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:

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gluten-free-before-after

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?
pinner-test-results
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.