Permission to whinge?

[Alwaysworthchecking]

DD is lactose-intolerant and currently consuming a fair amount of milk choc. Normally she can tolerate a very small amount of dairy before doing explody poos and generally getting run-down. Currently she seems OK-ish but has eczema round her mouth. No idea if that's connected, but it does sound plausible. She's been on and on about having ice cream but I've told her no way, not while she's chomping on chocolate. And anyway, Worthenshaw's is delicious - stop moaning, dd! She also can't eat soya.

DS is lactose and soya-intolerant to a lesser degree. He's also gluten-intolerant but we're doing the gluten challenge and it's going well - hooray! Mind you, he also has a rare outbreak of eczema round his mouth but it really could be so much worse.

I can't eat dairy products at all. I also can't eat soya, and lentils do me no favours at all. (Shame, because I love them!) I've recently developed 'oral allergy syndrome' to nuts. I already had one to kiwi fruits and various animals and airborne substances give me hayfever-type symptoms.

None of this i going to kill us and I do realise how lucky that makes us, but I am fed up with reading labels, trying to remember who can and can't eat what, trying to explain to ils, etc. I'm also fed up with not being able to eat anything in cafes, because you ask if there's dairy in it and they say, 'I don't know.' Well, chuffing find out for me! (Unreasonable of me, I know, but sometimes you just don't want another banana or another packet of ready-salted crisps!) I'm also fed up with inadvertently consuming the wrong things and paying for it later. On top of it all, I could murder a cheese sandwich!

Absolutely no point to this post, but I do feel better for writing it down and having a precious little ranty whingefest!

Permission granted. :)

Aww, bless you - it is a pita, isn't it!

I would think the eczema is related to the dairy intolerance but not sure that it's directly related to lactose intolerance, seein as that is usually because of a lack of the digestive enzyme lactase, rather than any sort of actual allergy/intolerance - but she might be cross-reacting to the proteins in the dairy. Or she's not actually lactose intolerant at all but is in fact cows' milk protein intolerant instead.

nottirednow - where are you getting your info from? Nuts are a potential trigger for oral allergy syndrome

I'm not entirely sure that you are clear what secondary lactose intolerance is about either - the NHS website describes it as a usually temporary situation, where the gut has been affected by something else primarily; perhaps a gut infection, or in fact coeliacs disease can cause secondary lactose intolerance. When the primary problem resolves, secondary lactose intolerance will often resolve as well.

That makes much more sense, nottirednow. Am still a touch worried that the OP's dd actually has lactose intolerance as opposed to cows' milk protein allergy - although there does appear to be at least one case of lactose intolerance inducing eczema, it isn't the most common reason for dairy to cause eczema.

A lot of the web information seems to confuse or link dairy intolerance with lactose intolerance - that doesn't help anyone much either!

Whinge, whinge and more whinge i say. Wouldn't you like to go out for the day without having to take copious bags of paraphernalia 'just in case'? Oh that is so my dream 1 day. To order off the menu by just saying to the waiter 'i'll have the works' without having to add 'but without....' or 'do you have anything that doesn't have........'
. Dream over, reality check!

Thanks for permission, everyone! Now feeling much better. Also I am a little bit in love with Starbucks for stocking dairy-free, nut-free ginger biscuits. Also for not looking at me oddly when I requested 'a dash of cold water in my tea' (because with no milk in it doesn't cool down for ages). Also feel better for finding the Pig in the Kitchen web site. Must make those beetroot cakes!

Right, well I'm a bit confused by all nottirednow's info and questions, but I'll follow up your links (thank you for those) and try hard to answer your questions. Firstly, I must admit that I don't know if it's the lactose or the cassein we have problems with. All 3 of us have to dash to the loo if we eat food containing milk. Ds can comfortably eat things made with a little milk (e.g. a biscuit with milk in it), likewise soya. TBH I have never tested him properly with soya as the paediatricain advised me not to. Soya has exactly the same effect on dd and I. Don't know about the kids and lentils but they make me bloated, gassy and in one heck of a hurry to go to the loo - for days! Not nice! (Lentils that is - the kids don't have that effect on me!) I have tried feta cheese, to see if sheep's milk (or is that goat's?) would be OK but it is not. I used to be able to eat lacto-free cheese and milk, but not any longer. Again: the dashing to the loo, bloatedness and a bit of a trumping problem. (Oh, how I love the anonymity of Mumsnet - clearly I woud not admit to a trumping problem in rl!)

Our GP diagnosed dd's probs with milk and sent us to a paediatrician, who suggested we cut out soya as well. That made a big difference to dd. Now she can tolerate some milk products, but not cooked, altered or raw milk. She adores ice cream but I don't adore what it does to her or the pant and loo-scrubbing it entails. No idea if the following symptoms are actually linked but if she eats a lot of milk-containing foods she seems to get run-down, thrush and more snot.

Dd (age 7) was tested for allergies to all sorts of substances, including milk, when she was 4. All came back negative. I can't remember how that was done, but it was as an outpatient in a hospital clinic. At the time she had major snot problems, as well as tummy troubles. The snot problems were largely alleviated by having her tonsils and adenoids removed. Later she was prescribed a steroid spray, which helped further. Now if she gets a cold, the cold goes as normal but the blocked nose lingers.

The GP suggested ds (age 4) try a gluten-challenge. Ds used to see a paediatriacian until she signed him off, mid-consultation. She did the same to a friend of mine so I can only assume that cuts came into that decision as it was a bit odd! The same GP said my nut-thing was 'oral allergy syndrome' and I had already assumed as much about kiwi. When I eat kiwi fruits (which I have not done for several years) I immediately have to wash my hands and face because they make my skin sting. Also my mouth just feels 'weird' right after I eat them. Recently I got the 'weird' thing after eating nuts (peanuts, almonds and cashews were the ones I tried, having eaten them and all other nuts with no problems, for years). The skin around my mouth itched, my tongue felt weird (felt swollen but definitely wasn't) and I found I had to breathe through my mouth as well as my nose.

I have wondered about me and coeliac because of the milk-consuming problems (apparent in adulthood and fairly recently at that), because there are other cases within my extended family and because I have other auto-immune diseases. (Let's face it: you never get just one of those - chance would be a fine thing!) I want to ask the GP for a blood test for me, but I somehow feel a bit of an idiot asking. Frankly, I am now so darned good at the GF baking that I wouldn't consider it an inconvenience to live off it - not if it then meant I could eat cheese again.

Babybarrister, thanks for the choc-tips! I mainly eat Lint 70% but it's good to broaden the range.

Thumbwitch, thanks for the links and explanation of lactose/dairy intolerance. I think dd may well be dairy-intolerant, having read all of that. The paediatrician (the one who discharges at random points) did say that it could be lactose and/or cassein with dd. I don't think we ever found out for sure.

Currently I am using Aveeno cream for the sore skin around their mouths as neither of them complain about this cream. It does seem to be helping although they do both look like I haven't bothered to wipe their chops. Weird that they both came out with it at exactly the same time. Only 'new' thing in both their diets at this time is milk chocolate (specifically creme eggs). They keep being given them at Easter events.

While I'm flinging symptoms at you all, dd gets eczema n her hands in the winter and a ring of it round her wrists (making her very particular about cuff-syles - elastic is a big no-no). We've noticed that this improves during the summer months, the school holidays in any season and if we send her to school with a bottle of E45 handwash in the winter. I think cold weather and the manky school soap are to blame as, remove just one of those factors and she improves.

Lindt 70%, obviously. If I was eating anything with 70% lint then I would expect to get some odd symptoms and maybe start a thread along the lines of 'AIBU to feel like a tumble dryer filter and to wonder why everyone raves about chocolate? It is mainly fluff!'

I'd blame the iphone but I haven't got one. My typing is simply retro-crap.

AWC - it doesn't sound like you've had the best "treatment" from your docs!

You could get tested for coeliac disease but if you do, you will need to go back on the gluten for, I think it's 6 weeks but could be wrong, so they can do a biopsy of the gut villi and see if they've shrivelled. You might prefer not to bother - if GF works for you, it might be easier just to stick with it, even if you don't get a definitive answer.

If you have other autoimmune conditions, I would also think that you're DD's problems are more likely to be allergies rather than lactose intolerance, although if she does have any element of coeliac disease, then lactose intolerance is, as we mentioned above, a secondary by-product of that. The reason being that the enzyme required to digest lactose is produced in the brush border of the villi in the small intestine, so if those villi have shrivelled or been damaged, they won't be able to produce lactase.

How does she do with socks and pants? just wondering if there is any element of contact allergy to latex, as there is often a bit of elastic in the sleeves of jumpers and things. But it might just be the chafing.

You might like to try some of this stuff - but it is made in Australia so I don't know how much it costs to export. It's getting rave reviews over here though, even from the medics!

Re. feta cheese - if you have lactose intolerance then ANY milk will produce the same symptoms, but harder cheeses and yoghurts should be better tolerated. If it's cows' milk protein allergy, there is often a crossover with goats' milk protein as well; and some feta is made with goat and/or cow milk, as well as sheep. Need to read the label carefully to check!

Hope that helps a little more anyway - if I think of anything else useful, I'll come back to you. :)

Thanks, Thumbwitch.

Just to clarify: ds has been on a gf diet snce he was 1 (now trying gluten). I still eat gluten.

Interesting point about the socks, pants and latex! She's very picky about such things and reacted to the elastic in Tescos pull-ups when she was little. She's OK with most socks and pants, but the odd pair have been rejected out of hand.

I can't tolerate harder cheeses and yogurts and neither can the the dc. Interesting!

I do wonder if my docs really know what they're doing. Mind you, the GP was the first one to agree that toddler dd evidently had a problem with milk and he got us referred to the paediatrician. Prior to that I spent months hawking my obviously malnourished todler dd round the HV and other GPs, telling them about her health problems to have them all say, 'It's not milk.' For both dc the HV said, 'You feed them too much juice.' By ds, I laughed and said, 'You said that for dd and neither of them drink juice!'