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[size="3"]Hi, I am new here and am looking for some help with my son and found this board for allergies.
He is 20 months old and since the 18th of June has had diaherea almost everyday sometimes several times a day. The dr. said to take him off hte new med he had just started so we did that but he still has it. (this isn't the first time he's had this been several occurances since birth) The medicine was for his asthma they switched him from the singulair to an inhaler controll med. Well they then decided to switch him back since it was clearly not the med causing it. He still has the diaherea and yesterday and today he's been back to several watery diapers in just a few hours.. THey bother him and you can tell when he's going to go he will whine and grab his diaper (and if i am not quick enough it's off lol..) We cannot figure out what is causing this. I was thinking maybe he has an allergy to something he's been eating? But i don't know where to start. He had allergy testing done back in January but i think they were just enviromental ones they stuck his arms with differnt allergens. Hes still very happy has no other real signs of being sick or anything. Where do i start with figureing this out? Anybody have any ideas?
What is the elimination diet? and how would i go about doing it? Just start eliminating things or just feed him the same basic things for awhile and introduce new ones over time?
BTW the first time he had an episode of the diaherea was when he was only a month or two old. He had it for a few weeks they did stool tests and all and the dr. said it was something but then the tests showed it wasn't he had a horrible diaper rash from it. Gets a rash sometimes lately within a few minutes of going hence prolly why he takes the diaper off so fast. He does have little red spots all over his bottom and has had for weeks.
My neice has severe food allergies, so I can tell you, this does NOT seem like an allergy to me. This sounds more like something in the intestines. (1) Did you breastfeed or formula feed when this started? (2) If you formula fed, what did you use? Has he had an endoscopy to biopsy the stomach for bacteria?
The elimination diet is one that starts with only 1 type of food and slowly adds in others. For example, if you go back to using only milk or formula, you'd do that for 3-7 days. If there is no reaction, the upset stomach goes away, etc., you'll know milk isn't the problem and then you'd be able to add something with only 1 ingredient ... like apples. (Don't try spiced apples, apple pie, apple juice cocktail, etc. because those have more than one ingredient. Even some apple sauce brands have citrus in them.) Add one new bland food every 3 days. If you see a reaction, the most recently added food is probably the reason. If the most recent food has relatives, those are likely to cause a problem too (like, if oranges caused the problem, you can bet other citrus fruits like lemon or grapefruit would as well).
I have a feeling you'll see some sort of reaction if you add something like bland oatmeal or rice to his diet. Many people have problems with a particular type of grain such as rice, gluten, wheat, oats, etc. After trying milk and fruits, start adding grains and see what happens. If there's a reaction, I would talk to your doctor about doing allergy testing AND autoimmune testing.
Add meats back to the diet last. They're the hardest to digest, and you don't know for sure what type of grains that animal ate.
My neice has severe food allergies, so I can tell you, this does NOT seem like an allergy to me. This sounds more like something in the intestines. (1) Did you breastfeed or formula feed when this started? (2) If you formula fed, what did you use? Has he had an endoscopy to biopsy the stomach for bacteria?
The elimination diet is one that starts with only 1 type of food and slowly adds in others. For example, if you go back to using only milk or formula, you'd do that for 3-7 days. If there is no reaction, the upset stomach goes away, etc., you'll know milk isn't the problem and then you'd be able to add something with only 1 ingredient ... like apples. (Don't try spiced apples, apple pie, apple juice cocktail, etc. because those have more than one ingredient. Even some apple sauce brands have citrus in them.) Add one new bland food every 3 days. If you see a reaction, the most recently added food is probably the reason. If the most recent food has relatives, those are likely to cause a problem too (like, if oranges caused the problem, you can bet other citrus fruits like lemon or grapefruit would as well).
I have a feeling you'll see some sort of reaction if you add something like bland oatmeal or rice to his diet. Many people have problems with a particular type of grain such as rice, gluten, wheat, oats, etc. After trying milk and fruits, start adding grains and see what happens. If there's a reaction, I would talk to your doctor about doing allergy testing AND autoimmune testing.
Add meats back to the diet last. They're the hardest to digest, and you don't know for sure what type of grains that animal ate.
HTH![/b]
Thanks for responding, I did get ahold of his pulmonologist and they are going to do some allergy testing monday and see if anything shows there but they also said they were going to send him to a GI speacilist while we were there since this has been an ongoing process. So I am hoping after Monday we will know something and know where we are going from there to get him over this.
He was formula fed as a baby and used enfamil formula. He first had the really watery stooolls for a couple weeks when he was barely 2 months old. but it went away before they got the test results back so he didn't do anything else. It then kept recurring but they would always say it was from teething or a bug that was going around.
Hmmm... Ben couldn't use Enfamil, but he could use Similac. The only difference between the two is palm oil, so we figured that was the cause of his rashes. Hopefully the doc will be able to tell you for sure what's going on. Be sure to ask about things like IBS or autoimmune disorders like celiac. Hopefully it's something easy to treat like a bacterial infection.
Hmmm... Ben couldn't use Enfamil, but he could use Similac. The only difference between the two is palm oil, so we figured that was the cause of his rashes. Hopefully the doc will be able to tell you for sure what's going on. Be sure to ask about things like IBS or autoimmune disorders like celiac. Hopefully it's something easy to treat like a bacterial infection.
Let us know what you find out![/b]
We still don't know much but we did see his pulmonolgoist yesterday. They also didn't think it was a food allergy so they didn't want to do the allergy testing quite yet. Instead they did some stool cultures to see if he had any blood or bacteria or anything. Results aren't back yet they will call us when they do get back. they told us we could go ahead and let him have basically what he wanted instead of diluting the juice and the other things we were trying. So today he brought me the apple juiice and we filled up his sippy cup with it and he drank it then he started gagging and puked. Made me curious so i put the juice away agin and gave him water. He also got red around his eyes nothing major more like when you get hot and your face gets flush and since it's hot out i just figured he was hot. Well i just got home from work and his dad informs me that he to had given him juice with the same outcome. But this time it was a differnt juice. We then talked about it and of course he had the diahrea shortly after both sippies of juice. Could there be something with the juice that don't agree with his stomache? It's differnt juices so i couldn't see it being an allergy but he did the same thing with both sippies of juice and we had been dilutiing them here recently which on top of that stopped all the night time coughting and gagging we presumed to be his ashtma flare ups. I am soo lost right now trying to still figure this out. What could be cuasin the puking after each sippy of juice even with diffent juices?
Juices are full of sugar and acid. If he has acid reflux, the acid from the juice could be causing it (I have that problem myself). Acid reflux can also cause asthma, so it's possible that's the cause of the vomiting. If he has some sort of bacterial infection, the sugar will only fuel the fire. I'm not sure what to tell you other than to avoid juice altogether. Ben doesn't have a problem with juices, but we were told not to give juice as part of the diet. Whole fruits have fibers that can be digested and used long-term for fuel. Juices are mainly sugar (even pure juices are natural sugar). Ben's ped told us to give him juice just as often as we'd give him something like a chocolate bar. It's a treat. Nothing more.
Jaden, who is now five, did something very similar. He would have rashes from diahrrea and it would be so painful for me even to take care of. We did a great deal of crying together. I couldnt use anything to wipe his bum. I would coat his bum really good with a good diaper rash cream (avoid vaseline based ones because it can trap the rash in not allowing it to breath and only make it worst). He couldnt drink juice, milk, yogurt, etc without having this happen. I am not sure if that is what is going on with your child or not. I just wanted to pretty much say hang in there. I hope they figure this out soon!
