Colic and Infant Allergies

For centuries parents have coped with babies who are fussier than they should be. With no way to know what was going on, many parents and their doctors gave up on trying to heal them and simply tried to cope with them. The term “colic” was gladly accepted by overwhelmed doctors as a diagnosis for these inexplicably unhappy babies. Unfortunately, a diagnosis of colic sentenced baby and parents to weeks or months of inconsolable crying. Even the best parent can fall apart under those circumstances.

Colic is A Symptom, Not a Sickness

Fortunately, we live in an age when the human body is not such a mystery. We can peek inside, find out how it works, and discover whether it’s working properly or not. Modern medical advances have made coping with your colicky baby a brighter prospect, because we now know that real problems lie behind all the screaming and something can be done about them.

Even the pickiest of babies won’t cry for no reason. One reason behind many cases of chronically cranky babies is cows’ milk allergy. Allergies cause many uncomfortable symptoms, any one of which might make baby cry. Particularly unhappy babies may have a condition called MFPI (multiple food protein intolerance.) The bad news is that allergies are as yet incurable. The good news is your baby’s allergies can be managed and almost all babies eventually grow out of them. By eliminating allergens from baby’s diet, you can rediscover your baby’s cheerful personality.

The Burps and Bumps of Allergies

Allergies occur because the immune system mistakenly identifies harmless substances as hazards and tries to fight them off, so allergy symptoms resemble an illness. Symptoms can either show up immediately after eating an allergenic food as rapid-onset symptoms or hours or days later as delayed-onset symptoms. Symptoms include rashes (such as hives, eczema, or diaper rash,) vomiting or excessive spitting up, irritability, congestion, diarrhea, and blood in the stool.

In infants, especially breastfed babies, the symptoms are usually delayed. Often the symptoms will start out mild and increase as the baby’s body builds up an allergy to a food. This can start at birth, or any time thereafter. Symptoms are frequently passed off as illness, so consider the possibility of allergies any time your baby has a low-grade chronic health problem, such as a slight cold that never goes away or a permanent case of diarrhea.
Both breastfed and formula-fed babies can experience food allergies. Formula-fed infants can react to the milk ingredients in formula and breastfed babies can show intolerance to any food mama eats. The most common foods breastfed infants react to are dairy (milk products,) chocolate, spices, caffeine, broccoli, and wheat. Additionally, many babies who are allergic to milk are also allergic to soy.

What to Do For Babies with Food Allergies

If you see symptoms of allergies in your infant consult your pediatrician. Your doctor will most likely prescribe an elimination diet or may order lab tests to determine the food your baby is allergic to. The elimination diet is the preferred method for many doctors and parents since allergy testing is uncomfortable and frequently inaccurate. Plus, the allergenic food will have to be eliminated from baby’s diet anyway, so using elimination to discover the offending food serves two purposes at once. If you don’t want to wait until you can get in to see the doctor, it’s perfectly safe to try the elimination diet on your own and can even help you provide better information to your doctor.
Elimination diet for formula-fed babies

For formula-fed babies, the elimination diet is quite simple: just change formulas. But which formula should you change to? The obvious switch is to soy formula, since most babies are sensitive to cows’ milk, but this isn’t always the best answer. Babies who are sensitive to milk are more prone to be allergic to soy as well, so you might not see any improvement in your infant by switching to soy.

Hypoallergenic formulas are much more likely to solve the problem, though they are much more expensive than regular formula. The milk proteins in hypoallergenic formulas have been broken down a little to make them less recognizable to baby’s digestive system. When even these formulas don’t work, super hypoallergenic formulas are the only other alternative. Babies who suffer from MFPI (see below) usually need these special formulas.
It’s important to note that babies will not respond to a formula switch immediately. It can take from a few days to a couple weeks for the irritating milk proteins to leave the system. You should wait at least a week before determining whether a formula is helping or not. By then baby should show some sign of improvement, but will probably need a little more time before the full effect can be determined.

Elimination Diet for Breastfed Babies

Determining food allergies in a breastfeeding infant is more complicated. Baby’s mother will have to eliminate the offending food from her own diet. Since babies can be sensitive to more than one food in mom’s diet, it may be difficult to determine what food to eliminate. You may be tempted to forgo breastfeeding altogether because of the hassle of determining and eliminating allergenic foods. However, breast milk is the best possible food for babies, especially those with sensitive tummies.

Consider a Food Diary

In attempting the elimination diet you need to take a good look at what you eat. If baby’s symptoms are intermittent then a food diary can help to determine what the offending food is. However, if the symptoms occur daily then you should look at the foods you eat daily. Review the information on MFPI for babies who are extremely miserable. Again, the most common foods causing discomfort in breastfed babies are dairy, chocolate, caffeine, spices, broccoli, and wheat. Follow your intuition as well in determining possible allergens.
Eliminate and wait

Some mothers eliminate all allergenic foods from the start, but it’s easier to just eliminate milk, since that’s the number one cause of allergic reactions, then move on to others if you don’t get results. Once you’ve eliminated a food you need to wait at least a week to determine if the diet changes are effective, especially when eliminating dairy since milk proteins tend to stay in the system longer than other food proteins.

One of three things should happen once you have eliminated a food from your diet. Either baby will improve, not improve, or show signs of improvement then relapse. If your baby improves try eating the food again to see if it causes a reaction. If it does then you know that food is causing the allergy.

If baby doesn’t improve, either the eliminated food wasn’t the problem or there is more than one food causing the problem. Instead of adding back in the eliminated food you should try eliminating additional foods until baby shows signs of improvement. Then you can add back in foods one at a time and watch for reactions to determine the specific foods that are causing the problems.

Finally, babies who improve then begin to show symptoms again may be developing new allergies. Babies who are sensitive to one food are prone to be sensitive to others as well. You can continue to eliminate foods until baby again shows signs of improvement then reintroduce one food at a time.

Warning: while attempting the elimination diet, make sure you are eating enough food to sustain yourself. Eliminating milk and one or two other foods will not affect your ability to produce milk. Just make sure you are still eating enough calories. However, if you begin to feel dizzy, weak, faint, or have other troubling symptoms then you should discontinue the elimination diet and consult your doctor for alternatives.

When allergic babies are old enough to begin eating solid foods, their parents need to be extra careful about introducing only one food at a time and watching for reactions. You should start with cereals and move on to orange and yellow fruits and vegetables. Green vegetables and legumes should be introduced after the baby has demonstrated an ability to eat the orange and yellow foods. You also need to be more careful about highly allergenic foods such as chocolate, eggs, citrus, nuts, and shellfish. Remember that babies usually outgrow allergies, so try each food again a few weeks later if baby reacted to it the first time.

Scratch and Radioallergosorbent (RAST) Testing

Your doctor may order a test to determine what foods your baby is allergic to. Scratch testing and RAST testing are conventional tests used by specialists to test for allergies. A scratch test is conducted by scratching the skin with a needle that has a small amount of the suspected allergen on its tip. If a reaction occurs then the person is deemed allergic to that allergen. RAST testing uses a blood sample which is exposed to the suspected allergen and analyzed to detect allergic reactions. Both of these tests have a high incidence of false negatives and false positives, so using the elimination diet to double check their results is a good idea.

Alternative Treatments for Fussy Babies

A number of alternative methods have been used to help babies with food allergies. The treatments listed here are all safe; however, these treatments are often expensive and not covered by insurance due to the questionable nature of their effectiveness. Use caution when considering an alternative method of allergy relief.

Chiropractic

Chiropractic can be helpful for babies whose spines may have been injured during birth. These injuries won’t be apparent to untrained individuals, but a chiropractor knows how to check for them. A chiropractor will be able to help your baby only if baby’s allergies are linked to an injury like this. Parents nervous about chiropractic treatments being used on their babies will be reassured to know that adjustments on infants are much milder than those done on adults.

A great deal of research has shown positive effects for Chiropractic patients and as a result, many insurance companies cover Chiropractic treatments. If you decide to try a chiropractor look for one who has previous experience working with babies. Asking friends for referrals is always a good idea.

NAET (Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique)

NAET combines acupuncture, kinetics, and chiropractic in a method that promises to completely eliminate allergies. The procedure uses surrogate testing and treatment for infants. NAET is expensive, not covered by insurance, and not always effective. It is highly acclaimed by many who have tried it but has never been analyzed by medical professionals because they disregard it as hocus pocus.

Bio-electrical Analysis or Vega Testing

Bio-electrical analysis measures slight electrical currents through the acupuncture points to determine the body’s reaction to food allergens and uncover other health problems. When compared to RAST tests, Vega testing returned the same results 70% of the time. Vega testing is also expensive and not covered by insurances.

Probiotics

Probiotics may reduce allergic reactions by helping the body process food better. Recent studies into the use of probiotics to treat infant allergies show a reduction in the incidence of eczema. However, it is unknown whether this is due to a reduction in allergies. Other studies have shown further benefits in infants given probiotic formulas, so parents of formula-fed babies will benefit from using a probiotic formula in other ways as well. Breast milk naturally contains probiotics. Parents should check with their pediatricians if they intend to add a probiotic supplement to their baby’s diet (other than probiotic formula.)
There are many other alternative methods of allergy relief available that have no scientific data to back them up.

Most simply promise to pinpoint exactly what allergies a person is sensitive to. If you are considering one of these other methods make sure it carries no risk of physical harm. Be wary of anything that sounds too good to be true or that arouses your suspicions. Unfortunately there are people who will unscrupulously risk your baby’s health just to make a buck.

Multiple Food Protein Intolerance or MFPI

Some babies are allergic of many different food proteins. This is called multiple food protein intolerance (MFPI). These babies are usually miserable as infants due to their body’s inability to process food proteins. Often solid foods have to be delayed for these babies. Special measures need to be taken for MFPI babies.

If you breastfeed your MFPI baby you will face particularly difficult challenges. As you try the elimination diet, you may discover that your baby reacts to a wide variety of the foods you eat and you may be tempted to switch to formula rather than dramatically alter your diet. This is not usually a good idea, however, since formula is even more difficult for these ultrasensitive babies to digest. Rather than completely avoid foods that cause allergic reactions in your baby, you may find it tolerable, for both yourself and your baby, to eat a wide variety of foods every day, thus minimizing the amount of exposure baby receives from any one food without compromising needed nutrients. You should also completely eliminate any foods that are particularly irritating for your baby.

MFPI babies who are formula-fed often require a special formula which has been processed in a way that completely breaks down the food proteins into their basic form: amino acids. These amino-acid based formulas are very expensive and can usually only be found online. Parents complain that they are smelly, but babies don’t object to them, and they are a tremendous relief to overwrought babies and parents.

If your baby shows signs of MFPI, be reassured that your baby will be just fine on a diet of straight breast milk or formula for the first year of life. You can begin to feed your baby solid foods as soon as you think baby can tolerate them, but you need to be very strict about introducing only one food at a time and watching for developing allergies. You should also be careful not to introduce any of the highly allergenic foods (chocolate, eggs, citrus, nuts, and shellfish) until the child is at least three years old and is doing well on more hypoallergenic foods, like cereals and yellow and orange fruits and vegetables.

Babies Can Be Colicky For Other Reasons, Too

Allergies aren’t the only reason babies cry excessively. Acid reflux is also a major cause of unhappiness in babies and some of its symptoms mimic those of allergies. Colicky babies may have serious health problems that need to be addressed. Pediatricians are best for addressing infant problems. Some doctors, and even some pediatricians, aren’t aware of recent medical findings about infant allergies and other causes of colic and will still send parents home with nothing more than a diagnosis of colic and a handout about soothing fussy babies. You should consider taking a more active role in your baby’s health care or changing doctors if your doctor isn’t helpful in determining the cause of your baby’s colic. These days, you don’t have to give up and just cope with your baby’s crying. You can experience the miracle of interacting with a happy, healthy baby.