful it is with an infant. Our craniosacral therapist recommended NAET testing at a local clinic and I know they work with babies. Our naturopath said she didn't have as much faith in the NAET testing as in the mineral/hair tests they do through her clinic, but that it might not work super well with a young baby.

What are your experiences with testing your LOs for allergies? Is it worth the expense? We don't have insurance and have tried so many things with DD (eliminating dairy, probiotics, chiro, CST, acupuncture, working on my milk oversupply, etc), that I don't want to put too much hope into something that might not be worthwhile.

[changingseasons]

Honestly, if I had to pay out of pocket for testing, I would say no- it's not worth it. Conventional allergy tests aren't very accurate for infants. Even alternative tests (ELISA, ALCAT) are anywhere close to 100% accurate.

The cheapest and most reliable thing you can do is an elimination diet, and keep a very detailed food diary.

I think for an infant, the top offenders are dairy/soy (those allergies seem to go together for some reason), then eggs, then gluten.

Check out my blog (link in sig) for info about testing & elimination diets.

[Chinese Pistache]

I agree with CS. I don't have much faith in NAET (we did it, it didn't work). We had conventional testing done when my dd was 15 mths. The skin prick gave us some useful results, but the RAST blood test had lots of false negatives. I don't think most conventional allergists will even test on an infant.

Really, at this age, your best bet is to do an elimination diet and food journal. See this link for help.

[JaneS]

Ditto. I would first eliminate egg and dairy and then reevaluate any changes before I jumped into an Elim Diet. Those are the most common foods to cause reactions in a babe. Which probiotics did you use? I would try a dairy free one before abandoning that approach.

[Minoh]

That's definitely good to know. I really was hesitant about taking her for allergy testing because other than this discomfort, she doesn't even really have any symptoms.

Thanks so much for those links. I guess I really do need to start journaling to track when she's most upset and if there's a relationship with what I'm eating. I've been off dairy for months now but it seems to be making very little difference, if at all.

How soon after I eat an offending food would I expect to see some kind of distress in my baby?

[Minoh]

Originally Posted by JaneS

Ditto. I would first eliminate egg and dairy and then reevaluate any changes before I jumped into an Elim Diet. Those are the most common foods to cause reactions in a babe. Which probiotics did you use? I would try a dairy free one before abandoning that approach.

We've used a few different probiotics but don't really know if any have helped significantly.

I had Natren Life Start at first but since it was dairy based ended up giving it to a friend. We used BioGaia (oil based) next. Now that that's run out, our naturopath recommended trying HMF Natogen. It says it's in a lactose base similar to breast milk. DD slept super well the first night I used this (just started it last week), but she's not really showing signs of being less uncomfortable in general.

[kjbrown92]

It depends on the mother and the baby. My experience with DS was exactly 24 hours after I ingested milk, he'd start projectile vomiting at/between every meal. Then he would continue for another 3 days. So for me, it would go out of my milk exactly 96 hours after ingestion. But I've heard people on here say that it can take just a few hours to get into or even a couple of weeks to get out of the milk supply. So you have to use the food journal to detect trends. For food intolerances, allergy testing is useless in my book.

[JaneS]

Originally Posted by Minoh

We've used a few different probiotics but don't really know if any have helped significantly.

I had Natren Life Start at first but since it was dairy based ended up giving it to a friend. We used BioGaia (oil based) next. Now that that's run out, our naturopath recommended trying HMF Natogen. It says it's in a lactose base similar to breast milk. DD slept super well the first night I used this (just started it last week), but she's not really showing signs of being less uncomfortable in general.

The HMF Natogen is the same as the HLC Neonate in my sig, both are human strains and grown on agar. I do not know what level a dairy allergic individual would tolerate the lactose. From what I understand from feedback and experience, using probiotics sometimes work quickly and sometimes not. If IgE allergies are present, they take a long time to heal. Other important things for you to consider are nutrients esp. vitamin D and minerals. Your diet directly influences the nutrients level in your milk. I think why a babe develops an allergy has multiple causes.

[JaneS]

Originally Posted by kjbrown92

It depends on the mother and the baby. My experience with DS was exactly 24 hours after I ingested milk, he'd start projectile vomiting at/between every meal. Then he would continue for another 3 days. So for me, it would go out of my milk exactly 96 hours after ingestion. But I've heard people on here say that it can take just a few hours to get into or even a couple of weeks to get out of the milk supply. So you have to use the food journal to detect trends. For food intolerances, allergy testing is useless in my book.

Yes it's very individual. DS was more of a "full bucket" baby... a little or a few days wouldn't bother him, but after a week of ingestion, forget it.

[kjbrown92]

are you still having soy? Dairy and soy do seem to go together for infants, gluten is next, then corn, then wheat, then eggs, then white potato, then apple (from the intolerance survey that I did in this forum). If you don't want to do a full blown TED, maybe you just want to remove those, then see what happens.

[lactationlady]

both of my dairy intolerant dd's also react to soy. DD6 was not quite as reactive and it took her a day or so to react. DD2 is much more sensitive and she reacted (major spit-up) exactly 5 hours after I had even a small amount of dairy.

[karin95]

definitely try taking out the most likely suspects before jumping into a full-on elimination diet. (This from someone who was on a 5-ingredient TED for 3 months and then slowly intro'ed food about 1/month...and is still on an elim diet!).

Take out dairy, soy, egg (and others, if you think you need to). you could do one at a time, i fyou want. but beware that dairy needs about 2 weeks to fully flush from your body, and i've heard another 2 weeks to flush from the baby (because she's getting it through your breastmilk up until it's totally out of you, kwim?). So you might not see a change until a month after you eliminate it.

others take just a few days, but I'd leave a week until I tried to reintroduce.

when you reintroduce, don't count hours after ingestion, just eat a normal amount for 4 days and see what happens. any return of symptoms that had gone away, no matter the timeframe, would count as a reaction, in my book.

My son's main reaction, so far, is eczema, which takes a while to pop up. so i'm used to having the reaction come nowhere near the ingestion. Even if he eats it by mouth, instead of thru breastmilk.

Good luck figuring it out! Oh, and we had our son CAP-RAST tested at 7 months and found it a good thing. the CAP-RAST has a very low chance of false negatives, so we chose that over the skin prick test, which has a slightly higher chance of false positives. At this point, we'd rather risk keeping him off something he's not actually allergic to, than giving him something he actually is! We had him retested at 14 months, and will again around 24-26 months.

[~Twighlight~]

You know, at this stage testing wouldn't be accurate for your baby, but it would be pretty accurate for you. I would absolutely get YOU tested and work with that. THe baby is only reacting to what you are leaking. Find what that is and treat accordingly. That would be my advice.

[karin95]

I don't see anything wrong with getting yourself tested for allergies, if you think you're reacting, but there's not at all a one-to-one correlation. Proteins pass through breastmilk regardless of how your body reacts to them. How much protein passes depends on the food, the time of day, the alignment of the stars (*jk!*).

Our son is allergic to 6 of the top 8, and neither of his moms (we're both b'feeding) are allergic to any of them. We don't have any allergies, at all. I don't even have any sensitivities that I've found (and believe me, i've looked!)

8 weeks is how old my son was when he started reacting (eczema), so I agree that it's too young to really get any good test results. At 6 months, I'd say it's relatively useful. But if your babe is reacting, then you want to get her healthy quickly, and eliminating the most likely foods is the best way to do that.

[Chinese Pistache]

Originally Posted by karin95

I don't see anything wrong with getting yourself tested for allergies, if you think you're reacting, but there's not at all a one-to-one correlation. Proteins pass through breastmilk regardless of how your body reacts to them. How much protein passes depends on the food, the time of day, the alignment of the stars (*jk!*).

Our son is allergic to 6 of the top 8, and neither of his moms (we're both b'feeding) are allergic to any of them. We don't have any allergies, at all. I don't even have any sensitivities that I've found (and believe me, i've looked!)

8 weeks is how old my son was when he started reacting (eczema), so I agree that it's too young to really get any good test results. At 6 months, I'd say it's relatively useful. But if your babe is reacting, then you want to get her healthy quickly, and eliminating the most likely foods is the best way to do that.

Not everyone leaks proteins. This has to do with the mother's gut (regardless of whether or not SHE reacts). You can google "____ protein excreted in breastmilk" to read studies on passage of dairy, eggs and peanuts into bm. Not everyone is s usceptible, just people w/ leaky guts.

Gotta run. Baby calls

[~Twighlight~]

Originally Posted by karin95

I don't see anything wrong with getting yourself tested for allergies, if you think you're reacting, but there's not at all a one-to-one correlation. Proteins pass through breastmilk regardless of how your body reacts to them. How much protein passes depends on the food, the time of day, the alignment of the stars (*jk!*).

Our son is allergic to 6 of the top 8, and neither of his moms (we're both b'feeding) are allergic to any of them. We don't have any allergies, at all. I don't even have any sensitivities that I've found (and believe me, i've looked!)

nope. your milk is made from your blood. There should be no proteins in your blood. A healthy body breaks proteins into amino acids in the gut unless you have a leaky gut in which case they leak out intact. Your gut should not be permeable. Proteins leaking indicates damage.

Adults generally don't know about their issues until something like this forces them to look and even then they can be quite challenging to pinpoint.