Pretty much from birth, my now 5-year old daughter suffered from eczema. It wasn't terrible, or it didn't seem it at the time-- it got worse in winter, it itched but never cracked and bled, sometimes it stung in the saltwater pool, but that was about it. But it was constant, for years. We took her to the doctor, who said to use
Cetaphil lotion and there was nothing we could do about it, but that eczema is more common in children of parents with allergies and asthma. Well, her dad has asthma and allergies, so we figured there was an association with that. We knew a little bit about food sensitivities, because a complete elimination diet had been suggested to Phil to address his asthma, but he never really followed through with it. But now we had two people in the family with possibly connected health issues, and so the time came to figure out if this even was a food sensitivity.
But I had no idea really where to start. I did some research on elimination diets, and they all seemed so daunting-- eat only rice and vegetables for three months, stuff like that. But I came across a book on Amazon.com, that looked promising (thank goodness for the "search in this book" option). I prefer my local bookseller and so should you, but the fact is I live on a small island in Alaska, and my choices are limited. The book is called
Superimmunity for Kids: What to Feed Your Children to Keep Them Healthy Now, and Prevent Disease in Their Future, by
Leo Galland and Dian Dincin Buchman. Plus I got it used for $5 and have since passed it on o my husband's father, who also has sever asthma.
What I got from this book, mainly, was an
easy way to determine if your health problem is even a food sensitivity or not. It's a simple, but short, hard-core elimination. So for (only) five days, we ate nothing but meat (except pork), rice, squash, potatoes, and... there was fifth thing, but I forget what now. I guess you'll have to buy the book to find out. It was tough, it didn't agree with me as I tend towards high-vegetable-low-meat diets, but THE ECZEMA WENT AWAY COMPLETELY!! Remember, Esther had had constant eczema for four years, and it was magically gone. So bingo, we knew it was caused by something in her diet; now we just had to figure out what.
So then I found
a great article on on Ask Dr Sears with two lists: the top nine allergenic foods, and the top 20 allergenic foods. My plan was to add everything back in but the so-called Nasty Nine, and see if the eczema came back. If it did, then we would try eliminating all of the top twenty allergens. My husband was convinced her reaction was to something weird on the list, though, so we just went ahead and started with the top twenty. I think we were so glad to be rid of the eczema that we just didn't want it to come back! Turns out we would have saved ourselves a lot of headache if we had just tried the nine, so I recommend starting with the nine to anyone trying this.
We eliminated the top twenty allergens, and still she had no eczema, so that was good. Then every four days, we added in a new food, usually in a very significant quantity, to see if it provoked a reaction (food allergies are often dosage-based, I think Dr. Sears said). Adding in 20 foods, every four days should take just under three months, right? No problem, or so we thought. The major hitch in this all is that if you are four, in preschool, and very social, you get invited to a birthday party about every week. With so many foods eliminated, there wasn't much we could do to adequately substitute for birthday cake and ice cream, and we didn't want to warp her, so we let her eat cake. But then it took 2 days for the eczema to surface after exposure and 3 more days for it to clear up enough for us to even consider trying a new food, so all in all the re-introduction phase took about 6 months.
We did learn some things about our old diet for sure. I was always a little holier-than-thou, I eat a whole foods healthy diet kind of person, but when we got serious about eliminating, we realized how much junk we did eat. A lot of it was in condiments and various seasonings, especially Asian, since preservatives were eliminated, and sugars, because they're in anything processed, even when it's all-natural. We chose to let sugar and preservatives be last on the list of things to re-introduce, since we figured it would be better for us in the long run, and it got me to learn which bottle of fish sauce or curry paste has sodium
benzoate and which one didn't. We even made our own ketchup just by starting with tomato paste and vinegar, and then looking on the label of Annie's organic ketchup (which lists the spices instead of just saying "spices") and using honey instead of sugar, and tasting it till it was close enough.
To be honest, I personally never followed the diet very well. I am a grain-based diet person, it's in the eat for my blood type and everything, and I didn't do well without wheat, and I had no personal motivation other than solidarity to do it. Luckily, my husband has been with Esther all the way, and while he'll eat bread occasionally out of her sight, he realizes how much it has helped his asthma, too, so he sticks with it pretty well. He's a meat-eater in the eat right for your blood type thing, and while I don't usually go for that sort of
hocus-
pocus health stuff, it is uncannily accurate (like when I got my palm read in India). I would bet a dollar that Esther is his blood type (O-) rather than mine (A-), because she too is a meat-eater.
But I digress. Both wheat and eggs caused Esther to have eczema, although interestingly, each one individually caused a much slighter reaction than had been her chronic condition. We re-eliminated them and continued on with re-introducing, and those were the only two that did anything. So then it changed from a diet to a lifestyle change, which I do think was a little hard for Esther. I think she had imagined it would come to an end and she would be able to eat everything again, and ultimately, that just wasn't the case. But she was AMAZING through it all. She had to bring her own snack to preschool instead of eating whatever anyone brought, and I have a friend who volunteered there regularly, and she said she'd never seen a kid show such responsibility and restraint. And Esther loves food, she loves to eat, but I think deep inside she's happy to not have eczema. She doesn't verbalize it very much, and she always says, "oh, I wish I could have bread!" in the saddest way, but she doesn't do it. I guess when she does, it will be her choice; we can only control our kids so much and for so long.
Which reminds me- one of the motivators for doing this
diet when we did was that we realized she'd be going to school the following year, and we'd have even less control over her diet than we already did. We sort of figured it was now or never. One of the teachers at her preschool can't eat wheat, so that was helpful, too, and it was a treat for the teacher when I'd bring snack that everyone could eat. We've gotten into the habit of bringing food wherever we go, and Esther sure does eat more healthily because of it, it's a very pleasant outcome.
People really feed their kids junk, and look at you funny when you say no she can't have "juice" and a "fruit" snack. Now we have a great excuse to bring our own food! We did run into one problem this summer when she took a little day camp Spanish class, and after the first day the teacher told her not to bring her own snack. My husband was dealing with it, and I don't know if the
teacher was made fully aware that Esther couldn't have wheat and eggs, but she did end up eating whatever snack was provided (some sort of chip with which Esther was unfamiliar, we're thinking Sun Chips) and getting eczema.
So that's how we discovered Esther's sensitivity. Hopefully, the rest of this blog will be helpful and concrete ways of dealing with it- if you like to cook and bake that is!
