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What Your Baby is Allergic to Bananas? |
 Feeding your baby her first solid foods or baby food is one the great joys of parenthood. One of the many reasons the arrival of possible infant allergies in your home is so troublesome is that it can take much of the joy out of meal time and replace it with suspicion. If mom and dad have to be suspicious of every type of food the baby eats, that makes the happy occasion of eating as a family a time of concern and worry until that allergy is brought under control.
It seems of the most basic food items that a baby will eat also have a potential of being a source of infant allergy reactions. Milk is such an important food for infants that if your baby becomes allergic to milk, it can change the way you plan her diet entirely. Similarly bananas are a nutritious source of food value to a growing baby. While infant banana allergies are not as common as allergies babies develop to other foods, it can be a problem that can interfere with your ability to provide good foods for your child. So it pays to understand infant banana allergies and to know what to do about them if you find that your little one is suffering with this problem.
As is often true for any allergy, your baby is probably reacting to one specific element of bananas. That element is called chitinase. In some babies, the immune system reacts to chitinase and regards it as a form of harmful proteins. Medical science is not sure why some infant's immune systems have such a severe reaction to this element in bananas and studies are underway to try to understand this infant allergy.
In some cases, it is possible that the baby is actually suffering from an intolerance to bananas. If that is the case, the baby is not really going through an infant banana allergy. The child's body is not having an allergic reaction to chitinase. Instead, the intolerance is caused by vaso-active amines that are common in bananas. This might seem like a moot point when your baby is suffering. And it is moot in respect to the fact that the reactions to bananas are very simply in the child and the treatment is the same. That treatment, as it true of almost all infant allergies is avoidance.
One reason that learning the difference between baby banana allergies and an intolerance is that if your baby does have an allergy to bananas, that means that the allergy probably is more widespread than just that one food item. The active ingredient in bananas that causes a baby banana allegory, chitinase, is also present in other foods such as avocado and kiwi. So it is important to know if the allergic reaction your child is having to banana really is an allergy so you know if you have more work ahead to try to eliminate the allergic reaction entirely from your baby's life.
You won't have to wait long to determine if bananas are causing an allergic reaction in your youngster. Most of the time the baby's digestive system will react almost immediately or at least within an hour or two after the allergen has been consumed. Some of the symptoms of an infant banana allergy include diarrhea, throwing up, upset stomach, coughing, cramps, a runny nose or even an allergic skin rash. Be alert to these symptoms even if they are mild as an infant banana allergy may start out with a slight reaction that gets more severe over time.
As with other suspected baby allergies, you can try to determine if the allergic reaction is banana related by simply removing bananas from the baby's diet. If the allergy goes away, you will have isolated the problem quickly. It might be tempting to simply adjust the baby's daily meal plans to eliminate bananas and let it go at that. But make it a point to mention the infant banana allergy you discovered when you go see the little one's doctor.
The doctor can guide you away from other sources of the allergy that are not banana related and help monitor the impact of this and other allergies on your baby's health. He or she may also be a resource to help you reorganize the baby's diet plan so she still gets all the essential vitamins and nutrition that she got from bananas but the baby gets those things from other foods that do not introduce allergens to her life.
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