Crusty Sores: Part Duo

Now for what you might not know:

Food Allergies and Food Sensitivities are not the same thing. Here is a website that explains food allergies and their causes very well. Regardless of which you might have (if you have any) they are not necessarily permanent. My oldest was allergy tested and came back allergic to beef, milk, cats, and dogs. The highest on the list were cats and beef, next were milk and dogs. We were told to avoid beef for a year and get rid of our cat. Milk was allowable once a week. We didn't get rid of our dog. We avoided beef for a year and when we re-introduced it, he no longer reacted. We stopped serving milk to drink but allowed cheese in meals and he didn't react.

Honor tested negative to a dairy allergy, but I knew that half an hour after eating cheese, I could watch her break out all over her legs. I knew that her ear infections cleared up when I took her off of cow milk and switched to sheep milk. But she wasn't allergic to milk. So I started reading. A friend recommended Is This Your Child by Dorris Rapp. I loaned it to another friend before finishing, but what I read helped me understand sensitivities better. I ran across an old book called Let's Have Healthy Childrenby Adelle Davis. It was old and it had its faults, but a little nugget in it led me to realize that a B-vitamin deficiency can cause skin complications. Elsewhere in the book, it mentioned that antibiotic use led to a B-vitamin deficiency. Honor had been on a steady diet of antibiotics since she was 2 months old. I started googling. From this, I learned that B6, B5 (pantothenic acid,) and magnesium helped the skin heal. I searched around and found that it wasn't easy to find vitamins that listed very much of any of these 3 items. I found KidVits
and started her on Acidophilus. Within days, her skin was better. Kidvits changed their formula and my kids couldn't stand the taste. We've tried many vitamins since then and have recently settled on NutriStars - Kid's Multivitamin. Within a week of acidophilus and good vitamins, we had a miracle. A well-meaning relative gave Honor a bowl of homemade ice cream with chocolate syrup when we weren't looking. Sugar and Dairy. Her two skin monsters. And she didn't react. I watched for days and there was no reaction. We didn't go crazy and let her start drinking milk, but we did relax.

So how could a food sensitivity just disappear? It didn't exactly. A few months later, we ran out of vitamins and they were out of stock at my health food store. After a few weeks of no vitamins, we started seeing it again. Well, if it was simply a vitamin deficiency, getting the vitamins in her should have fixed it, and she should have been able to get enough B-vitamins from her food to keep from becoming deficient, right? Well, I didn't keep up with the acidophilus. At the time, I was using an acidophilus powder that I had to sneak onto her food and I kept forgetting. And we had lots of people sneaking her "treats" so her sugar intake was not eliminated by any means. So we were still dealing with a yeast imbalance. Discussing this with another friend, she told me that yeast in the gut feed on our B-vitamin stores. I haven't found that information elsewhere and I have no idea whether this is true or not, but I do know that antibiotics leads to a yeast imbalance and that giving Honor vitamins with a high B-vit count helped her skin considerably.

So if you think a yeast imbalance could be the cause of your troubles, there are several things you can do. Supplements with high B5 & B6 & magnesium levels help symptoms, but don't balance the gut. Acidophilus from the refrigerated section of your healthfood store are good for this. If you can find a doctor that won't laugh at you, Nystatin is a very gentle prescription that actually kills the yeast. It is very mild and has no side effects and is even prescribed for newborn babies when they have thrush (a yeast overgrowth in the mouth.) I had a doctor prescribe it for me once, but he shook his head and said it was silly. But since it couldn't hurt anything, he agreed to give it to me. Ideally (and I've read it was originally intended to be so,) Nystatin should be prescribed every time antibiotics are prescribed. You will also need to avoid sugars and simple carbs such as white flour, white rice, etc. Whole grains in moderation....lots of veggies. This should be kept up for 3 months. Never done that well, myself.

If you are begin an anti-yeast regimen, be prepared for a few days of ICKiness. It is common to have a yeast die-off period where you feel pretty crummy. Skin can actually get worse instead of better for a few days. I've read of some extreme cases where the patient suffered from vomiting and diarrhea as well. Ewww.

Through it all, we've tried removing some things and seen an improvement, but then it would seem like something else would set her off. Why something out of nowhere? It's called the rain barrel effect. If you have a barrel collecting rain off the end of the house, it fills with water as the water comes and holds it in. When the barrel gets full, it bulges as the molecular bond holds it together, but eventually it can't hold it any longer and a single drop of rain causes it to run over. The drop of rain was nothing on it's own, but the water bond just couldn't hold out any more. When their little bodies are just overwhelmed, things that wouldn't otherwise bother them are just too much. Honor can handle a week of eating fast food. Honor can handle a week of eating dairy. Honor can handle a week of eating dessert through the Christmas season. Honor cannot handle all three. Thank you very much VBS.

And oh, there's so much more. What about eczema without antibiotic history, like my oldest? Even with antibiotic use, why do some kids do just fine with their skin? I tell you, it's fascinating stuff. But enough crusty sore talk for now. :D

Pin It