There’s a lot of controversy in the medical field (as well as the personal field) about the impact of nutrition on health. Specifically, in our case, about gluten. Some say gluten intolerance is real, others say it’s a made up trend. For us, the issue arose with Little Octopus when she was about 3 months old. She started having dry patches on her cheeks, that got angrier and redder as the days went by. Eventually, they became crusted with scabs from her scratching, and would bleed and ooze. She had patches on other areas as well, specifically her arms and legs.
I had been taking her to her regular pediatrician visits every two months, and the pediatrician kept pushing medicated creams for it. She said to try out a humidifier, that maybe having the heater on was causing dry skin. As her situation worsened, she moved on to pushing prescription steroid creams for it and suggested that if things didn’t improve by the next visit, we would have to take more drastic actions. I tentatively brought up an elimination diet as we were still exclusively breastfeeding. She scoffed at the notion. “You would just be depriving yourself. Food doesn’t make a difference, it’s a genetic issue.”
For me, depriving myself of a few comfort foods sounded a lot easier than medical interventions and steroid creams. “What could it hurt?” I thought. I started by cutting out the two most common trigger foods, gluten and dairy. I decided to stick with it for 30 days based on what I had read about the body needing at least 30 days to get the food out of the system and see a reaction. Here is our 30 day before and after photo, of simply eliminating gluten and dairy:
Pretty big difference, right? And I didn’t use any creams during that time, just modified my diet. At the time my daughter was 6 months old. Moving forward, I decided to continue with a gluten and dairy free diet until I could get some definite testing done. My current pediatrician was closing her practice, though I likely would have found a new provider anyway from her previous recommendations. Though my new provider wasn’t much better. He brushed off any food issues and blithely suggested avoiding gluten and dairy until she was 3 and then we could figure it out then. By that point she was a year old. I had been doing the paleo diet for six months, and was getting nervous about our weight. I had lost over 10 pounds, and I didn’t really have that much to lose. I was at my lowest weight in a long time, and my ribs were showing. My daughter continually stayed in the 10th percentile and was dropping. I wanted to know what our food issues were, and how to figure out a healthy diet we could both thrive on. The “wait and see” approach just didn’t satisfy me. He reluctantly agreed to an allergy test. We did a blood draw, and he tested for 13 common allergens, including wheat but not gluten. Nothing showed up. I was getting frustrated.
Then my mom shared her nutritionist’s information with me, and I was lucky enough to find out that she treats all ages, including infants. RELIEF! I spent six months with her, getting an initial consultation of our weights and giving her my girl’s growth chart and setting weight gain goals. She set us up with a great program, with more than just meal plans. We had a breakdown of how many servings of each food category we needed, what milk-free dairy options were, and how to categorize things. She taught me how to feed us in a healthy way that paleo cookbooks and websites just couldn’t.
Once a month I would visit and show her our progress and she would give me new materials and recipes on how to manage a gluten-free diet in a healthy way. It was an invaluable resource to have, and soon enough we were both flourishing and feeling well fed and healthy. After the disappointing allergy test, she recommended a food intolerance test. She was qualified to give the Pinner Test, which tests over 200 foods for an IgG reaction, different from the IgE reaction of allergy testing. I decided to go ahead and get us both tested. And what do you know?
Gluten was the first result. I wasn’t surprised about the tomatoes, as she had begun to have skin reactions to direct contact. One of the downfalls of the Pinner Test as opposed to other intolerance tests is that it doesn’t give you the extremity of the sensitivity. Intolerances work a little differently from major allergies, from my understanding, in that some are extreme and some are very mild. There are tests that give you numbers on a scale from the intensity of your reaction, which is nice. The pro is that we only had to do a finger prick as opposed to the four vials of blood drawn for the allergy test. Given that dairy wan’t a result, I gradually added that back into her diet. But we’ve never been big dairy people, so I still keep homemade almond milk on hand and not much cheese. We still get our “dairy” from alternative sources.
So, was it worth it? I think so. I had to pay out of pocket, and at $400 for the test I wouldn’t call it cheap. But my medical team wasn’t really giving me good answers, and my nutritionist helped us navigate this “holistic” road to better health. I see no reason why the food, the fuel, we in put into our bodies can’t be affecting our systems in a significant way. I’m glad we finally had some concrete answers. I wasn’t just depriving my daughter of goldfish and crackers on a gut feeling.
I later went on to have more intensive testing for celiac, just to check my bases, which turned up negative. And at two I had her re-tested for intolerances and it seemed she grew out of the gluten, which is fantastic news for my carb-loving girl. I reintroduced it into her diet and she has been handling it very well. But still, for those 18 months, I was grasping at straws, and was so relieved to finally have someone say, “Here is a way to find a real answer.” And that’s why I’ll fully support intolerance testing and food related issues.
I was lucky enough to breastfeed her for two years, and we shared the bond of not only that, but also being gluten-free. I didn’t want her to have to feel different or alone, even at such a young age. If we encounter more food issues in the future, I feel much better equipped to handle it.
ed note: The information on this site is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and is for education purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
hostess / cantaloupe / 6486 posts
I get SO angry when people act like diet isn’t an issue. I don’t care how other people eat, I don’t judge you for your choices but man it makes me mad when people (especially doctors) act like it doesn’t matter. Your food forms the building blocks of your body and it’s processes, it’s more important than you think! I’m so glad that you found real answers. Good job at going with your gut and searching for a real and sustainable solution!
guest
I feel really fortunate to have a pediatrician that actually suggested food as a cause for my son’s sever eczema. They referred us to an allergist and dermatologist when he was just 4 months old. We had him allergy tested and found that he was allergic to quite a few foods (wheat, dairy, eggs, peanuts). Though elimination of those foods we have his eczema totally under control. It surprised me when our allergist told us that a lot of doctors won’t treat babies for allergies. The team as also stressed that repeated testing for infants-toddlers is really important because they’re very likely to outgrow the allergies/sensitivities and we don’t want to limit his diet unnecessarily. Still have fingers crossed that my 15 month old will outgrow this.
blogger / grape / 92 posts
@Mrs. Sunshine: It was extremely frustrating when people would act like I was keeping my infant gluten-free for funsies. You know? “Friends” would post things on my Facebook wall of stories like “59 Reasons Gluten Free is Fake” or something and it would just grind my gears. Look, I really GNF if you think it’s a fad diet for hipsters, rando from high school. What I know is when I eat gluten, my daughter suffers, and that’s enough for me to cut it out. We were extremely fortunate it wasn’t Celiac and had to replace all our cookware and dishes. Or that she would be facing down a limited diet for life. But many many people do, and it’s not something to make fun of.
guest
This sounds a lot like my experience! Our pediatrician was more supportive with trying an elimination diet, and my son’s eczema was less severe. We struggled with so many different creams and ointments that didn’t help at all. We didn’t the perception steroid creams because I never felt comfortable putting those on his face where he was likely to ingest them. I tried eliminating eggs, dairy and gluten from my diet for 6 weeks at a time and then reintroducing them one at a time to see which was the culprit. Eliminating gluten from my diet kept his eczema under control when he was 3 – 9 months old. At 16 months now, he tolerates gluten just fine. It was difficult for me, especially trying to explain to co-workers, friends and extended family why I was suddenly on a restricted diet. I got so much [unsolicited] advice on how they had had eczema, or their kids did, and what lotion to use. Most people seemed to think I was nuts for trying the elimination diet, especially when his skin was clear, as though I was staying away from gluten just for the fun of it (ha!) or just to make their lives more difficult (staying with my in-laws for the holidays, for example). I am glad he outgrew it and I learned a lot in the process – about what foods have gluten, and a glimpse of what it’s like to deal with food allergies/ sensitivities.
grapefruit / 4988 posts
I wish I had heard about this test back when I was on an elimination diet for my LO. We never fully determined all of the things she was intolerant to, and I think I eliminated things I didn’t need to while at the same time, we didn’t fully clear her up. Thank you for this post! Food intolerance are very real.
kiwi / 603 posts
I too did an elimination diet with my 9 month old to figure out what was causing her eczema. It cleared up in a week! Thankfully I was working with a ND but it makes me so mad when some medical professionals totally dismiss it and push the steroid creams instead. Isn’t it such much better to find the root cause than just treat the symptoms?!
persimmon / 1472 posts
Thanks so much for sharing your story! I think I remember reading a similar entry from your blog.
This sounds so much like the struggle I had with DD1. She had severe eczema show up around 3 months and the doc pushed prescription creams and steroids right away. I didn’t know any better and the creams helped, so I used them in the beginning. But when we stopped, her eczema flared right up again so I started doing an elimination diet against the recommendation of her ped. I avoided dairy from 5-10 months and, though it helped, she still had many flare ups. I finally figured out corn after I phased back in dairy, then around 13 months saw she had some reaction when she had some peanut butter from my toast one morning. We saw an allergist and she tested highly allergenic to all nuts but corn didn’t register. The allergist says that although she doesn’t test allergic to corn, it seems she is highly intolerant to it and I continue to restrict corn from her diet to this day (almost 4!). When I had my second daughter, we also noticed eczema flaring around 3-4 months and I started doing an elimination diet given food allergy/intolerance presence with my older daughter. We figured out dairy/soy/eggs with dairy being the biggest trigger. She is 18 months now and even just kissing her after eating buttered toast will cause a contact skin reaction. Luckily she seems to have outgrown her egg allergy/intolerance and we are going to test out soy next. I did all this based on a complete elimination diet then self testing by adding one item back in at a time (in 6 week intervals if I had to take it back out). It’s a long drawn out process and I lost so much weight doing this, but the doc did not want to do allergy testing. I wish I knew about the Pinner test. I think I’m going to ask if we can have it done for both DD1 and DD2.
@Mrs Spoon: Yes thank you!!! My thoughts exactly.
olive / 58 posts
Just want to correct an inaccuracy in this blog post. Traditional allergy testing is to an antibody called IgE. This is essentially the anaphylaxis antibody so if you are positive you generally have to carry an EpiPen. This would not be a test for food intolerances.
The test described above tests for IgG. Your body makes IgG to everything it has been exposed to. If you have been exposed to something, your IgG will be positive. Thus if you have eaten gluten, your IgG to gluten will be positive. Unfortunately, the Pinner test described above doesn’t make physiologic sense and doesn’t have any sound evidence to back it up.
That is not to say that food intolerances can’t contribute to health. That link has been well described in many conditions, including eczema like in this case. The problem is that a blood test isn’t going to detect these intolerances. The best “test” is an elimination diet.
blogger / grape / 92 posts
@littleveesmommy: there are likely some better tests out there, I follow a gal on IG who had one that scored her reactions based on levels of intensity. So she knew what she could have in moderation vs. what she should avoid completely
blogger / grape / 92 posts
@kjn: Ah, yes I didn’t notice I had switched up IgG and IgE. I’ll see if Bee can change those two letters for me.
From what I gathered from looking into the test, it analyzes your levels of reaction to the exposed substance. By that point, my daughter had started baby-led weaning and had most food groups. It’s a pretty controversial test and I know a lot of people don’t agree with it. However I’ve seen a lot of folks who have had intolerance testing done as a complement to other testing, including elimination diets. Speaking with an allergist confirmed for me that no test can really be cut and dry when it comes to food. He said it changes so much, you can develop intolerances and allergies over different ages as well as “cure” or get rid of them just by growing out of it. That elimination diets are by far the best, and testing is simply a supplementary action to give you a better idea of what you might be dealing with. It was helpful to know when doing celiac testing. I didn’t realize at the time that we needed to have reintroduced gluten for several months before the test as opposed to just several weeks as we had done. But, reintroducing gluten went well, and we got lucky.
The medical field is still so divided on food intolerances. Some studies vehemently deny that gluten intolerance is “real” and can cause digestive or skin issues. Others say it can. I just found that in our experience, doing the test was useful and worth the expense. It confirmed my suspicions and gave me something concrete to show to care providers so they wouldn’t be cavalier about the matter and give my daughter foods that would cause her pain and discomfort because they didn’t “believe it”.
admin / watermelon / 14210 posts
@Mrs. Octopus: updated!
kiwi / 511 posts
My littlest had eczema and tons of ear infections. He was always congested (snoring) and had a runny nose. We finally decided on putting tubes in for the ear infections and he got an ear infection less than a week after the surgery. It was our ENT that suggested going gluten free.
We had an upcoming pediatric allergist appointment coming up to deal with his egg allergy (we discovered this when we gave him scrambled eggs and he started wheezing and ended up developing hives on his face and neck) she tested for all the major allergens plus gluten with blood work, and the standard major 8 for the scratch test. Gluten was in the “normal range” but she said try going gluten free and if helped his congestion great, if it didn’t feel free to re-introduce it. She said for intolerances the tests are not fool proof. Within two weeks we saw a drastic improvement, we were gluten free for two years but happy to be eating gluten now.
We are now introducing baked eggs (so in cakes, breads etc) under her direction so we hope to have those back within a year. His nut allergy is likely with us forever.
guest
we’re currently going through this right now. We just had our son tested for food allergies because of eczema and a rash that started about 10 minutes after he starts eating. Our daughter was allergic to eggs and dairy so I assumed he was following in her footsteps. He tested negative to the few things we tested for. The allergist says its eczema and prescribed a two creams; one for his body and one for his face. I’m pretty ticked because she didn’t even remove his clothes to look at the affected areas. How can she prescribe creams for something she hasn’t even seen?! I’m still not convinced it isn’t food that is causing the problems. I hadn’t considered gluten but my sister has celiac so it would make sense. I’m going to visit with out pediatrician tomorrow at his 15 month we’ll visit.