Elimination diet: the end

The long awaited end to our elimination and challenge diet has arrived.  After three and a half months of monitoring everything my son and I ate, we can now go to a party without bringing our own food!  During this period we challenged salicylates (twice), amines, and glutamates, and my son also challenged bread preservative.  My son finished his second salicylate challenge a few days ago, and he'll be off the diet tomorrow (I finished a little over a week ago).  I'm disappointed to report that the only thing I've learned about my son's skin condition from all of this is that my son does not have a severe reaction to any of these things.

This post has moved.  Read the entire post at http://wombats-and-cents.blogspot.com/2007/02/elimination-diet-end.html

Comments

[Vera]

There has been eczema in my family, too. Our eldest had/has it, though not debilitating. I used cortisone on him when he was young, but have since learned that it only treats symptoms, and is not at all healthy for the body. His skin clears up when he is away from the petrol products associated with his work. Our 7th, now 11, has had it since he was 1. Our 9th, now 5, has had it, too. Both these later children had it to a debilitating degree. Their skin was bleeding and coming off in large oozy patches with their uncontrollable scratching. Their necks, arms, legs, and then their faces were eczema covered. I did not want to take them in public because I always got questioned about their skin. This winter is the first winter our 5 year old has had clear skin since she was about 1. Our 11 year old is still working with his skin, but it is getting better, and not falling off in bleeding patches anymore.

This is the real basic of what we have found out about eczema: the root of the problem is the liver. If the liver is malfunctioning, then the digestion is not working properly. It can be a virus (EBV) in the liver; it can be that the liver is not metabolizing key nutrients-vit. Bs, essential fatty acids (the omega 3-6-9 oils), vit. D (especially in Canada).
Our children are taking supplements made from real food, in addition to a herbal combo liver supplement. Our 11y.o. seemed to get his eczema infected, perhaps from scratching so much, so he began a daily soak in a shallow bath with hydogen peroxide in it, and using an ointment I made up with liquid soy lecithin, flax oil, vit. E and polysporin. He also washed occasionally with Betaine surgical scrub. I wash his bedding everyday to clean up the dead skin that comes off at night, hopefully decreasing the irritation that may occur from those microscopic mites that feed on dead skin cells. His eczema now is just some scabby patches.
I went through the whole food allergy thing for at least 3 years with them, but it didn't clear the problem because the liver needed to get the nutrients to heal and begin to work efficiently.

[Naomi]

I'm also doing the elimination diet, but I find leaving in the dairy and wheat (gluten) and eggs leaves people with eczema still suffering. You also have to stay on the elimination diet until you feel better and if it's longer than 3 weeks eliminated the other things too. But I think they should start people off stricter and then test the dairy, gluten, and eggs.
The food stuff is really crazy, but so worth it.

[Courtney]

Hi Naomi,

Sorry about the delayed approval and response to your post. We moved earlier this month and still don't have high speed internet access!

With more time to reflect on the elimination diet, I don't know if I could go through it all again and can't believe that I was able to keep myself and my son on it for so long with no mistakes. That said, we also did everything in the wrong order.

I agree that you really need to eliminate all of the common allergens in addition to the possible irritants, especially with small children, who are less likely to have grown out of their allergies. We now know that he is not only allergic to egg whites but that it affects his excema (unlike his cashew allergy, which causes hives). The presence of egg in his diet during much of the elimination diet put into question most of what we supposedly accomplished.