I'm fed up guessing but how do I get allergy testing for my kids.

[spidermama]

I'm pretty sure at least two of my boys have intolerances or allergies to certain foods, but I want to know for sure. Does anyone know how I go about having them tested.

I'd be interested too!

Hi! When I noticed that my ds was showing signs of allergies, I mentioned it to his dietitian initially and she referred us to our paed, who deals with allergies alot. In the end, we opted to go private to by pass the waiting list, which is anything from 3 to 18 months depending in where you live.....it's about 6 months in south staffs.

If ds hadn't been under a dietitian, I would have approached his GP, but then again, we have a good relationship, which I know that alot of people don't have with their own GP's.

We saw a paed consultant who specialises in gastroenterology, nutrition and food allergies, who thankfully, also work on the NHS at our local hospital (always worth calling up the paed's secretaries to find out if they would consider seeing you privately). Ds had a RAST test done, a simple blood test and was tested for with the standard paed screen. This is dairy, eggs, nuts, fish & wheat. Ds was shown to have 4 of the 5, 3 of them he is highly allergic to. The only problem with RAST tests is that they only show true allergies as opposed to intolerances. I really am not sure how to get tested for intolerances, but hope that this has helped a little bit.

At a few months old my daughter developed quite bad eczema and i believed it was milk as she would scratch more after/while feeding and she also got quite constipated on formula. The GP said no she would have diarrhoea and sickness if she had a milk allergy. at 6 months i made her cod in cheese sauce and she scratched furiously -until her face was bleeding. Again i saw the GP who said, no it wasn't dairy and that it would go when the weather brightened up and we turned the heating down! Anyway, i saw a homeopath which helped but the breakthrough came when i took her to a kinesiologist who tested all the formulas in the market and found one that she was less sensitive to (organic baby nat cow's milk). Her eczema has now totally cleared up, but if she has even a taste of ordinary milk it will flare up again.
So, it's worth trying alternatives if the GP isn't forthcoming!
Good luck and trust your instincts.

Thanks HM2J. My doc has made it clear I'll have to do this privately and has no idea how to go about it. I'll try a dietician.

TM, my suspicions are that my two boys are intolerant to dairy but I want to take the guess work out of it. Since we cut out dairy my astham symtoms have almost completely disappeared.

Thanks for the help.

I have been fighting my childrens case to many docs consultants etc for 2 years since my DS! was 9 months i have now demanded that he be seen as Great Ormand Street and that is now where we take him. He has many intollerences aparantly and is addicted to the food that we susepct him to have the intollerence to. So we are in the first stages still. But GOS feeding team will help immediately if your child is not eating much. EG my DS1 only ate bread and water for a year. I was told that i shold have let GOS see him but i did not know of this at the time as when i did speak to GOS it was 1 week after his 2nd birthday. If i had rung up the week before we would have been seen immediately, but now we are on a long long road.

I too am getting private health care for my dd2 just in case. I can not go another 2 years like i did. Hope that helps..

My dd1 has had RAST tests that were inconclusive and she has been seen by a paed but is still waiting for her appointment at the allergy clinic.Didn't think about there being a long waiting list , will they tell you if you phone appointments?I don't want to wait much longer to find out what the problems are.

If you can't get it done for free try here: www.yorktest.com
I used them about 3 years ago and they were good. Expensive though. Good luck.

Sorry forgot to say that only allergies show up on testing. Intollerences do not show up on any tests. Many hospitals have said that there are no test that are 100% even GOS confirmed it. If you ask your pead to test there ige levels or if the eosinophil count is low then it is an intolleance and you will have to work it out for your self or ask to be referred to a feeding team where they can help you. As i am.

Hi Spidermama.

I've heard that there aren't really any completely reliable tests for intolerances (but stand to be corrected!)

Unfortunately, the best way to establish intolerances is by following an elimination diet. If it is just dairy you suspect, and their diet is otherwise balanced, you could simply try eliminating it yourself. You will need to make a list of symptoms that are bothering you, and then keep a diary of reactions etc. After 3 weeks, you can check to see whether or not there has been improvement against symptoms. You will expect them to become worse before they become better as they will probably suffer from withdrawal symptoms if they are intolerant.

I have followed an elimination diet for DS1 (not for dairy - that is one of the few foods he has!) and found Sue Dengate's \link{http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info\excellent site on intolerances} invaluable for help with planning and administering it.

In DS1's case, we took out artificial preservatives, flavourings, colourings, sweeteners and flavour enhancers, and within a week he no longer had wet pants during the day, his runny nose and cough had cleared, and he no longer had loose poohs. Behaviourally, we saw a big difference when we took out food high in salicylates, amines and natural glutamates.

Hope this helps - I really do recommend Sue Dengate's site and books. They completely changed the way I thought about food.

Totally agree with singersgirl.
Unfortunatly, for allergies like exczema or asthma, a skin test can come back negative to dairy even if you have seen some big improvements by eliminating it for your sons diet.
On the other side, these tests would probably come back positive for dust mites (At least 80% of children with asthma are allergic to dust mites) even if you haven't notice anything special.
If you do the tests, you will need to keep in mind that you might not have more answer after that than before. Doctors don't really know what is triggering asthma and exczema and you might hve found a trigger - even if this is not yet recognized by the doctors.
If I was you, I would trust my instinct, eliminte dairy from their diet and be extra careful that they still get the adequate amount of calcium from their diet.

When my baby was born I had her covered under Bupa, it only cost £16 per month, at 9 months old she had an anaphylactic shock when she ate egg. I took her to my GP and he said it would take months to get an appointment to see someone. I phoned up Bupa and within two days she had seen an allergy specialist and had blood tests to see what she is sensitive to. My advice is if you havn't been to the dr already and there is no log that your child is allergic to something and you think they may have an allergy then get them covered under Bupa first!