On Wed, 23 Sep 1998 10:23:54 -0500 Theresa Ray <[log in to unmask]> writes: >10) If you know of women who followed a dairy free diet while pregnant >in the interest of minimizing the child's sensitivity to dairy, when >did she start on the diet? As soon as she knew she was pregnant? >Before getting pregnant? Only during later trimesters? I just heard an allergist speak last night to a Mother's Group and this subject came up. According to several studies (in Europe and Kaiser, SD), restricted pregnancy diet made no difference except to produce lower birth weight babies because of nutritional deficiencies in the mother. Also, regarding maternal diet when nursing, this only helped with the first 5 years to lower the eczema and food allergy/intolerance rates. At around 5 years of age, all the children they had tracked (up to aget 10) had the same incidence of food allergies/intolerance no matter what supplements they had or other factors such as time of introduction of solids. The recommendations I've been given for restrictions during nursing are dairy, eggs, peanuts, and shellfish with egg being the worst since it passes the most easily into the breast milk. It was interesting that most reactions are intolerances and not true allergies (i.e. don't show up on a skin test). He only categorized true food allergies as those creating anaphalaxis. I was very glad to hear that intolerances rarely turn into true allergies and are most likely to become less severe by age 5 since that is what we apparently deal with. Kathy P. _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]