Rotation Diet.

[Juliebove]

Daughter and I both have IgG food allergies. She outgrew some of hers and the Dr. (naturopath) told her she could now eat these things but only twice a week and not on subsequent days.

Later, the same Dr. told me I had outgrown my dairy allergy. But she told me that I had best not eat it again. I was fine with this for a while. It had been easy for me to give up the dairy to begin with and I felt I didn't miss it.

But daughter was always wanting things like pizza and nachos. I could make her a small amount of nachos and then make some for myself using refried beans and a bit of rice cheese, mainly for the cheese like effect it had. It didn't really taste like cheese. But the pizza was a problem. I would make her an Amy's Rice Crust pizza and doctor it up a bit. She would eat half and then not want the other half later in the week. I tried to re-freeze it but it wasn't so tasty to do that.

Then I got to thinking about it. If she could eat the dairy...why couldn't I? So I tried a few bites of the pizza. And I didn't get sick! Then I tried one of her nachos from Target (the cheese sauce kind) and didn't get sick! Soon I was eating cheese twice a week just like she was. I never liked milk, sour cream, yogurt, ice cream or other dairy products. Just cheese.

But then we both began cheating. Neither of us knew that the other one was doing it. Until I heard her confess to my mom that she was eating the cottage cheese, one spoonful at a time out of the container. She would sneak into the kitchen and get a bite. I was doing the same thing! I was also eating cheddar on days when I wasn't supposed to.

Now we generally do not have dairy when we are dining out. This is mainly so that we don't confuse people. It's hard for the waitstaff and cooks to understand that we can have cheese one day and not another. So we have reserved only a few places to dine out and have dairy and really we don't go there often. When we do go it is only on a Sunday or a Tuesday because daughter declared those her dairy days.

Now here's the odd thing. We are eating dairy when we are not supposed to and we are not getting sick! So it makes me wonder... Are we being silly to limit ourselves in this way? My parents do not understand our diet and get annoyed with our food restrictions. They think we should make exceptions for holidays and birthday paries and such. But we don't. We just sneak the stuff at home.

When I first gave up the allergens, I vowed never to eat them again. At that point in time it was just dairy, almonds and eggs. I suspect that eggs was the most severe of the three based on my experiences with eating eggs. When daughter was diagnosed with her allergies, I gave up all that she was allergic to just to make it easier on her. But then after a while I did begin eating eggs and dairy again. I clearly got very ill after eating the eggs on four separate occasions. I guess I was just dense that it took me to long to realize, but it was a delayed reaction. And then after I gave up the dairy, I thought I was reacting to it on the few occasions where I got food at a restaurant and found some cheese in my food after I asked for no cheese. But maybe it was psychosomatic?

The allergist we saw said she does not believe in IgG allergies and other people have told me that IgG testing is bogus. Anyone else having similar problems?

[ravenwoodglass]

It is not unheard of to be able to eat stuff we once were sensitive to once we have healed. If dairy isn't giving you any issues, and the best way to tell is to eat it a couple times a day for a week, (at least according to my allergist) then enjoy. Please note this does not apply to gluten if we are celiac or gluten intolerant we need to avoid it for life.

[Juliebove]

It is not unheard of to be able to eat stuff we once were sensitive to once we have healed. If dairy isn't giving you any issues, and the best way to tell is to eat it a couple times a day for a week, (at least according to my allergist) then enjoy. Please note this does not apply to gluten if we are celiac or gluten intolerant we need to avoid it for life.

We have been tending to go overboard on it twice a week, having it at every meal.

Our allergist does not believe in IgG allergies. I just don't want the allergy to come back. The naturopath said if we eat too much of any one thing, the allergy can come back. In fact she said if we eat too much of any one thing ever, we can develop an allergy to it. I surmised this is how daughter's pea and lentil allergies came about. All of the faux cheeses she was eating contained them. And she was eating almond butter every day because of the peanut allergy. Now she's allergic to almonds.

Daughter keeps telling me I will one day be allergic to wheat. I go through phases where I eat cereal with wheat for breakfast every morning for long periods of time. Then I alternate that with polenta and tomato sauce for a while. I don't really think I eat a lot of wheat otherwise. Bread and pretzels only occasionally.

I just can't explain my oyster allergy. I never ate a lot of those. Only oyster sauce on a few occasions and that was many years ago. More recently I had Chinese food maybe 3 times but at that it was a good 7 or 8 years ago. There may or may not have been oyster sauce used in what I ate. So it's odd that oysters didn't show up on my first test but they did on the second. I know that I didn't have any at all between the two tests.

[ravenwoodglass]

The naturopath said if we eat too much of any one thing, the allergy can come back. In fact she said if we eat too much of any one thing ever, we can develop an allergy to it.

I don't really agree with that statement. Nor do I think unless you have a genetic predisposition to develop gluten reactions that you will develop a wheat reaction by eating it daily. Many people do have wheat daily and never develop celiac or gluten intolerance. There are a lot of children who react to peanuts the first time they eat them and lots of folks allergic to sea food that have reacted immediately the first time they had them also. There are folks in this world that eat the same thing everyday for all their lives that don't develop reactions. As you can likely tell by now I am not a fan of rotation diets. I believe they hide reactions and can keep people eating stuff they are reacting to by 'hiding' the reactions. If you want to know if you react to something and are being guided by an allergist in elimination diet they have you add the food back in 3 times a day for a week, in pure form, to watch for a reaction. That makes the reaction obvious and allows us to eliminate the offending food item. It is also not unusual for folks that are newly diagnosed celiac to react to a number of items while still healing. That may be due to the 'leaky gut' and some of those reactions can abate after we have healed and the gut is no longer 'leaky'.

[alchemist]

I don't really agree with that statement. Nor do I think unless you have a genetic predisposition to develop gluten reactions that you will develop a wheat reaction by eating it daily. Many people do have wheat daily and never develop celiac or gluten intolerance. There are a lot of children who react to peanuts the first time they eat them and lots of folks allergic to sea food that have reacted immediately the first time they had them also. There are folks in this world that eat the same thing everyday for all their lives that don't develop reactions. As you can likely tell by now I am not a fan of rotation diets. I believe they hide reactions and can keep people eating stuff they are reacting to by 'hiding' the reactions. If you want to know if you react to something and are being guided by an allergist in elimination diet they have you add the food back in 3 times a day for a week, in pure form, to watch for a reaction. That makes the reaction obvious and allows us to eliminate the offending food item. It is also not unusual for folks that are newly diagnosed celiac to react to a number of items while still healing. That may be due to the 'leaky gut' and some of those reactions can abate after we have healed and the gut is no longer 'leaky'.

That is a "spot on " observation ravenwoodglass...there is so much nutritional dogma that few take the time to really question some of the statements made in the nutritional world....great post:)

steve