Nutricia are again providing another great opportunity for Healthcare Professionals to develop a greater understanding of Food Allergy and the Gut.
They have designed a study day in conjunction with The Hospital for Sick Children Great Ormond Street Paediatric Gastroenterology Department. It focuses on practical solutions for managing gastrointestinal symptoms of allergy in children.
There are many misconceptions surrounding food allergies, often people have an intolerance rather than an allergy itself. A food allergy is an adverse clinical reaction to food due to any type of abnormal immune response to food protein.
There is often great confusion regarding cow’s milk allergy (CMA) and Lactose Intolerance, with the terms often used interchangeably despite both being separate disorders and very distinct. As described above, food allergies such as cow’s milk allergy are a form of food intolerance that involves the immune system. Lactose intolerance describes a form of food intolerance caused by deficiency of a specific enzyme and does not involve the immune system
This is my first blog and I’m doing it to see if anyone has any useful information they can give me. Let me tell you the problem, my 6 year old son was born with to the symptoms he has now.He was diagnosed with a CMA after showing severe colitis when he was about a week old. He was put on Neocate and after a year we weaned him back on cow’s milk. He showed no colitis so they said he’d outgrown the allergy.
Not long after this he developed an ear infection that for 18 months would not clear up. He had tubes put in to allow drainage. They were taken out 2 years later and they said that should be the end of his problems.
What is Cow’s Milk Allergy? A simple enough question, and one you would think most doctors would be able to answer. Why then, in this day and age do we find that GPs struggle to diagnose this illness? I may be over reacting here, but it is my experience. I want to take this opportunity to share it with you because no parent should have to live through the nightmare. Hopefully this might go someway to raising the awareness of this illness.