foul smelling diapers got worse and worse, to the point where I sent a foul smelling diaper in to our pediatrician because it wasn’t normal for poop to smell this bad. His constant sickness culminated in a high fever and antibiotic injection. After which, he lost the ability to point, wave and blow kisses and lost eye contact for 24 hours and lost the few words he had.
Because his regression was so severe with both verbal and non verbal regression, I put him on a gluten free casein free diet the next day and begged our pediatrician to get us into a GI doctor who eventually found two genes for celiac. He got better on a gluten free/casein free/soy free diet, but he still reacted to other foods. He was diagnosed by a developmental pediatrician with an “allergy syndrome” and “verbal processing delay.”
A friend whose child had gotten better from dietary intervention suggested that we see Dr. Fred Pescatore, who does food allergy testing including a food sensitivity panel of 150 foods. On the ALCAT test, he was most intolerant to: oranges (something he had had ONCE in his life and had a severe reaction to.) He had a medium intolerance to: broccoli, almonds, avocado, and black pepper. When we removed these things from his diet his constant red cheeks went away and he got better.
I had tried to figure out where his reactions were coming from, but he seemed to always be reacting to something. ALCAT testing was the ONLY thing that helped us get to the bottom of his intolerances.
A year later, my son started to develop constant red cheeks again and to be sick again.My husband and I tried to figure out what was making him react. We searched labels for ingredients to try to figure out what was happening. Then, desperate, we returned to the ALCAT test to find his new intolerances: chocolate, almonds, avocado, blueberries, bananas and lemons. He was reacting to the lemon flavoring in his multivitamins and the chocolate chip cookies I made with almond flour and the bananas he would eat every few days. AGAIN, when I took these things out of his diet, he recovered from the red cheeks and subtle regression that I was observing.
In our case,the ALCAT test was an important tool that helped us figure out the foods he was sensitive to.
Allergists, with their reliance on IgE testing mainstream allergy testing DID NOT HELP MY SON. It is sad that I knew he was reacting to food and that the mainstream allergists could not give me helpful information and following their recommendations HE GOT WORSE until I found Dr. Pescatore, who did the ALCAT testing and Dr. Teich, who understood both mainstream medicine and alternative approaches.
I know the mainstream medical community’s reluctance to include a test which changes over time. But, I want them to know that this test helped more than most of the doctors I have seen and it needs to be considered for patients who know they have food sensitivities but who test negative on typical allergy tests.
Therapy Mom - We have had very similar experiences! We got all negative IgE tests for foods. The allergist told me it was nothing. We did IgG testing through Great Plains Lab in KS and found all sorts of sensitivities!
And we are doing soooo much better too! Behavior has dramatically improved, as well as dev delays are less and less!