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Journal of an Herbalist
By Karima Burns, MH, ND 16/05/2001
Client: Selwa
Case: Selwa came to my office complaining that her 18 month old son was experiencing severe rashes all over his body, which she thought might be a food related allergy. She had taken him to a doctor, but felt the medications he was prescribed were too strong. She subsequently went to a homeopath but was only given remedies for the baby's immediate symptoms and not provided with any guidelines on how to deal with the actual allergies. She heard that I specialize in allergies and came to see me.
Journal: The first thing to consider, when dealing with a baby's health needs, is diet. Ideally, children should be nursed until they reach two years old. Breast milk provides them with an enhanced immunity system and oftentimes assures that the child will not develop allergies. The first consideration for any baby with allergies, or one who seems vulnerable to allergies, is to make sure they are nursed, as opposed to being bottle-fed. I asked Selwa if she had been nursing her baby and she said she had, therefore, we eliminated this as a factor in her child's struggle with allergies.
Babies react to foods their mother has eaten. Those who are prone to allergies will often continue to react to foods the mother may have been allergic to, even after they stop nursing. I asked Selwa if she had noticed any correlation between her diet and her child's allergies. She had never considered this possibility before, but then shared with me that she
did tend to eat a lot of bread and cheese. These were her two favorite foods. She mentioned that her son also liked these foods quite a bit.
We decided to start with bread and cheese as the possibilities for her son's allergic reactions. Oftentimes it is the foods consumed most frequently, or the "favorite foods," that are the culprits in allergic reactions. Since it is a precise and sometimes complicated process to actually test for
all of a person's allergies, I usually start off by defining the most likely possibilities. By eliminating one or two major culprits, 80% of the people who come to see me are cured of their allergies. So this is where I started with Selwa and her son.
The top ten foods that most people are allergic to are: corn, eggs, milk and milk products, soy and soy milk, white sugar, wheat, yeast, peanuts, and oranges (or other citrus). Of this list, the foods that most often cause allergies are: milk, eggs, soy, sugar, and wheat.
The least allergenic foods are: apricots, beets, carrots, cranberries, grape, honey, lamb, peaches, rabbit, salmon, salt, squash, sweet potato, tapioca, taro root, green vegetables, vanilla and brown rice.
The second least likely candidates are: chicken, barley, cherries, oatmeal, pears, peppers, sesame seeds, turkey and vinegar.
The third least likely allergenic foods are: bananas, chicken, mushrooms, pineapples, spices and garlic.
Foods that sometimes, but rarely, cause allergies: are apples, beef, cheese, chocolate, onions, nuts, peas, potatoes, raisins, rye, corn, shrimp and tomato.
However, we did not test for all of these foods during the first visit. I told her to eliminate all wheat and dairy from her son's diet for one week. I explained to her that this was not as difficult as it sounded. Barley, brown rice and oats are all healthy alternatives to wheat, bread and noodles. Bread can be made from a mixture of barley and oat flour. Calcium was readily available in broccoli, oranges, sesame seeds, prunes, chard, spinach and many other foods.
If her son did not respond to the elimination of wheat and milk products in his diet, we would have to do some more complicated detective work. The home-based method of discovering allergies involves implementing an elimination diet. For a week, Selwa would only feed her son foods that she knew would not exacerbate his allergies. Then, she would gradually incorporate other foods into his diet. Thus, she would be able to determine which foods he was most allergic to using her observational skills, consulting lists, or by having allergy tests performed on him.
Selwa returned a week later, overjoyed - her son's rash had disappeared only 5 days after eliminating wheat and milk products from his diet. But, now she had another concern. Would he ever be able to eat bread, milk, cheese or ice cream again? We now needed to adjust his diet so that he could integrate these foods back into his system in a more responsible way. There were a few ways to do this. The first way to deal with his allergies would be to remove these foods from his diet for six weeks and then re-introduce them after that. This often curbs the allergic reaction in many people. If, when introduced again, the person is still allergic to the foods, another six-week cycle may be recommended.
A second method used to eliminate allergies is to utilize herbs, vitamins and minerals known to counteract allergic reactions. Donald Lepore, ND, in his book,
The Ultimate Healing System, states that allergies are merely a reflection of mineral or vitamin deficiencies and that if properly balanced, can "cancel" the allergy. He provides a chart of common allergens and the vitamins, minerals and herbs he uses to counteract them. He states that a person only needs to take these "Neutralizing Nutritional Antidotes" for a few months to a year before the allergy is completely eliminated. For example: he says that a yeast, barley, millet, potato, prune, raisin, rye or walnut allergy can be counteracted by thiamin (B1), (B6) and zinc. For people allergic to corn, wool, dust, detergents, cats or dogs, they need to boost the deficient essential fatty acids in their system. People allergic to milk and meats need to up their intake of biotin, carnitine, sulfur, vitamin D (through the sun) and potassium.
The third method is to follow a rotation diet, which incorporates the "offending foods" into the diet only once a week, so the system does not get overloaded with the allergen. I explained how to create a personal rotation diet by making a list of foods she would normally eat. Then, using her list as reference, she would make another one of the foods her son was allergic to and make a weekly "schedule" for cooking the ingredients, listing the "offending foods" only once a week.
Selwa decided that it would be too difficult for her to eliminate wheat and milk for six weeks, and that the herbs and vitamins would be too strong for her son, so she opted for the rotation diet. I explained to her that even within this rotation diet, she could take some further precautions to prevent allergic reactions. By eating the "allergenic foods" with a meal or with other foods, especially fruits and vegetables, she could reduce the reactions. By reducing the amount of chemicals and sugar in her son's diet, she could also decrease his allergic reactions in general. This is because white sugar and additives and preservatives often act as catalysts that cause a person to have allergic reactions to anything eaten with it or cooked in it. They can also weaken the immune system and make it less able to efficiently deal with the allergies. Unfortunately, white sugar and chemicals exist in everything from cereals, to baby formula and crackers, and even in canned vegetables.
I explained that avoiding sugar anmicals would be easiest by cooking most of the meals from scratch and shunning the use of packaged goods. She mentioned that her mother had cooked in this way and that lately she had gotten "lazy" and started to use more packaged foods.
I also mentioned to Selwa that skin rashes could also be aggravated by lack of exposure to the sun or by the use of strong detergents. People have an affinity for pretty smells and detergents that will "clean any stain." But, these are often highly irritating for sensitive skin. I told her to make sure that the skin products she was using on the baby and on the baby's clothes were made with natural ingredients.
Selwa called me a few weeks later to tell me that she had followed all of my suggestions and had even begun to add wheat and milk twice a week to the menu. Her son had still not experienced any negative reactions.
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