Sudden allergy to safe food?

[carnaval]

Hi all,

We are really struggling and im so anxious now. I really need help. My baby seems to be developing allergy to foods that he's used to eating. For example, we've just given him cod fish fingers and within 5 minutes the area near his mouth, his cheeks and chin went red and hives appeared too. It looks a lot like perioral food rash but im not sure if you can have perioral food rash to cod. He's just two. The reaction did not spread to other areas, and he did not get anything on his hands (he eventually touched the food).

Could this be perioral food rash? We've contacted our allergy nurse, but she will only get back to us on Monday.

I really would like to know if any of you have had these issues with your child and it turned out to be something else rather than allergy. He also seems to be reacting to safe foods a lot since spring started.

Thank you so much. I cannot eat. I cry all the time. I'm so worried.

Thank you

@Maflingo

I am By no means an expert, but I have heard of activity induced allergies, and have heard of exercise exacerbating existing allergies. IE when they’ve eaten something they could tolerate in small amounts but then run around etc. so that might be worth exploring if you are keeping a diary to include what he was doing as well as what he is eating?

Hi @Maflingo would you know if that would be pushing him to actually becoming allergic to whatever he ate prior to running?

Have you heard of mast cell activation syndrome? Have a read about it. If he’s getting hives from scratching and trampoline jumping it could be something like that.
Also histamine intolerance. Fish is high in histamine and he might have had a particularly high histamine piece when he reacted? Some people can’t tolerate food high in histamine. Often because they lack the enzyme needed to digest it. It’s not an allergy as such though. Worth reading about both conditions, seeing if the foods match the things your son can’t eat and speaking to your consultant about them.

It does get easier as you get more used to it all. My dd was four when she developed an allergy and she's eighteen now.

Those first few months trying to get my head round it all and reading every single packet of absolutely everything were incredibly difficult.

Going to soft play parties and having to ask for the packets to read the ingredients like a mad woman and not letting her have the cake. Awful.

You do sort of settle into it as you become knowledgeable about what you need to be wary of and at the moment you don't know what he's actually allergic to which is both frightening and stressful.

You do find that people are quite happy to tell you that foods are fine for your child when they have absolutely no idea. It's up to you and then when he's older your son to check for yourself. Before my dd could read I had her looking at the packet when someone offered her a biscuit or something. It just becomes part of their lives.

My dd was going out the door to meet her friends one day when she was a young teenager and said as she went out the door 'phone, money, drugs. OK, got everything BYE' and I had a friend over who almost fainted and I had to explain that dd takes a tiny bottle of antihistamine with her wherever she goes. It's just normal to her.

@JS87 thanks for that! I will have a read and also get some questions ready for Prof Lack

Thanks a lot

My son would have this reaction to white fish, so it's perfectly possible. It didn't develop significantly and he can now eat white fish but doesn't actually like it. His little brother has a peanut allergy but ds1 is fine with peanuts. All confusing!

@SavoyCabbage we thought we knew what he's allergic to. But now we are no longer sure and I'm so afraid I am not able to keep him safe because of that.

He the middle of his upper lip was swollen. I noticed while we were walking home from nursery. Is that a new allergy? Probably... to what then???

I am very self conscious about the state of alert am I all the time. I think I've alienated a few parents as to them I look like an overprotective mum. I'd love to not have to worry about food. I think only people who have children with allergies will understand.

Has your child grown out of any allergy over time?

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Good luck OP, hope you get some answers!

For us, previous blood tests weren't conclusive even for the very obvious milk allergy, whereas the skin prick tests were very clear (for house dust mites too 🙄) but I have also read that they can be difficult with eczema.

It's interesting to hear about the link between stress/allergies/skin reactions. It's often hard/impossible to work out what causes flare ups of eczema for my DC!

We are just getting our heads round the new allergy really... Invites to kids parties have been a bit of a minefield but my DC is 4 and is pretty good at telling people he's a "dairy dodger" and tends to check whether he's allowed food before taking it/accepting it... We love eating out but the fish allergy is a bit trickier as we have to avoid cross contamination e.g. chips fried in the same oil

@girlfrombackthen mine is turning 2 in a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to when he is able to understand he cannot have certain foods. At the moment I don't eat what he's not allowed and he will eat from his plate and mine.

Some of my concerns are:

1. I'd be eliminating safe food due to a rash or something else that looks like an allergic reaction but it isn't. So in the future this food becomes an allergen
2. I keep offering the offending food and push him to have anaphylaxis
3. The more we restrict his diet, higher the chance he will add other foods to the allergen list

It's really hard to know if they have grown out of it as you are avoiding it. In that I don't know if it's better or worse than it was fourteen years ago. She's still got an allergy.

She has had occasional cross contamination reactions and one spectacular parenting fail when I have her a bowl of peanut weetabix at her grandmas. I didn't know they existed!

My dd says she can feel when she's eaten something she shouldn't and she doesn't feel the same way when she's just ill.

You definitely do make yourself look like an arse asking about ingredients and stuff. I tried to be as subtle as I could like asking the venue rather than the host at parties. It's better when they get older and they can ask about it themselves. People tend to take it more seriously for a start!

I need all of you to be friends with me in real life 🤣

Posting as someone upthread mentioned exercise induced anaphylaxis and I have this, mine is wheat dependent, and it means I have an IgE allergy to a specific wheat protein which typically only triggers if I either eat a shit load of wheat, or in the presence of a co-factor (commonly exercise or activity, but also stress, heat/cold, NSAIDs, alcohol and menstruation/female hormones). It has historically been hard to diagnose as the assumption among many is that anaphylaxis/allergic reaction must be immediate onset and that you must react every time, but as we learn more and more we know this isn't true (alpha gal is a another 'weird' allergy that flouts the usual rules).

Regarding fish fingers, whilst both wheat and fish are top 14 allergens, those top 14 aren't the only things that can be triggers. And, awell as the ingredients, cod and other fish often host the anisakis parasite which can trigger severe reactions (and has links to house dust mite and crustacean allergies due to a shared protein).

Taking pics of ingredients and keeping a diary of food/drinks/meds and reactions is the most useful thing you can do while you wait for testing.

Hope you get some answers soon

Hi, just in case someone needs help and finds this post.
They've done a skin prick test before the food challenge and peanuts serum was negative and it was 1 mm for peanut butter. They are happy for us to continue offering peanuts at home. He should eat them everyday. It will make me very anxious, but I see where they are coming from.

And we've done walnut food challenge and he passed. He got some hiccups but that's all. I won't google it otherwise I will start believing this is a reaction etc etc. Now we need to make sure he eats a tablespoon of walnut butter per week which will be a challenge but we'll get there.

Im still very anxious and fearful. These random reactions that he has been having are always in my mind. Im hoping that these nut challenges we are doing privately (as it would take years in the NHS) are the right course of action and that we are not pushing him beyond we should. For us just food avoidance made him sensitive to nuts that he wasn't when I first tested. I'm trying to do the best I can and I hope the best I can is the correct action.

Thanks all for talking to me here. It would be amazing if they invented a cure to all allergies, wouldn't it? A woman can dream....

Thanks xxx

That's awesome about the passed challenge! They can be so daunting while you're doing them but worth it in the end.
The less allergies the better :D

At the moment I don't eat what he's not allowed and he will eat from his plate and mine.

I’ve taken a different approach wrt this. I deliberately eat DD’s allergens in her presence and talk, every time I eat eggs which she’s most allergic to, about the fact I’m eating something she can’t.

As a result, she knows that eggs are in omelettes, mayonnaise, tartar sauce, horseradish sauce, brioche, brushed on top of scones etc. and she knows what these foods look like as she’s seen me eating them.

She also learned that it’s not safe to eat food others offer from their plate. For example, it’s fairly likely if eating out for a grown up to offer a child a chip from their plate or whatever and DD knows not to in case they’ve got mayonnaise on their plate.

I want her to learn that she has to think before eating. She started school this year and it’s a bloody minefield because nowadays kids seem to come home with sweets in their book bags on pretty much a weekly basis. Every time a kid has a birthday, sweets are given out by the birthday child. Kids are rewarded by school with sweets. On Friday one of the kids brought in sweets for the class because it was Easter holidays. DD knows to always wait until she’s asked me before she can eat them.

Basically, I really recommended equipping them from a very early age to know that they have to question what’s in their food.

Nursery and school have made mistakes with DD. Even my mum slips up sometimes so DD needs to learn to look after herself.

Her allergy probably isn’t life threatening although I don’t know really as she’s not had a big exposure to egg yet. My nut allergy is life threatening and my mum took the approach of making ME ask the host at parties what was safe to eat from the outset, from 4 years old. Because it was the norm for me I didn’t mind and just got in the habit of doing it.

They need to get in the habit of this when young so that it is ingrained well before the teenage years when social embarrassment becomes a factor.

Yes, I want to do this too. So he learns what's safe and what isn't. He's not 2 yet, so it's a bit hard for him to understand at the moment.

And I think your mum was correct. This is the approach I want to take as well.

How did you find growing up with nut allergies?

Thanks for your message

DC16 has loads and loads of food allergies. And at this time of year his oral allergy ramps up considerably as his hay fever is so bad (he's on the final year of a three year immunotherapy program for tree and grass pollen allergy as it's so debilitating).

So, he often reacts at this time of year to things that would otherwise be fine when but under allergic stress. His most recent was lettuce and parsley.

Just as you mentioned time of year, and to show that a reaction now doesn't always mean permanent allergy maybe more inability to currently tolerate.

@Matchingcollarandcuffs

DC16 has loads and loads of food allergies. And at this time of year his oral allergy ramps up considerably as his hay fever is so bad (he's on the final year of a three year immunotherapy program for tree and grass pollen allergy as it's so debilitating).

So, he often reacts at this time of year to things that would otherwise be fine when but under allergic stress. His most recent was lettuce and parsley.

Just as you mentioned time of year, and to show that a reaction now doesn't always mean permanent allergy maybe more inability to currently tolerate.

So does he keep eating the things he reacts during spring/summer or does he stop for a while? I had a feeling the reason my son was reacting to some random foods was because of the time of the year too. I just don't have enough data to compare due to his age

He decides how much he wants to eat it Plums/cherries no as the reaction is too great, rocket/lettuce he will eat a bit as he's restricting so much he wants a bit of something he fancies.

Obviously steers well clear of nuts/legumes other known but reactors.

His eczema gets much worse too, when it spills over into his skin (as it does when he's on high alert) it's a sign we have to rein things back in and keep him on safe foods. Thankfully he can tolerate wheat/potatoes and dairy

@Matchingcollarandcuffs but does he ever reacts like that to peanuts for example, without being allergic to peanuts?
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