Baby is allergic to root food

Babies who are allergic to root foods are mostly transient reactions caused by immature immune systems. More than 60% of children will establish tolerance on their own before the age of 3, and less than 5% of severe allergic cases will last until school age.； When encountering an allergy, first determine the severity. Only severe reactions in the respiratory tract and whole body require emergency medical attention. For mild to moderate reactions, there is no need to be overly anxious, and there is no need to directly blacklist such foods permanently.

Last week, my best friend sent me an urgent message in the middle of the night. In the photo she took, her 10-month-old baby had a red circle around his mouth and a few small rashes. She said that she had just fed the baby two spoons of steamed yam and said, "It's over. Is my baby allergic?" Am I not allowed to eat anything from now on? ”

In fact, situations like hers are too common. Many parents first react when their children react to root foods such as sweet potatoes, yams, and taros. In fact, many times what you think of as an "allergy" may just be caused by the irritation of the food itself. Take yam as an example. There are saponins and plant alkaloids in the skin of raw yam. Even if it is steamed, if the mucus is not washed away when peeling, the baby's delicate skin will become red and itchy. It will disappear on its own within two hours. It is not considered an allergy at all. I once met a mother who said that her baby would get rashes after eating carrots and that it would be fine if she stopped eating them. After struggling for two months, I discovered that the fresh-keeping carrots she bought from the supermarket were packaged in plastic wrap and had residual antibacterial agents on the surface. Later, she replaced them with carrots grown in her hometown and steamed them thoroughly for her baby to eat, without any problems.

At this point, someone will definitely ask, how can I distinguish between an irritation reaction and a real food allergy?

In fact, it is very simple. True allergies generally do not only have local reactions around the mouth, but are often accompanied by rashes, vomiting, and diarrhea scattered throughout the body. In severe cases, there may even be coughing, wheezing, and swollen eyelids. The reaction will occur as long as you touch even a little bit of the relevant food, and it will take 1-3 days to completely subside after stopping eating. If the area on your skin that comes into contact with the food is only red when you eat it, but nothing else happens, and the baby doesn't scratch it, then it's basically irritating. Just wash your face, and cook it for 10 minutes more next time to remove the skin, and it won't happen again.

Regarding the treatment of allergies, there are actually two different ideas in the industry. The general advice from traditional pediatricians is that as long as the allergy is confirmed, they should strictly avoid such foods for 3-6 months, wait for the immune system to develop again, and then try it from a very small dose. This plan is the safest and there is basically no risk of going overboard. In recent years, the view of functional medicine is to first check whether it is a "false allergy" - for example, whether it is an allergy to herbicides and preservatives remaining on the surface of rhizomes, or whether it is cross-allergic to pollen (for example, some children are allergic to wormwood and will react when eating rhizome/umbelliferous foods such as carrots and celery). It is not an allergy to the food itself at all. There is no need to completely avoid this situation. Just change to clean ingredients and try to avoid the pollen season.

In fact, there is no absolute right or wrong between these two views. If the baby only has a mild to moderate rash and no systemic reaction, you can try changing the ingredients first, cooking it more thoroughly and then trying a small amount. If the baby still reacts, it is not too late to avoid it. Of course, if the baby already has asthma, laryngeal edema, or low energy, don't think about anything and send him to the emergency room immediately. This is a hard standard that cannot be discussed.

By the way, there is another pitfall that everyone easily falls into. Don’t listen to the scammers on the Internet who say, “allergy means low immunity, and eating more anti-allergic probiotics will help.” There is currently no clear evidence from evidence-based medicine that ordinary probiotics can improve food allergies. Those “anti-allergic probiotics” that frequently sell three to four hundred boxes each charge an IQ tax. If you really want to make up for it, it’s better to feed your baby more diverse foods, which is worse than anything else. There is also the idea of ​​low-dose desensitization, which is quite controversial now. Some doctors think that as long as it is not a severe allergy, you can increase the dosage at home to exercise tolerance. However, some doctors think that parents can easily cause risks if they do not control the dosage. My personal suggestion is that if you really want to do desensitization, it must be done under the supervision of a pediatric allergist. Don’t try it blindly at home. It is just a small allergy, and it will be a serious reaction.

I have come across 20 or 30 children with rhizome allergies in the past two years. Except for one case of severe yam allergy, the child did not tolerate it until he was 5 years old. The rest basically avoided it for half a year to a year, and nothing happened if he tried again. There is a 2-year-old boy who vomited once after eating taro. The taro IgE test half a year ago was still level 2. The re-examination last week has turned negative. Now he enjoys eating taro buns at home better than anyone else.

You really don’t have to be afraid of an enemy when you see allergies. Your baby’s immune system matures gradually through repeated contact with the outside world. If you are really worried, check for food-specific IgE. Don’t make blind guesses about food taboos. In the end, you don’t dare to give your baby anything to eat. Failure to keep up with nutrition will affect growth and development. That is really picking up the sesame seeds and losing the watermelon.