My soy allergy is similar - my stomach is so much better since I started avoiding.  Luckily, I can work with lecithin and small amounts of soy oil.  Before I started avoiding, I frequently had HORRIBLE stomach aches and other GI issues.  I can definitely tell when something that I eat has been 'soybeaned'.

I did have someone tell me once that 'if I only got a stomach ache when I ate something that was in everything, I'd just keep eating it'.   Umm...clearly you have never had this type of stomach ache.  Sure, my other allergies might actually make me dead, but the soy allergy will make me wish that I was dead.

I used to go to tons of stores every week as well.  I have a well stocked pantry now, and a large freezer, so I can actually make a ton of meals without going to the grocery at all. 

 

Hopefully you'll be able to just hit a couple of stores and find everything perishable that you need.  It really makes a big difference to not have to do three or more every week. 

thats very interesting about the milk stuff. It does , on reflection make sense.

have just come back from my first weekly food shop, and really felt stressed and teary at the sheer amount of food that is no longer possible.
I also cant find the calcuim fortified orange juice, or her safe spread. So it seems i will have to dart around every week between three supermarkets to find her safe food.

As if our lives werent frustrating enough!

dealing with huge older kid teen problems as well as two kids with new medical problems....

 
When DS was younger, he used to only react to milk from certain dairies. The allergist finally decided it was feed (most likely peanut). Around here we know certain weeds can make milk taste bad, so it stands to reason that diet could affect the milk in other ways as well.

Oh boy-- does that ever sound familiar, eragon... this is exactly how DH was finally diagnosed with a soy allergy when he was about 7 yo.    He was so sick... he had all kinds of diagnostic tests (some of them kinda scary) which found nothing wrong with his GI tract.  Then he finally got tested for food allergies and the SPT panel lit up like a Christmas tree. 

Elimination diet worked like magic for him-- but fair warning here, reintroduction of a few true allergens was rather brutal.  I will hope that she winds up only needing to avoid one or the other once she's successfully avoiding the allergen...   

Milk is one of those weirdo things where... yes, it MIGHT be possible for allergens consumed by even ruminant animals to be passed into milk more or less intact.  It's certainly so in non-ruminant mammals, and a fair number of anecdotal reports exist to suggest that feedstuffs which are heavily laced with a food protein which is an allergen can be enough to produce discernable contamination in milk.  Remember that people who are pretty sensitive can effectively detect contamination below the analytical laboratory detection limit in many foodstuffs.  Peanut-hay is seasonally quite common in some parts of the US; all but the most sensitive PA persons probably never even notice it, but there is a small group of people that seems to.  DD, for whatever reason we've never fully discerned, seems to (still) have the most trouble with dairy between November and March, which makes no sense since that is the very LOWEST ebb for environmentals here.  I'd imagine that soya feeds are not that common in the UK, and you'd probably already know if she were SUPER-sensitive like that... but it's worth bearing in mind, anyway.

no. dont think milk works like that....

she has already said she feels better avoiding soya since tuesday. has stopped the stomach aches and funny throat feeling. says that she feels hungry in mornings now, rather than pain in gut.
so we are on the right track avoiding soya and milk.

she is going to stick to non milk and soya for a month, then get skin prick tested again, and we shall see how things go.

daughter is adapting so well that when i was out with older son, she googled some recipes and made a milk egg and soya free cake for her and allergic brother, was rather yummy really!

Since she does have enviros, I wonder if she's reacting to pollen/weed/grass in the cow's feed - kind of like an OAS response to the milk?  Maybe getting her enviros under control will empty her cup enough that milk won't bother her any more.

Has she always had milk with no reaction up to this point?  Lip swelling and throat tightness are considered very serious symptoms in the USA because if the swelling continues it can can make breathing difficult to impossible.  I'm very surprised the doctors do not think this was an IgE reaction.  In general I have only heard of foods and stinging insect allergies causing those particular symptoms, not environmental allergies.  Environmental allergies tend to cause itchy eyes, watery eyes, sometimes eye swelling, sneezing, sometimes wheezing but not lip swelling or throat swelling.  Those things make it sound like a food reaction and IgE.

Most emergency plans in the USA (nearly all) would call for giving the epi for a food allergic reaction that included throat tightness and lip swelling.

Hopefully it was a weird fluke.

Quote from: eragon on April 13, 2012, 11:41:17 AM
had a mild bit of puffy lips today, after eating something she knew had milk powder in. tight throat , feeling sick.

she looks ok, talking well, alert, so mild reaction.

am glad we have started process of going to allergy clinic.

am really hoping she wont go down the same epi pen path as her brother.

although i suspect new enviromental allergies as well.......

i suppose i should count ourselves as lucky its only 2 out of the 4 kids...

may i be allowed a small time for a quiet sob of dispair?

I know what you mean, I am not totally convinced that this is not ige personally. I find it confusing that she responded to anti histamine more than once....am still hoping that i am being a mad over reactive mummy, but.......

hubby quite short with me about it, he thinks 95% sure is enough for him to relax about it.........and i am going along with it, but doctors have been wrong about son before...

when we go back in month I think they will skin prick tests her again, and then perhaps give her some soya. who knows how things will go.

intolerence is in the family, cetainly her great grandmother had it to milk, and wheat.

nothing is ever clear cut with allergies it seems....

  Well, at least they don't think that it is IgE-mediated.  Avoidance should be simpler this way.

I'll also add that there is really something to the environmental allergy control helping with EVERYTHING allergy.  I think you're on the right track.

FWIW, my DD didn't skin-test positive to milk either-- but she was very clearly allergic, and her symptoms responded VERY nicely to diphenhydramine and correlated completely to intake of milk proteins.  This lasted for years.  Allergist eventually just shrugged and said, that, well, 95% accuracy means 5% INaccuracy in positive test results. 

back from hosptial yesterday, and doc things she is intolerent to soya and milk, we are continuing to cut out milk and now exclude soya. After a month we are going back to let her try soya again.

her skin  prick tests show that she has a pretty big allergy to dustmite and cats. and is allergic to tree pollen, hay fever.

so , we came home through out everything with soya, and i went shopping, we can only have one loaf of bread without soya, and i spent lots of money on other stuff.

also spent over £100 on allergy bedding, and thinking of getting her a pollen and dust filter as its helped son so much.

our food bills are going to go sky high now, esp if you add on top my IBS exclusion diet.

space aliens...............hmm, i quite fancy Dr Who. perhaps daughter can get me a visit with him when next she trips to  planet puffy face......

Her skin has always been very sensitive, but this is such a clear response. I have just paid for a week school trip to Germany for her in july, and now am stressing about getting everything sorted before she goes.

we are currently visiting 3 different hospitals a month for son, and have spent a fortune on london public transport, ( and a taxi cab trip with a cabbie who educated us both on french wine....)  so our stress levels are way, way too high.
Although the NHS isnt speedy, i cant fault it, lots of profs call us and return calls, (eventually, they are very busy creatures , professors)  and we have been seen at great ormand street, the royal and st marys, all working with him. There is no way on this earth that would pay for this ourselves. I hope that the current gov doesnt stop this aspect of the nhs, which has been a godsend.

 

We've had the same experience of "what??!!!  Kids don't "grow into" food allergies to milk/wheat/soy/egg at this age..."

Great, what does that make her, then?  A space-alien?  Maybe our children are actually time-lords, eragon.   

I will fervently hope that this is somehow related only to environmental allergies, eragon.  Your family has got plenty already to deal for with this year.  I think the saying is that you "gave at the office."  <sigh>  Sure wish it worked that way, anyway. 

had a mild bit of puffy lips today, after eating something she knew had milk powder in. tight throat , feeling sick.

she looks ok, talking well, alert, so mild reaction.

am glad we have started process of going to allergy clinic.

am really hoping she wont go down the same epi pen path as her brother.

although i suspect new enviromental allergies as well.......

i suppose i should count ourselves as lucky its only 2 out of the 4 kids...

may i be allowed a small time for a quiet sob of dispair?