Dairy intolerance. Lots of questions

[nkf]

Exczema has flared up badly again in my son. When he was a baby, I kept him off dairy for quite a while and his excsema (how do you spell it?) went away. Well, now it's back.

Have cut out milk (replaced with rice dream), using soya yoghurt and olivio. But what about cheese? He loves it, we eat loads.

Is goats cheese likely to be okay? Or is there some acceptable alternative?

With thanks in advance.

Thank you.
You are all so kind. I kept hoping the problem would go away or that the cream I applied would sort it out.
It is getting better. Cutting cheese and milk has made a difference but as soon as he has even a little, the excezma is back. I am going to have to be more ruthless about his diet.
It was easy when he was a baby becuase I gave him chicken or pulses for protein. But cheese is so useful and delicious.

go and mither for a dietitian referral, it was from them that we got a heap of useful booklets and figured all the balances in the diet when you go DF, I was worried about calcium but the gist is that dses get alpro milkshake for morning break, a yogurt or two during the day and white bread [surprisingly] has calcium in. just have to check that there is no milk in the bread tho as some do.
For family cooking, as there are 3 DF dc and me and dh who aren't, I tend to make all sauces puddings cakes and stuff DF. Rarely we have a korma or something which i cook after the lo's are in bed, but it is the exception rather than the rule. We make custard with goat or soya milk and it tastes fine, all use swedish glace ice cream most of the time, would you believe that plenty of chocolate dessert sauces actually contain no milk anyway
I tend to do lots of casserole and stew things - tho that is mainly because i love my slow cooker and it is so easy to chuck everything in and have it sitting there ready when we get in from work Pasta sauces which are ready-made with tomato/herb/mushroom etc are all fine, as are most tikka (sp?) curry sauces.
my basic rule of thumb [no ref to fellow witch ] is that get fresh stuff which hasn't been 'processed' - i.e. fiddled with in any way, and it is totally fine. If you end up on the goats milk route, then remember you can freeze it. now we could do with our own goats in the garden as we use so much, but when we only had ds1 on it i used to freeze unopened packs of it, and sometimes open one and put half in ice cube bags [not trays] and use the other half fresh.

my ds (2) is allergic to dairy and intollerant to egg and soya and sheeps stuff. He has goats. This mainly came about as newborn, was v ill and always in pain. The sheeps and soya make his eczema really bad so not necessarily so about having cows intollerance/allergy = goats allergy. Diff bodies.

It's working, thank the Lord. HIs skin is healing. And he likes the "cheese" slices. I think they are foul but with good bread and chutney, they seem to work. And they melt on pizza.

But - I guess this means he's not getting much calcium any more. Do I have to do anything about that?

Thanks again. You've all been really helpful.

I didn't know that about greens. He's fine with them. That's good.

nkf - tinned fish with the bones still in is an excellent source of calcium in a useful form; and if he can have nuts, almonds, brazils and hazelnuts are also a useful source.

Don't go too heavy on the greens as they also contain phytates which can block calcium absorption - keep mixing the sources.

Sardines on toast. That sort of thing?
I take it nobody would recommend supplements.

Sardnes on toast is good.

You don't need supplements really, not if you include a good range of foods mentioned. But if you do decide to go the supplement route, get a multi-vit and mineral supplement, not a calcium only one. Many minerals are competitively absorbed, so by supplementing only one you run the risk of not absorbing enough of some of the others, with poor health consequences. Also, for good bone health, you need a good intake of magnesium as well (found in greens and many other foods) and enough vitamin D, as mentioned by HMFG. Another point about supplements is that some of the cheaper brands are not in the most bio-available form so you might not get any benefit from them anyway. Calcium carbonate for example is added to white flour (therefore it is calcium fortified) - but if you remember your school chemistry (if you did it, sorry!), calcium carbonate can be chalk or limestone/scale. Not the easiest to absorb!

HTH

Thank you.
You are very well informed. I need to know more about diet. They eat well but I haven't had to exclude anything since he was a baby and he was eating so much narrower a range of food then, it wasn't a big deal.
But when I see his skin all smooth again, I feel almost weepy and am so glad it was this easily solved.

why thank you nfk, that'll be because one of my several jobs is lecturing in nutrition.
Oddly enough, what set my boss onto the nutrition path was the same thing as your DS - dairy-induced eczema in her second son. She says it cleared up completely in about 2 weeks and you could almost see it healing!

That's exactly it. I'd look at it in the morning and then after school. And the difference was amazing.

I thought you were an expert.