Fear of developing a soy allergy

My sister developed peanut and soy allergies at the same time. Along with some others, just to make life fun. [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/rolleyes.gif[/img]

I've had pa for over 15 years now. I used to worry about developing a soy allergy. I occasionally ate soynut butter, and I cook with soya sauce, and cover my rice with it (which we used to eat often). I started worrying about it. Now I eat peabutter instead of soynut butter (because I like it better). And I don't eat as much stuff with soya sauce - and I don't worry about it anymore.

My fear might have been completely unfounded all along - but it was there for a while.

My son is DA and PA. His doctor told us that it seemed a high percentage of DA people also develop soy allergies. Why? Who knows? So we don't use soy milk. However, we don't avoid soy completely (too hard, and not really needed). We use Sunbutter as a PB replacement.

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[i][b]Peanut Slayer[/b][/i]

My son was diagonsed with peanut and soy allergies together. His peanut is his only anaphylactic allergy so far. He does not avoid soy although maybe he should.
Peggy

I definitely avoid feeding my pa, tn and egg allergic daughter concentrated soy products (like soynut butter, soy milk, etc.) for fear she'll develop the allergy. She is also only 2, so her immune system is not close to mature. I do not, however, avoid soy or soybean oil in general products. My doctor never recommended avoiding it, but I'm just overly paranoid and don't want her to develop any other allergies if we can avoid it.

I think every one should think very carefully before removing a food that you know your child is not allergic to.
Our lives are made very complicated with our known allergies, why make work for ourselves?
simply eat in moderation all the safe foods IMO.

How on earth are you going to teach an older child how to avoid their allergens if you are increasing a list of foods to avoid that they are not allergic to?

I understand these concerns, and had thoughts along those lines when my son was younger, but decided I was making our lives more difficult.

sarah

edited for my poor spelling .

[This message has been edited by williamsmummy (edited May 18, 2005).]

I don't think I suggested removing Soy Butter entirely, but perhaps I should also use Sun Butter or PeaButter and not the soy exclusively (DS wasn't too fond of Sun Butter). He mostly eats the chocolate Soy Butter but will eat the honey kind if we're out of/can't get the chocolate (we live so far from a Whole Foods since moving from Dallas, and while our closest grocery store, Kroger, sells both kinds, they often don't have the chocolate for weeks on end).

I was basically wondering if others share the fear I have about giving so much of something to my child that he develops an allergy to it--and soy specifically because it's a legume. I was wondering how common or even how irrational this fear is.

It seems that it's not a common fear. So maybe I should try to erase it.

McCobbre, I do think that it is a common fear, only because they are finding that PA children have a greater chance of developing a soy allergy than say a non-PA child. I had this discussion a couple of years ago here.

I'm going to re-raise a thread I started re my son's last anaphylactic reaction and the response I got from Anaphylaxis Canada at the time. They thought that he could have developed a soy allergy, when, in fact, he hadn't.

And I'll re-raise the very similar question that you did ask in this thread.

However, having said all of that, I do agree with williamsmummy.

Best wishes! [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/smile.gif[/img]

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I won't give my child soy nut butter because even if the risk of developing the allergy is low, the allergy would be so hard to manage that it isn't worth it to me. Soy nut butter is made from roasted soy, and I've read that one theory about peanut allergy is that the roasting makes the proteins more allergenic, so the soy roasting worries me. Plus, there is a poster on this board whose child developed a soy allergy after soy nut butter. She's posted about it a few times, so run a search and you'll find the posts.

My son developed his PA at age 6, when he'd already been eating peanut butter for a few years. Since he was missing PB&J sandwiches, I started giving him I.M. Healthy Soynut Butter. He took them to school for lunch every day. Several months later, he developed a soy allergy. Did the large amounts of soy in his diet combined with his previous history of allergy to a legume (peanuts, I mean) cause his soy allergy? I don't know for sure,of course, but I believe so.

The soy allergy was a huge pain in the you-know-what. It was hard to even find a piece of bread he could eat. He reacted to a couple of products -- Teddy Grahams and Chips Ahoy (regular), and we think it was from the soybean oil and soy lecithin in them (although many people with soy allergies can consume soy oil and lecithin with no problem), although we'll never know if they were perhaps cross-contaminated with peanuts or nuts.

After some number of months, we noticed that my son could again tolerate soybean oil and soy lecithin. After 3.5 years, we retested him for soy allergy and his RAST score was below .35, so officially negative, although he still has some soy antibodies left. He can now eat foods containing small amounts of soy with no symptoms. We haven't let him try anything with large amounts of soy for fear of re-triggering the allergy.

So we lucked out big time, and the soy allergy he developed was apparently temporary. But if I had it all to do over again, I would either not let him have the soynut butter at all, or at least put it in rotation with other lunch foods, allowing it just once a week or so. Because while PA involves a lot of denial, especially with regard to desserts, soy is much, much tougher to avoid if you need to avoid it in all forms and at all levels.

--Debbie

We now have to avoid soy for a while due to my son's recent RAST. He has never tested + for it before, but I think because he is allergic to the other stuff, we were over feeding it to him. The results were only a 2, but enough to get him off of it for a while. Dr said in a few months it can be re-introduced and he should be ok. I have done this before with milk, when he was little he tested at a 2 for milk, now 2 years later after avoiding it, he no longer tests + for it, but I know that if he gets too much of it, he could re-develop the allergy, so we try to give him different things to drink besides milk-type drinks.

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Mother to a 5YO PA, soy, gluten and wheat allergic child who is also autistic. ( non-speaking autistic child who can't tell anyone who he is or what he can eat or not eat!!! scary stuff!!)

Well, since my last posts in this thread, my son has had two reactions after eating soy burgers (high concentration of soy, obviously). Until I get an answer from the manufacturer to rule out cross-contamination (and the answer is taking forever with a lot of run-around), yes soy allergy is definitely on my mind.

If I can't get an okay answer from the manufacturer, I'll have to get a referral to an allergist to test for soy although I know certainly that my guy has eaten a lot of things probably with soy in them since the burgers and has been okay, and somehow my gut is telling me no, he's not allergic, there was something PA wrong with the burgers, but it's on my mind now definitely.

Best wishes! [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/smile.gif[/img]

My son developed his soy allergy before his peanut allergy, so it has been a non-issue for us.

My daughter is milk allergic and eats a lot of soy products, so I worry a bit about her. So far she's RAST negative to peanuts and soy though.