glutenator! help!

[Guest guest]

ok. this is going to be a bit long, so i'll try to be as organized as possible!

i had a new patient yesterday who is a dead ringer for celiac/IgA. IBS,

hair and nail trouble, lactose intolerant, has to eat every 3 hours, kids

have skin issues, etc...

as she was describing her children, she mentioned that the 6 year old still

has cradle cap and bumpy arms, and the 3 year old has a " spot " on her

bottom: a red spot with a distinct boundary, which is sometimes red and hot

and sometimes dry and flakey...

this got my mama-me kind of upset, and here's why:

amber has had a bout of excessively dry skin this winter. everyone who

looks at it says it's " just dry skin " , our naturopath said it wasn't

eczema, and the bit of it that was on her legs did go away with the salves

that we've been making for her (coconut oil, lanolin, and calendula) - that

helped me believe that maybe people were right about the dry skin... the

thing is, i have this very painful nag that tells me it's *not* " just dry

skin " .

on her arms, chest, and back, it's raised dry patches, which aren't exactly

" scaly " like eczema would be. they're more...flakey, or crusty maybe, but

not the pussy kind of crusty. they often appear to have red cracks through

them, like antique porcelin/china does. they get better some days and not

other days, and it doesn't seem to matter how many times we slather her in

salve. if she takes a bath, they flair up. they don't actually *seem* to

bother her - in that she doesn't scratch at them...

on her bottom they're less raised, but still with boundaries. sometimes

smoother and quite red, other times paler and dry and a bit flakey.

she also has mild cradle cap, though she didn't have it since she was a

baby - it sort of " came back " .

in the last while it is getting better, which was mostly attributed to

spring coming and cod liver oil...

hearing my new client mention this on her children yesterday, i had this

terrible pang of ouch. i wasn't going to let this be ok in her children,

and i knew it wasn't " just dry skin " for them. my mind was already

prescribing grain free and fish oil for her kids...so why was i allowing

amber to go on this way? (insert some motherly guilt here, which i brushed

away so i could finish with my appointment)

so last night i was up late doing more research. finally, this morning, i

went back to the celiac site. one link i had *not* clicked on in the past

was the DH (Dermatitis Herpetiformis)link - i sorta filed it away as " oh

yeah, skin problems... " this morning i checked it out and the photographs

on the UK site - the milder photographs - strongly resemble what's going on

in both appearance and location.

so, ok, i have a diagnosis that i'm satisfied with. though i could be

wrong, it's always nagged at me that this was food related, and the

pictures really are the same. so, now's the tough part. amber has never had

grain. of course, she was receiving gluten in my breastmilk for many months

of her life (she's a year old on saturday and we've only been gluten free

for the last couple/few months). putting that together with the fact that

sometimes it takes a while for the symptoms to show and then to clear up

again, this makes perfectly fine sense.

so here are my questions:

1. do you agree with me so far?

2. she eats dairy. raw organic happy dairy. so do i. we *live* off dairy in

this house. i really don't want to give up dairy, and even more i REALLY do

not want her to be dairy-intolerant. really really really.

do you think that we need to give up the dairy until her skin heals? am i

just digging in with denial here? if we do give up dairy, is kefir still

ok? is ghee ok? (i would think those would both be fine).

3. am i freaking out, and really she's going to be fine in a while longer,

i have to give the exposure she had to gluten time to heal up...?

thanks heidi and everyone!

-katja