Episode 273: Dairy Allergies & Elimination with Hallie Bulkin

Hello friends and welcome to episode 273 of the Untethered Podcast. It's your host, Hallie and we are going to be talking about dairy today. Okay, For a few reasons. One, my daughter, my six year old Mia and myself were both pulled off dairy recently by a functional medicine doctor. We are working on healing our guts this summer, summer of 2024. And I keep joking, it's the summer of Mia. Well, it's a summer of Mia and Mama healing our guts while Lily is away at sleepaway camp. And the craziest part of it all is Lily actually got diagnosed with a milk allergy, a cow's milk protein allergy, a week before she left for sleepaway camp. So we're going to dive into this episode. Stay tuned. Listen to hear all about all the things going on here and what we are doing. Because cutting out dairy is easy, but also not easy at the same time. Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Holly Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway tether, dural tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since June 2019, thanks for being a loyal listener. As we jump into today's episode, remember to listen with correct coral rest posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose. Let's get started. Foreign. Into this, I want to first focus on, well, you know what, the allergy or the sensitivity doesn't. It doesn't really make a difference if you're cutting out dairy. If you're cutting out milk, you know, from a cow's milk protein standpoint, right? We know there's some infants that have issues with cow's milk protein and that's really why I want to dive into this topic. Not only do we sometimes have parents who come to us who are like, my kid can't have these formulas, like, what do we use? There are a lot of options out there these days and that's not what the focus of this episode is going to be. But the point I want to drive home is that it's much easier to find dairy alternatives these days than it was even five years ago. That said, not all dairy alternatives are created equal. And the reason why I want to dive into this is because as you cut certain things out, if you start to add in processed foods or alternatives that have other ingredients in them that are not helpful, sometimes you make the situation worse than it was to start. Okay. And I've had a lot. I had a milk allergy, a milk allergy when I was a child, like maybe in the early years of life, Right. I'm not exactly sure at what point it was no longer a milk allergy and more of a lactose intolerance. Right. I was consuming it. I've consumed dairy almost my entire life. I have cut it out in the past and it didn't really seem to make a difference. But I think that that's because my gut has been in an unhealthy place for quite a while. So now that we are addressing the internal issues, right, the inflammation, all this other stuff, I am hopeful I'll be able to add, you know, dairy, like high raw milk over here. Crunchy. Mom back in at a certain point. I am not currently drinking it. I've never actually really been a raw milk drinker, But I've been doing my research and that just seems like the best way to ease back into some dairy. I am the kind of person who has to take two lactate pills when I have dairy, otherwise it ends in severe symptoms like flu like symptoms. It's not fun. But I want to talk about my six year old and my eight, almost nine year old. Right. So Lily is at a camp that actually keeps kosher. So I know that in the meat meals there will be no dairy because there can't be. It's a kosher style camp. So the meat meals will have no dairy. So those meals are always safe for her. Right. But then there's dairy meals where there are no meat options. Because in, you know, kashrut, you don't mix milk and meat together. Right. I grew up in a kosher household. I do not live in a kosher household now. But I understand the laws of keeping kosher very well. And, and what I will say is that I know a ton of people, some people who keep kosher at home, but not when they eat out, or some people who keep kosher at home, but they'll eat, fish out or, you know, there's all different. And some People who only eat in kosher restaurants. There's all kinds of variations, but that's not what this episode is about. I just think it's a very interesting topic because it actually makes it. As a mom of a child who just got diagnosed with a food allergy, makes me feel a little bit better because I know at least, like, I don't know, a third or half the meal somewhere around there will be completely dairy free for everybody. Right? So that's kind of, that's, that's kind of interesting. What was really cool when we were visiting her camp though, is they did have this big sign on the wall and they had all these allergens listed down the side. And then they basically put in the foods on the top that are in each meal and they put like an X if that allergen is present in a specific food. So kids who are aware of their allergies, and these are kids who are going to be at least like 7 years of age and up. So they're well aware of their allergies, as obviously are their counselors in the camp and everything. But they can look at that chart and know like what foods are safe for them to eat in that given meal. And I think that's absolutely incredible. So I was like, as a new allergy, a new food allergy mama who was also dropping her child at sleepaway camp for the first time, I was like, oh, I can breathe a little bit easier, right? And I'm sure that some of you food allergy parents can relate because it can be a little bit unnerving when your child is going into a preschool every day or a daycare or somewhere where you are not with them and you are not sure all the time what food may be served to them or what they may be exposed to. And obviously we can send our kids with their own meals, but not always feasible. And or even if we do, it doesn't mean they're still not going to come in contact with or be exposed to something, right? And there's some, there's some people who can't be in the same room as certain allergens or some people who can't have contact, like physical contact right on their skin or anywhere near their face, right. Or they'll have a reaction. And then there's others where it's like, it's only an issue if you actually ingest it, if you chew and swallow it, right. Or if it enters your mouth. So there's various levels of reactions to allergies. But if your body is flagging for any allergies. Even if you're not having a major, like, majorly overt response, it's still going to cause inflammation in your body. And I think that's a lot of what I want to focus on in this episode because the more that I look at dairy alternatives, and I've always looked at dairy alternatives just being super lactose intolerant and having cut out dairy in the past and now, you know, obviously this summer. I will not buy something that has all these seed oils in it. I will not buy something that has ingredients in it that I can't pronounce or that I don't understand or that I can't easily Google and see what they are. Right. And I shouldn't have to google ingredients. But occasionally there's a couple of things here or there that might be okay that I just don't know what they are. Right. So when I say like seed oils, ultimately in my household we've already been eating pasture raised organic to the extent that we can. Right. Like we have foods delivered from places. Like I was using Butcherbox, for example. This is not an ad for them. I actually stopped canceled it because I don't. It's not saving me any money. And it was coming in like two larges of quantities with the type of box that I ordered. And then it just felt like it was too limiting with the smaller box. Like I needed something in between. And it wasn't saving me any money over buying from like local sources, whether that just be like Whole Foods or Sprouts Market. And my next thing, okay, super crunchy now, next thing is I am going to through the Weston A. Price Foundation. There's a listserv and you can actually look up who you're listening like local farmers are and buy directly from them. And so that is where I am moving towards. I know there are not any, like, I don't think there's any like dairy or meat farmers like immediately in my vicinity that won't require me driving like 45 minutes. And that's a little bit of a hesitation for me because I do not enjoy driving long distance, long distances for no reason. So stay tuned on that journey. We'll see where that goes. And if anybody knows of any farmers or people where you can do some of these like co ops or you can do, you can get fresh produce and dairy and meats and poultry and everything and eggs like straight from the farm that's close to like Boca Raton, Florida or Del Rey. Yeah, our newer, like, even like boynton, beach, any of those areas, let me know because that might, that's, that's definitely of interest to me. And that's what we're like shifting towards now. I did hire a functional medicine doctor and I'm going to do a separate episode after this one to talk about some like eating hygiene that I really appreciated from the notes that she sent us. But for this episode, and this will be pretty short compared to some of our other ones, going 100% dairy free, gluten free, while trying to consume like a whole food based diet. Much easier at home than when traveling, right? So we started this and then we went to Asheville, North Carolina for almost a week. And we, we really do try to like avoid refined carbohydrates, refined sugars. We try, we, we don't eat high fructose corn syrup. I don't, we don't eat things with artificial sweeteners in my house. And so you know, one of the big things that we are changing, which we're being forced to change, but also which is making me go, this is a good time to shift these things are the processed snacks, right? So even though they may be organic and look, I'm not trying to, what's the word I'm looking for? Not demonize, but maybe that is the word. These types of snacks and like on the go snacking and all that stuff. But when you are already like organic, pasture raised, wanting the best ingredients and then you cut out dairy, now you start to shift because some of these like allergy friendly packaged foods are full of crap. Excuse my French. I apologize if you apologize. If you have a kid listening. They are literally full of. It is a chemical beep storm. Okay? So we have been told to limit snacks to like, like healthy nuts and things, you know, like walnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, cashews and try to even like. And one of the things was like, oh, you can make, you know, a little trail mix and like throw in a little bit of dried fruit or something to that. But like little raisins, right? With like a 3 to 1 ratio of nuts to raisins. And I think that that's a major shift for us because my kids come home and quite honestly they go straight to the pantry and what's in the pantry? We've got chips, we've got fruit roll wrap thingies, we've got, you know, all kinds of bagged stuff. And quite honestly, these things are empty calories. Now. I packed a whole two big ziplocs of them when we were just Traveling, because I know it's impossible in an airport to find good gluten free, dairy free options. I was like, let me just have this stuff on hand. Thank goodness I did. Because you know, when you don't, when you're not home and leaving from home and like you're coming from a hotel, like planning on what you're going to eat, coming from a hotel to dropping your child at camp, to driving a couple hours to an airport, to then getting to said airport. Like it can be challenging to find foods that work with your diet, especially not having come out of a kitchen. You came out of a hotel, right? So look again, there is a time, there is a place, but we are actively focusing on switching things up. And so I wanted to share with you all some of the healthy snack options that we discussed, that we discussed with Mia has both the functional medicine doctor and a registered dietitian who is working with on her case for me because I really understand a lot about this stuff. I'm only working with a functional medicine doctor for my case, but I actually just signed up for this program. We can talk about that another time that focuses on, you know, counting your macros and not exercising too much because that can also mess up your cortisol levels. All the fun things, right? So one of the things that. And I'm going to get to the healthy snack options in a moment, right? And we'll wrap up there. But one of the things that I was learning was that like Mia, for her age at age 6 should be. She should be drinking about 24 ounces of water per day. And we're working on her microbiome. Microbiome, right. So she's basically having this microbiome veggie mashup where we're creating this smoothie. And so what, what the. And, and this is something I wanted to share because if you have a hard time getting things into your children, smoothies can be a really great way to do that because you can hide the taste of healthier things inside smoothies, right? So we're doing this daily and it basically is some water filtered water, right. With organic tart cherry juice or pomegranate juice and with no added sugar, right? It's got to be the good stuff. So make sure if you do buy that, you look at what you're doing. And this can be tart cherry juice, I've also learned, can be really great, like in the evening before bed for kids. All right? So you can also use like unsweetened almond milk if you prefer. That. But be careful, because a lot of those almond milks have additives like carrageenan and some of those other stuff that are just not good for you and very inflammatory. So, like I said, we already eat organic. I know organic is not even what it used to be 10 years ago, but it still makes me feel better. So we're gonna stick with it. But we basically create these little ice cubes that were made of two veggies, two fruits, and an herb. And. And I think for this first week, this is. That's the veggie mashup. So Mia chose carrots, parsley, banana, papaya, because we were told to, like, eat the rainbow, so she was trying to find different, like, colors. And spinach, right? So we had, like, orange, orange, orange, yellowish, and a green. Right? So. So we match that all up. Of course, it looks like the color of diarrhea. It's disgusting and jokes on me. I have to show you guys this picture on Instagram because I. Oh, let me see if I can find it on my phone. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see it. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Okay, so I did not take a. I thought I took a picture. I didn't take a picture of it, but I bought these little ice trays that are, like, kind of rounded. They look. And then it's here. If you guys can see this, if you're watching, you can see the color of it. Okay. It just. It's like. It's, like, orangey brown. It's disgusting. So. And me is like, oh, that smells bad. Because, like, papaya has a really strong smell. So I'm thinking we'll leave the papaya out next time and use something else that maybe has a little bit of a sweeter smell. So. So you take, like, a few of those, right? So take three of those ice cubes. Every day, you put it in the blender. You add, like, frozen organic berries. And then you can choose either, like, ground flaxseed or hemp or sesame or sesame seeds. Like pepitas, Right? One to two tablespoons of those. And, like, ground seeds. And don't be like me. And put in the whole pumpkin seeds, raw pumpkin seeds, because they won't blend. Interestingly enough, they did blend the other day. They blended the other day being two nights ago, but last night, they did not blend up. So they were kind of chunky. And she was like, oh, but you basically start with, like, half a teaspoon of them and add more up to, like, One to two tablespoons as tolerated. And so this helps to increase fiber and can actually cause a child to be a little gassy, but it will regulate over time. And so this is something that we're doing to heal her gut. So this is not something that we'll do for like the rest of her life or like super long term, unless she wants to, because it's like, it's healthy, but it's something that we're using as a tool right now to heal her gut. Okay. So it's a very specific dietary recommendation for her. This may be appropriate or not appropriate for you, but honestly, these are just foods. So you could create something like this if you're trying to get more, more, more, what's it called? Fiber, Right. And veggies and nutrients and stuff into a kid's diet. But you're going to want to find some fun recipes, like smoothie recipes to hide the taste of those little ice cubes. I think that the combination of the tart cherry juice and the papaya is a little bit much for me. So she did drink like half of it last night, but she. And she said she likes the taste, but she doesn't like the smell. So that was very interesting. Anyways, okay. This is not medical advice, by the way. This is just me sharing what we're doing. And also, I think. And I tried it and I thought, I thought the smoothie tasted delicious. But I also am someone who tends to like healthier things. So what are some other, like, healthy snack options that don't totally eliminate the food pantry and gives you a good, easy, like, easy things that you can do. Right? Because that's what I basically went to. I was like, I need ideas for breakfasts, I need ideas for snacks. Like, I need. I like, I feel like lunches and dinners I've got. But for me, I needed ideas for breakfast and snacks. And so some of the healthy snack options that we discussed were like siete chips. So I don't know if anybody eats siete chips. We eat those in my family. We love those. And those are gluten free and they don't have all the awful stuff, you know, additives in them. So that can be really good with like, guacamole, right? Or even hummus. Or you could do like veggie sticks with hummus, like just cut up some carrots, celery, peppers, you know, with hummus. Or that could be with guacamole. Right? You can do either. Or rice cake with a little bit of like nut butter, like almond Butter. They, they say almond, sunflower, cashew or walnut. I personally seem to react funny to cashews. I don't like walnuts. And sunflower to me is okay if you like, absolutely cannot do like the almond flour or the almond, sorry, almond butter. But a lot of them tend to have like sunflower oils in them, which is a seed oil that we want to avoid. So if you're going to do sunflower butter, look and see what the ingredients are in there. And so you could have like a rice cake or something with a little bit that like on topless has a little smear, a little smear of, of nut butter or alternative butter. You could do an apple with nut butter on it as well. And then nuts and seeds like I talked about before. And like even making that little like trail mix, right? And so obviously there's a ton of other snacks out there and things you can do. But this is kind of what we're starting with because it feels very easy, it feels very doable. And one of the things that I really want to highlight is that what we are putting inside impacts our behaviors. It impacts how we feel and how we can respond. It impacts our nervous system. Mia has been very like, irritable. Irritable, like, I want to say agitated, but irritable for like months now. And what I've noticed is that when she's eating all of, when she's feeling this way, she just wants more sugar, right? And she goes to the pantry and she wants more. She wants more, she wants more, right? So now we cut out dairy. So we eliminated like half the snacks pretty quickly and easily. But there's still other things, like little, you know, Annie's organic fruit roll up thingies, right? Those like long fruit ones. Like, it's all sugar. And I mean, she's a kid, right? So I'm not going to demonize sugar and I'm not going to take it away. And you know, Lily's a sleepaway camp and I was like, eat whatever you want that doesn't have dairy, right? Like, I don't want my kids to ever feel like there are massive restrictions. But it's interesting because even though I tell them that they will go to birthday parties and they will turn things down that are covered in food dyes that, because they, they've. Without being able to tell me, I think they can recognize that they don't feel well when they eat these things that have these seed oils that, that are inflammatory, that have food dyes that make them crazy, right? Like they're starting to understand that they feel a certain way after they eat a certain food. But the problem is that a lot of young children don't, they don't understand that yet or they can't vocalize that. And if we continue to just feed kids and feed kids and feed kids with seriously like a shit storm, sorry for the cursing again of chemical laden food, foods and snacks, of course they're going to start to act out. Of course they're going to have behaviors, of course it's going to inflame them, it's going to impact their breathing, it's going to impact their sleep. And so I think that we really, really need to be focusing more on what we are putting in our bodies, what we are putting in our kids bodies. I saw this real. I don't remember where it was. I was on Instagram obviously. But I don't know if someone shared it with me or if I was just like scrolling to find something and this just kind of fell in front of me this morning. But it was a parent talking about how like when we put. And this was someone who said, I used to just kind of feed my kids whatever. And their child was diagnosed with autism, their child was diagnosed with adhd. And they said through changing the diet, a lot of the behaviors went away. Not just like decreased, but a lot of behaviors went away. And look, I'm not saying that you can go and cure anything through food alone, although you can cure a lot of things through food. Food is medicine. What I'm trying to say is that, you know, we spend so much time with these like behavioral therapies and with trying to change a kid's behavior, try to change, you know, which, that's another conversation for another day. But we need to be looking at what they're eating, what, what we're putting in their body and their ability to breathe and how that impacts their sleep as well. And so, you know, I knew I would bring this full circle at some point to the topic of this podcast. Obviously pediatric feeding, this is fully in line with that. But if your child is constantly getting sick of their mouth breathing, right, if they have a hard time chewing and swallowing their food, what are they going to go for? They're going to go for the softer foods, they're going to go for the easier to break down foods. Those are the foods that typically are, are laden with chemicals. Those are the processed foods that have already been partially broken down for you. So again, not to overwhelm, not to demonize certain choices that anyone makes or the foods that you choose to eat. But I have noticed such a change already in Mia where you know, obviously she's six and her sister's not here for the summer or for a month. You know, she's like getting to kind of figure, figure out her herself and she doesn't have another kid to compete with at home. But it wasn't just always with Lily, it was with all of us. And she would like grunt and like go and like you just get so angry so easily and was so irritable and was so gassy and so bloated. And I started to look at all of that and fatigued, right. And I started to look at this and I was like, I know this has to do with what she's eating. So the fact that like she's a kid who like 90% of the time is eating pasture raised, organic, good quality foods. And when she's not, it's because she's at a birthday party or we're at a restaurant or something along those lines. And not to say that those foods aren't good because they might be, but I kind of, that's our 10% of the time where I kind of go like whatever, like you can have whatever's here as long as for her it's gluten free before now. Gluten free, dairy free. Which means I bring her own food with us to parties now. The point is such an immediate change, Such an immediate change. And not just like in her behaviors, but in her demeanor and she's the cutting out the dairy. Her like gassiness has massively gone down. She used to get up in the middle of dinner to go to the bathroom, like whether we were having dairy or not. Like her gut was just obviously so inflamed and so starting some of these things, even just like days into it, couple weeks into, I think we're like two weeks into dairy free now. It is phenomenal to see the results. Phenomenal to see the results. And this obviously was a recommendation from a functional, functional medicine doctor. But I think that it's really important that we start to think about what we're putting in our bodies. And it goes beyond just like a protein and a carbohydrate and you know, fat. Right. Your macros, which are important, obviously we want those to balance each other out in meals. And I've been spending a lot of time learning more and more about those over the past several years. But it actually comes down to the actual foods and what it's made up of. And so one of the Other things that I will share is like in my house we only use olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil to cook and to bake. We have been using like cane sugar because I felt like, okay, that's natural, that comes straight from the source. But we are switching now to like just using things like maple syrup and applesauce and other like all, you know, replacements too, and maybe not so much applesauce. I know that's a good dairy free, gluten free one, but applesauce is loaded with sugar and not necessarily natural unless you've made the applesauce yourself. But anywho, we're starting to work on replacing those refined sugars even when we bake things with better alternatives so that there are no refined sugars, no like simple sugars in the baked goods. Because I'm a baker and I love to bake. So I could ramble on all day. I said this was going to be a quick episode and now we're at like 27 minutes already. So I'm going to wrap this up for. But I wanted to have a little conversation about what's going on with us. Kind of catch you all up on our dairy free journey, what that looks like, what's going on with Mia, healing our guts, all the things. And listen, if you're someone who's been on this journey and you think you have a story that would be helpful for other parents to hear about, especially surrounding food allergies, I would love to have you on the podcast. So reach out to me because now, I mean, I've, I had a peanut allergy once upon a time that I grew out of after six years and that was in my like early 20s. But I understand, I get it, I get the allergy thing and I know it's, it can feel very lonely and it can be very confusing and also just very nerve wracking and there's a lot of fear around it. So I would love for some of you to come on and join us. One of the things that I am also going to explore with Lily when she's back from camp, we already have an appointment is Naet. And I have heard that that is a really amazing way to basically cure allergies. So we're going to work on curing her allergies because not only is she allergic to cow' milk protein, she's also highly allergic to dogs. And we have one and he's not going anywhere. So we are going to do what we can to rid that allergy, to remove that allergy. From Lily's system. Anyways, all right. This has been fun talking all the things. Come and join me if you have a kid with food allergies so you can share your journey. Maybe some of your tips reach out to us. Supporteetthepedes.com this is Hallie signing off. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your social media platforms. You can access free resources and all I offer@halliebalkin.com or pop over to Hollybalken on Instagram to get all the latest updates.