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How to Detect and Handle Your Child’s Food Allergies
1. Some symptoms of food allergies include diarrhea, vomiting, skin rashes, runny noses, and sneezing. 2. If you suspect a food allergy the best way to diagnose their allergy is to take your concern to your physician. 3. Food intolerances can be misdiagnosed as food allergies. Symptoms of food intolerances (such as lactose intolerance) include diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal cramping. 4. Babies are more likely to suffer from food allergies than older children. 5. Babies will usually outgrow the allergies by the age of three with the exceptions of allergies to peanuts, fish and nuts. 6. One way to delay the onset of allergies in a baby from a family with a history of allergies is for the mother to eliminate allergens such as milk, egg, fish, and nuts from her diet while she nurses the child. 7. Another tactic is to wait at least six months to offer dairy products, eight months for wheat, citrus fruits and cooked tomatoes, and ten months for fish, shellfish, peanuts, corn, berries, raw tomatoes, and chocolate. You can wait even longer if you have a family history of allergies. 8. Helpful things you can do if you suspect that your child has a food allergy is to keep a journal of the foods eaten with the symptoms observed and to introduce new foods to babies one at a time with a three day wait in between each food. 9. A pediatric dietician can help create a diet that eliminates the allergenic foods without nutrient deficiencies yet still offers a variety of foods. 10. If you need to eliminate certain allergic foods from your child’s diet then you will need to become an avid label reader and will need to communicate precisely to your child’s caregivers about the foods your child can and cannot eat. Related Web Site: Gilbert, Sue. "Food Allergies, Nothing to Sneeze At." Allergies and Sensitivities. 1998. http://www.parentplace.com/expert/nutritionist/allergies/gen/0,3489,8645,00.html (2 Nov. 1998).
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