DEALING WITH FOOD ALLERGIES

Babies often suffer from food allergies since parents are not aware what foods are more prone to cause allergies. Normally if you or your husband's family do not have a history of food allergies (basically chocolate, peanut butter, peanuts etc) then it will not be a big problem for your baby. Children have a 40 to 70 percent chance of developing allergies if both parents have allergies, depending on whether the parents share the same allergy. The risk drops to about 20 to 30 percent with one allergic parent and to 10 percent if the parents have no allergies.

Food allergy is when the immune system responds to a particular food by releasing antibodies, causing allergic symptoms such as a rash, swelling at sudden parts of the body, bloating, wheezing, runny nose. Thus if your child suffers from food allergy, he's likely to show an obvious reaction soon after eating the offending food and the most important thing that you have to do is to stop giving that food immediately to the baby and avoid it for life.

The most common foods to which your baby might be allergic are:

Wheat, rye, oats and barley
Eggs
Sesame seeds
Nuts including peanuts
Citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruit
Cow's milk and cow's milk products
Fish and shellfish

Try cutting these out of your diet, one at a time, and see if your baby's health improves. It may take up to ten days for it to clear from his/her system. Avoiding the early introduction of potentially allergenic foods is the basic step in the primary prevention of food allergies in children who are at high risk and therefore it is advisable to clinically test your baby for any food allergies.

If you are concerned about the possibility of allergies try out the following:

1. Breastfeed your baby for as long as possible as this seems to help protect baby's system against some allergies.
2. Avoid introducing solids until your baby is at least four months old.
3. Take extra care to avoid common allergens in your baby's diet.
4. Introduce foods one at a time, with several days between them, so you can more easily identify the food that is causing a reaction.