temporary elimination of soya in DS's diet: advice welcome!

[garliclover]

Hello yet again. DS (16 mo), who already has multiple allergies including CMPA, has had some strange symptoms lately, the most worrying being intermittent vomiting or diarrhea without any other signs of being unwell. I think we have identified the culprit, because he has been symptom-free since we swapped his steroid inhaler for Montelukast.

However, in a paranoid moment I decided to cut out soya from his diet. So he has been soya-free for three weeks, having been eating it regularly from the age of 13 months. I've heard that you have to keep up tolerance levels to certain foods by making them a regular part of the diet, so now I'm really worried (maybe unreasonably?) that his body has 'forgotten' that he is not allergic to soya, and will start reacting massively when I reintroduce it! Is there any rational basis to this fear?

The answer is probably to reintroduce it with a bottle of Piriton to hand, but tbh I get too scared and shakey when he reacts to things! (and my DP is rarely around when I feed him).

Any ideas?

I think you are mixing up the idea of intolerence v intolerence, but , your child has ige allergies, and so the idea of giving the child something they allergic to is not sensible without medical back up.
that said, you have removed the soya without any true confirmation of allergic response.
I suggest that you go and ask for a blood test from the gp or if are reffered to a immunoligist in a allergy clinic, for a skin prick test, to confirm.
ventolin has a pretty good history for not being a problem for the allergic people, so it might be worth going through medical testing , and advice to confirm this for certain so that his asthma medication can be viewed with greater caution by the medical peeps.
i hope this is the sort of advice you wanted. I was always more nervous trying new foods, and often had the piriton nearby when our son was small.
good luck.

Hi garlic, I'm so glad to hear that your DS is much better after changing to montelukast.

If your DS is not actually allergic to soya there should be no reaction to him having it again. It's only when you have an intolerance to a food that withdrawing it then exaggerates the symptoms on re-introduction, but that's because the antibody levels build up. If you're not allergic/intolerant to a food then your body has no antibodies to it so the levels can't build up. It's normal not to have antibodies to food because food is not actually a danger to body (hence why having allergies to food is not good and not normal)

Also soya is in lots of normal things which you may feel safer to reintroduce, like bread which has been baked so the protein is pretty much destroyed. And then build up. But like I said if he's not actually allergic to soya then you don't have to do the slow build up, but I'm sure if it was me I'd feel safer doing it this way and with a bottle of antihistamines too. Good luck and HTH. :)

Thank you so much for this, Choca: I feel reassured now. Will give him a couple of spoonfuls of soya yoghurt on Friday, when I've got the whole day with him. Or maybe some gluten-free bread made with soya, as you suggest.

I'm still a bit confused about the delayed allergy/intolerance thing. I thought that if the immune system is involved, then it is still an allergy, even if it's delayed and not IgE-mediated. And that an intolerance doesn't involve the immune system or antibodies at all (but is caused instead by, for example, the lack of a particular enzyme). I learned this from googling a mumsnet Q & A session with Adam Fox, but it's more than likely that I misunderstood it!

And thank you, eragon, for your post too: DS has had two skin prick tests and a blood test, and has always tested negative to soya. Presumably this is because, even if he is allergic to it, the allergy would not be IgE mediated. Having said that, he tested negative to wheat in the first skin prick test, but turns out to be massively allergic to it (as was confirmed in the second test). He's absolutely fine with the blue inhaler, Ventolin, by the way; it was the brown steroid inhaler that we were concerned about (and seems to have contributed, if not actually caused, the persistent vomiting).

I am a bit slow on here as you have probably gathered. I hope things are going well and good luck with the bread or yoghurt.

You're not the only one that's confused! You are right that intolerances are not meant to involve the immune system, but it is confusing because many problems that were labelled as intolerances are actually delayed allergies or called non-immune allergies so it doesn't involve the immune system in the way the direct allergies do. However they are all abnormal reactions where the body mistakes a food substance for being foreign and dangerous like bacteria. I hope that helps, not sure as I think I might be confusing myself!

DD has gained no weight over the past 4 months and is still having 3-4 dirty nappies that are quite runny (sorry about tmi) so they think she probably has more delayed allergies or maybe coeliacs despite all the tests being negative. But it's still nice just having the dieticians call us every month to check up on dd, it makes a huge difference having proper support.

Did you manage to get hold of the consultant through the secretary? I guess if your DS is improving so much it may not be necessary to be seen again but it's useful to be able to run things by them.

Anyway I'll let you know how we get on next Thursday. Hope all goes well with DS. :)

I was also going to say we had to replace two expired epipens and I asked for the new jext pen. It is amazing to see an expiry date that says 2013 and also no issues about storing at certain temperatures. The other handy thing is that when used the needle retracts itself, and having used the epipen a few times this is a real bonus, the needle is huge! So in case you are needing new ones I thought I'd let you know about the jext pen.