Can food allergies suddenly develop?

[Rollonbedtime7pm]

My DD is nearly 1 and is covered in eczema at the moment. She has always had little patches but now it's all over her back and tummy. I put it down to her being run down after a prolonged period of bugs from the childminder's after I went back to work.

People are obsessed with suggesting food allergies. She was FF from 12 weeks and we did BLW and she ate everything without problems.

Could she really have just suddenly developed an allergy to say, milk, which might have caused the flare up?!

I know families with children who suddenly developed allergies, though generally at an older age (e.g. 7ish). Maybe you might like to consider trying an exclusion diet to see if it helps?

The only way to determine for sure if the dairy is causing flare ups would be to record an accurate food diary. As a nutritionist, what would be recommended would be to take a food diary, and record what your child is eating. You can also track the time-lag between meals and symptoms. This may help the dietitian/doctor decide what exactly is going on. At least then you can be sure of what is definitely exacerbating symptoms. A good app that is built for just this is www.alliapp.com and is recommended by the NHS. Hope it helps!

My niece developed a tree nut allergy on her 5th Birthday. Before that she had no issues at all. It was a full on 999 call. At the time (because she was at her own birthday party) they didn't know what the allergen was. Turns out it was cashew nut in the pesto sauce.

Have you changed your washing powder recently? Got a new cat? The eczema could be caused by something external. My kids are both sensitive to washing softener and powder. My son also gets flare ups from eggs but the doctor should be able to test for this. I put my DD on a dairy free diet for a while when she was about 12 months but it didn't help. If you don't know what they might be sensitive to how do you decide what foods to cut out? Good luck, I hope you find something.

I was 27 when I became allergic to cows milk but it was quite obvious it was allergy, I was literally red from head to toe.

No eczema though. It was a rash.

My DC has allergies and eczema. The allergies are not related to the skin condition - in my experience if an anti-histamine resolves the issue it's not eczema. You are then very lucky as eczema is far more difficult (and distressing) to deal with. How do you know it is eczema?