Dear Flossie,
       You asked if people ever really outgrow their allergies.  You
mentioned that your daughter seemed to switch to different types of problems with
dairy as she grew older, and that you're not convinced that she ever really
outgrew the allergy.
       My own two children had severe problems with dairy allergy.  Because
of its effect on our family, I read a lot about this over the years.  What I
learned is that *some* children do outgrow an allergy, if they are able to
completely avoid any exposure to the offending agent for 6 months or 12 months
(depending on what source you read).  But most babies/children aren't really able
to avoid the allergen.  What happens is that eventually the baby stops
throwing up/screaming/etc., so everyone thinks the allergy has gone away.  But what
really happens is that the allergy begins to manifest itself in other ways that
people do not generally think of as symptoms of food allergies.  These
symptoms are called "underground" symptoms, because people don't recognize them for
what they are.
       In my own case, before I had my first child, I would not have told you
that I was allergic to any food.  But when I gave up dairy for my first
child, I discovered that my body worked so much better than it ever had.  And in my
reading, I learned that I had been exhibiting a number of the "underground"
symptoms.  My mother told me that I had been a very crabby baby, but no one
then had any idea that babies could be allergic to their formula (I may have
gotten condensed milk.  I'm not really sure.).  When I gave up dairy, the dark
circles that I had under my eyes, no matter how much sleep I got, went away.  I
learned they are called allergic shiners.  I never had BMs every day.  I could
go 4 or 5 days between, though it was not difficult to pass so I never felt I
was constipated.  But low and behold, when I gave up dairy, I started having
BMs every day.  Now they warn you that delays can increase your risk of colon
cancer!  And from puberty on, I fought anemia.  I was always borderline,
sometimes just into normal, and sometimes anemic and needing iron.  I got
life-threateningly anemic with my first pregnancy.  It took months to regain a healthy
level of iron.  During that time, I started living without dairy for my son.
Although I now eat yogurt, ice cream, cheese, etc., again, I have never gone
back to drinking milk from a glass.  I used to drink 3 or 4 glasses/day.  Since
I got my iron up to a healthy level, I have never been anywhere near anemic
again.  I have learned that milk allergy can cause microscopic intestinal
bleeds.  (In babies, it can sometimes be visible bleeds, because their guts are more
immature and because there is no residue from solid food for the blood to
hide in.)  Because the bleeds are microscopic, the stools are not black and tarry
or bright red, so you don't see anything that would send you to the doctor.
But because these bleeds happen on a daily basis, many people with dairy
allergies become anemic due to the constant small loss of blood.  Another
"underground" symptom.
       There can also be emotional symptoms.  As my children got older, I
would notice that although they seemed to be able to handle small amounts of
dairy, if they got more than one serving every few days (for instance, if they got
ice cream at school for somebody's birthday and I didn't know it and happened
to do "fast food" that night and decided to allow them a milkshake because I
didn't think they had had any dairy for a while, they would get very short
tempered and come to blows with each other.  They could draw blood during their
fighting!  But if they were kept from dairy, they were sweet loving patient
children.
       So I think that although it may be possible to outgrow an allergy, it
seems to me that it is way more likely that people just grow up with an
allergy they may not know they have because they have symptoms they don't recognize
as being related to what they're eating.
       Dee Kassing, BS, MLS, IBCLC
       Collinsville, Illinois, in central USA

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