How long for improvements to show with dairy free diet?

[IlanaK]

I have put my ds1 and ds2 on dairy free diets as a trial thing for different ailments. For ds1 (8 years old) it is for excema. It never improves (but is not severe) and he has not grown out of it. We have tried all the conventional stuff. For ds2 (5) it is for never ending cough/post nasal drip. Same thing that ds1 had for years and he finally out grew it at about 7 years old. We tried all sorts of conventional and non-conventional treatments when ds1 had it. But never tried dairy free so thought we could try it with ds2 so we don't have to wait another two years for him to grow out of it.

So, my question is, how long should I expect before seeing improvements? And at what point do I say "It hasn't worked"? I know when I went dairy free for 6 months when ds3 was reacting to my breastmilk, the improvment was within two days. But that was presumably milk proteins that were the problem where now I am guessing it is lactose?

Any ideas?

it an take up to 2 weeks. but you would normally see some improvement sooner

Thanks for that. I am wondering if it is different for different conditions?

i don't think so, i think the 2 weeks is how long it can take for all traces to leave your system. so if anything was going to happen it shoudl happen within that time frame.

no harm in keeping it up for say, a month or so though just to be sure.