Curious about something.

In ,
Ali's Daddie wrote:

*I accidentally posted this to another NG, just ignore that one for those of
*you who post there lol.
*
*anyway...
*
*
*What happens if a child is both lactose intolerant and allergic to soy? Is
*there a 3rd alternative? Does breast milk contain lactose? (I assume that it
*does)

It is VERY RARE for an infant to be lactose intolerant. Such infants
wouldn't do very well at all! When an infant does have an episode of
lactose intolerance, it's usually secondary to some other problem and goes
away when that is fixed.

That being said, yes, breastmilk, like all milks, contains lactose. It
also contains some lactase (the enzyme which breaks down lactose), which
helps even babies with insufficient enzymes of their own be able to digest
the milk. Formula does not contain that enzyme, as far as I know.

I am not sure what the next step is for a lactose-intolerant, soy-allergic
child, because I haven't ever had one of those (as far as I know. I
suppose my daughter could be lactose-intolerant and soy-allergic! She's
never had soy, and she's still only 8 mos old and lactose intolerance
usually shows up much much later in life than that!)

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

"Ali's Daddie" wrote in message ...
I accidentally posted this to another NG, just ignore that one for those of
you who post there lol.

anyway...


What happens if a child is both lactose intolerant and allergic to soy? Is
there a 3rd alternative? Does breast milk contain lactose? (I assume that it
does)

I have not researched this, but I was curious about it :-)

--

LES!

Daddie to Alegra Lee. May 25th 2003!
"Daddie's Little Diva"

before you reply to me via email,
please remove your hat

ourHat

Hi Les!

My daughter is allergic to milk and eggs, and it's caused her growth
to be slowed, really, before she even had those foods (she had eggs
twice and reacted the second time, hasn't had them since, milk
products she never really liked, but we found out she was reacting to
them through breastmilk). She's still nursing, and I'm off dairy and
eggs too, and she has a supplemental beverage that's a single chain
amino acid thing. It's very expensive (about $500 a month, drinking
12oz of the supplement per day), and only made (this particular one)
for kids over one year old.

She doesn't really like soy milk, but she's tested negative to a soy
allergy. I guess the reason they skipped trying her on some kind of
soy based formula/supplement was that she's still nursing. Also, the
fact that she is apparently very sensitive to allergies, and soy's a
pretty common one. I'd bet with an infant, they might add that step
in between -- *but* many (most?) 'soy formulas' actually contain milk,
so you wouldn't necessarily try that if you were dealing with an
allergy as opposed to an intolerance.

And I don't know that any babies are truly lactose intolerant.
Sensitive to milk protein -- I understand, and have dealt with it in
my other daughter (again, through breastmilk).

I think, once you've got an infant with an allergy that could so
severely affect feeding, it needs to be a Dr. who decides which is the
next choice -- our pediatric GI seemed to have a lot of choices, our
daughter just happened to be willing to take the first one we tried!

Tina.