Doing the Elimination Diet - Twice!
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- By Sharron Brazier
I have been lactose intolerant since I was a baby, but I can tolerate small amounts of dairy. However, when my son was three months old, he was diagnosed with a severe dairy allergy and, as I was breastfeeding him, I had to eliminate all dairy products from my diet. Before my son was diagnosed he was constantly screaming and obviously in pain. After I cut out dairy from my diet he settled down and started to put on a little bit of weight.
While I was dairy free, I drank a lot of smoothies and herbal teas and I ate a lot of fruit. I would advise anyone starting the elimination diet, for whatever reason, to always read through ingredients lists as well as the allergen information. Just because a product doesn’t have an allergy information box, doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain any allergens – read the ingredients as well. I also discovered that there is dairy in a lot of foods that you wouldn’t expect it to be in – everything from tomato sauce to crisps.
I have long since stopped breastfeeding my son and when he was finally weaned, I went a bit mad with the dairy! Unfortunately I made myself quite ill and spent a few days with really bad stomach cramps and was bloated to the point that someone congratulated me on my 3rd pregnancy!
The doctor suggested that my body had gotten used to being lactose free and was now reacting really badly to the (admittedly huge) amount I had ingested over a couple of days. So I decided to go lactose free again for a few weeks and then gradually reintroduce it – take two of the elimination diet!
I discovered that I can eat approximately 5g lactose every couple of days (having used the Lactofree calculator to work it out). But if I exceeded that I ended up with a very sore stomach and would start to feel tired and sluggish.
Luckily my mum got me started on Lactofree – I tried the hard cheese at her house one day. It’s really nice, and tastes just like normal cheese, I’ve started buying it instead of normal cheese, even my dairy mad seven year-old hasn’t noticed the difference! I can now have as much cheese and yogurt as I like!
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