Hi -

The symptoms your child is having COULD be a food intolerance, or they coulud
indicate something completely different, or, as your doctor says, they could
indicate nothing of significance at all.

To find out if they're caused by a food intolerance, your best bet is to try
a MULTIPLE elimination diet.  (Is there a reason you suspect dairy in
particular?  You didn't mention in your post, so I'll assume not, for the
time being.)

A multiple elimination diet takes about 2 weeks and will let you see what
happens when the most common allergens are removed.  An excellent explanation
of how to do it can be found in Dr. Doris Rapp's book "Is This Your Child?",
which you may be able to get at your local library, and you can certainly
purchase either at a bookstore or on-line.

I suggest that when you try out the elimination diet, you eat no processed foods and noyhing from restaurants.  Hiddin ingredients can screw up your
results.  Also, have the whole family go on the diet at once, so no one feels
singled out.  (Besides, you may uncover food-related problems in other family
members.)

If you decide, after the diet, that you want to go dairy-free, come visit my
web page to get started.

I hope this helps,
--Beth Kevles
  [log in to unmask]
  http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the milk-allergic