How to identify allergic reactions to foods in babies?

I will do a quick post now Sunitha and pull up the links I have used later, DS is stirring. Our paed said there are two types of reactions to food, one is the true immune system response of hives, wheezing, eczema. the other is diarrhoea, vomiting, chronic exposure could lead to enteritis.
Among the gastro intestinal reaction, it is further classified on the basis of how immeidate or how severe the reaction is. Most severe reactions would be vomiting wtihin two hours, the moderate ones when the reactions happen after 24 hours. Our paed classified these as intolerance rather than a true allergy.
With DS, he had no overt reaction to cheese and paneer that we were giving from 9 months. We never gave straight cow's milk. But K's weight gain between 9 and 18 months was very poor. We stopped all milk products immediately and he put on 1 kg in two months and has added 2 inches between 18 and 23 months .

 

Yes, i think so. Strictly speaking people dont "outgrow" anaphylaxis-like reactions (hives etc.) to allergens easily but in this case it certainly looks like it.

Vanathi.

 

These two sites - Allergyclinic and kellymom are the ones I used as a baseline for detecting food allergies when I first introduced solids. Though there was mild eczema with yoghurt at 9 months, stopping yoghurt or curd brought an end to eczema; we continued with cheese and paneer.
DS has always been a very healthy eater (quantity and quality wise) once he took to solids. There were days when he ate half the adult portion sizes, sometimes even adult portion sizes like one cup pasta. His sleep was awry, his mood swings were the material of discipline books. He also has/had sensitivity to egg (diarrhoea), soy (sleeplessness and diarrhoea) and milk (vomiting, diarrhoea and eczema.)
Milk allergies are not very common (around 2 percent of the population.) so, it's good to just rule it out since your child has always had eczema-prone skin. Have you tried to restrict your milk intake for 3-4 weeks and seen what kind of difference is there to her skin. At 18 months, I dropped all milk - including the one cup coffee that I sorely miss. To me the pay off is really there, not saying everyone's case is similar. If you suspect an allergy, it is best to rule out everything with an elimination diet because at that age you may not get an accurate test result.
Like Vanathi said, our paed is of the opinion because it is not a severe reaction to milk, DS may outgrow the intolerance by 36 months. If you think your LO has outgrown moong dal sensitivity then fine. But I will wait for somemore time, offer other sources of protein. Just my two cents. Hope this helps.

 

hi,

sorry cant help you with details you had asked for still would like to bring to your notice which doctors ask to avoid for a short duration to test : To what our body or skin is allergic.

They are:

1. Seafoods - particularly fish and fish oil(even pickle)
2. Saccharin - an artificial sweetner used in most of the pastries
3. At times egg white
4. Mushroom
5. Previous days food or food which is not fresh
6. Brinjal
7. Rarely tomato