Re-introduction… The most exciting but nerve-racking part of the process when trying to heal Eczema. Now disclaimer – I’ve got an overly impulsive personality at times. It’s 0 to 100 in my head most of the time. If I’m going to give something up its cold turkey, never again. I’ve given up smoking – never had another one, given up Coke products – never had another one. So when I got my head around The Eczema Detox I gave it 100% with the thought it my head that I would never crack… well I did! Quite a few times!! Then I spent a solid 6 weeks following it to a tee and seen some fantastic results with Ollie’s skin. Re-introduction was looming but I was kind of putting it off in fear that it would undo all the hard work we had achieved.
It really helps to have your head in the game when starting re-introduction. I had help to create a plan on how we were going to commence. We decided to start with some high salicylates (no ammines and glutamates where possible). I did fruit for a few days then veges. We didn’t see any changes in Ollie’s skin so it was very exciting. And the taste of peach was incredible! (Our first high fruit in weeks). We did this over 6 days then had a day off then started very high salicylates. Day one of very high introduction I had a fruit salad – this was heaven! Day two was even better – mushrooms! I had missed mushy’s so much. I also had some avocado and tomato. Unfortunately the next day things went downhill. Poor little Ol had a hive reaction. The problem is that I had no idea what food it was as I was trying a range of foods and just using the salicylate content as my guide, it could have been anything. I was eating some of the Itchy Dozen (google for the list) and thought maybe pineapple or strawberries might have been the culprit but I was clutching at straws.
Above – The Hive flare up after eating very high salicylate fruit and vegies.
So back to square one – I cut it all out again and waited until the skin had calmed again before we started re-introduction again. This took 9 days to clear. Disheartened was an understatement but I knew we had to keep soldiering on.
Our next re-introduction food I thought I would stick with something much more obvious – dairy. I chose clean dairy. Started with pure butter, then moved on to pure cheddar cheese (the more matured a cheese the less lactose in it), then onto pure cream, sour cream, natural yogurt and lastly full cream milk. These were all full fat and organic where possible with no additives, thickeners etc. You would be so surprised if you read the pack of your dairy and see how many can have preservatives, thickeners etc. But you can find them clean and pure too. We did this over 9 days – I was making doubly sure he was ok! So I kept my diet low to moderate salicylates (The Eczema Detox) and then added one dairy product a day. We didn’t see an instant reaction so that was reassuring that he might not have an allergy but it can take 3-4 days for an intolerance and eczema flare to show. After 9 days we were still clear. It was incredible!!
So the next food I tried was wheat – a mountain bread wrap. They’re great – only 4 whole food ingredients in the wrap. Unfortunately the next day he had a flare. I was within 24hrs so I was pretty sure it was wheat but I continued to eat it to see if it got worse – and it did. So we stopped. Unfortunately now that his skin was flared it didn’t seem to improve and I was still eating dairy. This is where I hit the brick wall – I had to give it all up again.
This is not what I wanted so I had a break from all the pressure, ate whatever I wanted and my poor little boy suffered with some terrible flares. Heartbreaking!
This is why I started some more itchy detective work…
If you have the willpower to slowly take the time to reintroduce I do believe you will see some great results and potentially tolerate them over time. Unfortunately I just didn’t have that in me and I wasn’t settling with living on this diet for life. Ollie was about to start solids and I needed to look at different approaches.
My next blog will give you an insight into some of the new additions we have added to our Eczema protocol.
The Itchy Kid 