Flaxseed – Super Food or Dangerous Allergen?

by Danielle Margulies

The process of identifying a food allergy is arduous, tedious and unpleasant – as an adult – but as a parent coping with an infant who is showing signs of an allergic reaction it can become a desperate, lonely quest. It can stir up every emotion from gut-wrenching helplessness - when you may have inadvertently subjected your infant to the allergen - to ecstatic euphoria - when you finally identify the cause of the discomfort.

Jane Davison has had such an experience and has taken the time to share her experience with us - here is Jane's letter:
"My youngest has battled infant eczema since the beginning. She was also diagnosed with GER as an infant so from the beginning we had to medicate with baby Zantac (Ranitidine) and I spent many sleepless nights trying to understand why she woke up every 30 minutes - or in her longest stretches - every hour and a half, crying.

We tried the Ferber method and discovered early on that it was not going to work with her. She could cry for hours and it was clear that her crying was not a behavior we could moderate with affection or methodical techniques - nothing consoled her - until we used the Ranitidine. Yet absolutely nothing could touch the awful rashes on her skin. Each GP would tell us the same story - lots of creams, no lotions, just an atopic dermatitis, she would probably outgrow it, and so forth.

In the last two weeks we got back the results of a RAST panel and discovered that our daughter reacted significantly to flaxseed – but here are the events that preceded that discovery ...

Our first near-trip to the ER was around the first of the year. It happened with Stonyfield Farm's Organic YoBaby Fruit & Cereal Yogurt. Our daughter was about 10 months old. We were starting to wean her to formula and soft foods thinking that maybe my nursing her was making her eczema worse. We had some Strawberry Banana YoBaby and we were extra careful introducing all her new foods because of her eczema and our family history - we were hyper careful - I am not kidding - I just dipped the edge of her baby spoon into the yogurt and let her get a lick. By the next tiny bite she was red around her lips and the fingers that she had put in her mouth with the yogurt came out bright red. Within the first few minutes she developed hives and started squeaking, wheezing and screaming like something was hurting her. We were scared, stopped the yogurt immediately, and called the nurses' hotline. The nurses had us give her Benadryl right away and we rushed to an urgent care clinic. By the time we got there her symptoms had subsided and we were left with a doctor who looked positively bored; even her awful red eczema didn't impress him. We got the usual talk about moisturizers and that maybe she shouldn't have the yogurt again, he said the Benadryl had been a good move and that was it.
We went back home worried, confused and feeling really insecure.

We felt like what we had witnessed was a big deal - but the doctor just didn't seem to share our alarm. Now I am so thankful we were so cautious introducing the yogurt: we were cautious for all the wrong reasons as strawberries were not the enemy – the yogurt contained flaxseed and had she gotten more of that flaxseed in her system, I truly believe she would've gone into anaphylactic shock. I read about a mother who almost lost her 18 month old this way. He had eaten a small bit of cereal that contained flaxseed and stopped breathing before she could get him to the ER.

Fast forward about a month. We had recently moved to a new town and so I took our daughter to her new doctor for her 11 month wellness check. She was scheduled for immunizations that day and I was so hopeful that maybe this new doctor would see her awful skin and have a new approach for us. Instead, the doctor took one look at her and said "yup - she's got eczema" and handed me a photocopied list of food sources of EFA (essential fatty acids). I was instructed to go home, give her avocados every day, FLAXSEED oil - just break the capsule and pour it on her cereal and skin - fish oils, feed her sardines, and other items I don't even remember. We left the doctor's office and headed straight for the grocery store. I thought I would give it a shot - anything to try to beat the awful rash. I already had flaxseed capsules at home; I had taken some during my pregnancy, or while I was breastfeeding. Thankfully, I hadn't been very disciplined in taking them - still probably enough though to make her miserable.

That week, after we followed the new doctor's advice, we ended up in the ER.
She had gotten steadily worse in the few days following her visit to the doctor's office.

Everything finally came to a head one evening and I shudder when I remember that at one point during the evening I put her in an oatmeal bath to try to soothe her skin. The only oatmeal I had in the house that night was organic oatmeal that had FLAXSEED in it. As soon as I put her in the bath, the entire right side of her body began to swell with hives and she was screaming and squeaking again. We called the nurses hotline and this time my husband took her straight to the ER.

Thankfully, by the time they got there she was doing better but the ER doctor gave her a steroid shot and told us to give her Ranitidine and Benadryl twice daily for 5 days.

There had been so many things introduced into her diet that week that I had no idea what to blame. I was even worried that one of her immunizations caused the reaction. But even then, if someone had said "flaxseed" I wouldn't have paid any attention because I thought flaxseed was nothing but a good super food - nothing I had ever heard anyone being allergic to.

So I began a food journal of sorts. I wrote down everything I could remember that had happened - minor reactions, like even diarrhea were noted and I started researching allergies. Since I had been told that an allergist would not see her until she was two as the popular medical belief was that children under the age of two can't possibly develop allergies.
At that point I felt truly alone!

But I had to do something so I went back, found the ingredient list for the yogurt and copied that into my little journal, and noted all the things other food reactions I could remember.

Fast forward another four months and we finally give up, call an allergist hoping that they wouldn't turn us away. Thankfully, I found a practice that had a pediatric specialty and the doctor spent almost 45 minutes with us - reviewing what I had logged, answering our questions, and patiently listening to our worries; he was wonderful!

He prescribed a low-dose steroid cream and made arrangements for a blood test - a RAST panel - that would give us a list of suspects. The steroid cream worked on her like magic in the first 24 hours. We were absolutely giddy! And then, the results of the RAST panel came back. Milk, soy, wheat, the big allergens came back ok, but he said she had reacted significantly to one item - FLAXSEED. We were stunned UNTIL I went back, pulled out my little journal and reviewed that ill-fated ingredient list from the yogurt. I had to read it about 3 times before I saw it - ORGANIC FLAXSEED CONCENTRATE. I couldn't believe my eyes - it actually all made sense. And then I read back over the other things I had noted and I had written, "Flax oil - diarrhea almost immediately".
So – wow! We had an answer - and a pretty definitive one at that.

For what it's worth our daughter's skin and demeanor has been incredible in the past week. She is her bubbly, adorable self and her skin is baby soft and peaches and cream again. The RAST panel also implicated egg whites and dog dander so we are watching those two things, but the doctor said they were quite minor in terms of her reaction compared to the flaxseed. So, we have some work ahead of us.

I would encourage any parent who is concerned about food sensitivities and allergies in their children to keep a journal and seek out a qualified pediatric allergist.

I know allergies can come and go during a lifetime, but if something is really making your little one ill and miserable it is serious business and worth every penny to start the detective work to figure out the triggers and so forth and it might save their life some day."

Here are some websites that Jane recommends if you have concerns about flaxseed:
www.www.mayoclinic.com.com
www.intelihealth.com.com
carefirst.staywellsolutionsonline.com

As well as Jane's advice I think it can't be stressed enough to trust your instincts.
Don't be undermined by a doctor's opinion and if there is a history of any type of allergy in your family, be constantly vigilant for signs of a reaction in your infant – as Jane's story tells us - what is a nutritious friend to one person can be a dangerous foe to another.

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