[Banana731]

For my 4 year old.

She has dark circles under her eyes most of the time, and her behavior is just intolerable. It was suggested to me that it might be a food sensitivity. I'll bite, it's worth giving it a shot, we've tried everything else!

So how do I do this? Is it like an elimination diet for a BF mom?

I want the quickest method, if she has to eat rice and veggies for 2 weeks so be it. Does anyone have any experience in this with their kids? Any good links?

Thanks!

 

[kjbrown92]

Head on over to the Allergies subforum. Lots of advice over there.

Typical TED is turkey, rice, pears, and zucchini. Switch it out if there's no improvement (as in switch rice to quinoa for a few days, then turkey to lamb, etc.). Until you get to baseline (no circles, good sleep, good poop, normal behavior). Then start adding in new foods, one every 4-7 days, if a food affects her, keep it out. Keep a food journal the whole time noting all foods and all symptoms. Or you could just take out the most likely culprits: dairy, soy, gluten. Or you could take out the top 8 allergens. They're all forms of elimination diets.

 

[tanyalynn]

If you've never eliminated any foods before, and if you don't suspect a specific food already, I'd say starting by cutting out a few of the top allergens first and then see if you see any good results. I think the two biggest are gluten and dairy--they're also ours, but I think more people have problems with these two than the others. But, as the kind folks at Allergies can attest, there can be lots more--it's a great resource.

For us, it's just specific foods (gluten, dairy, cashews, chocolate) but some folks have problems with specific food chemicals, things like phenols and amines and salicylates. Feingold and Failsafe deal more with that--I _think_ being intolerant to a specific food is more common, so I'd start there, but maybe that's colored by my experience, and I wouldn't rule out food issues if the ED doesn't yield good results.

If you really want to be almost absolutely sure that you cut out the offending food(s), then a TED would be faster, but it's also more work, and the process of adding foods back in could take a while.

FWIW, all of our troublesome "behavior" issues have really been health issues. My kids don't have sleep problems or poop problems or atypical behavior problems (they're 2 and 5 so they're not little angels) but that's because of the foods we've cut out and some other work we're doing on health topics. I hope you have similar good experiences!