[BernieL]

My 10 1/2 year old son, who is a very healthy, calm child, seems to have an intolerance to salmon. On repeated occasions, after eating salmon, he has woke in the middle of the night complaining of gas, stomach ache, and cramps. My son also has fairly bad lactose intolerance, whihc runs in the family, but his reaction to salmon is more severe. Is there a known food intolerance specifically for salmon? For ocean fish more generally? Last night, my son complained of being somewhat gassy after eating another kind of fish--Petrale sole--for dinner. But I can't draw conclusions from that single instance--he does eat canned tuna several times per week without any complaints. And some of the salmon he's been eating has probably been farm bred, so I don't know if it qualifies as ocean fish. I have IBS, and have generally assumed it came largely from stress, being overly obsessive and high strung, etc. But I too have lactose intolerance, and my mom and dad also had ibs symptoms, which together with my son's experience leads me to wonder if there might be an unusual sort of food intolerance in the family.

 

[scout2001]

You may have found an interesting connection.I am similar to you....lactose intolerant IBS and I also have ileitis.I am finding that fish can cause a reaction in me as well. I have eaten fish all my life....now the reactiosn are worse, though.Let me know if you find anything out. Perhaps it is also hard to find fish that remains fresh and therefore we get sick?....probably not that simple.There are different biological classifications of fish. For instance, if mackerel bothers you...then swordfish will too.Something to think about.

 

[Mike NoLomotil]

Strange as it may seem, unlike sensitivity to other foods, anong fish the concept of food-family reactivity is considered not relevent. This may or may not end up being true, but since the group of fishes noramlly eatedn are the bony fish, not the cartilagenous fish (shraks, rays, skates) ALL the bony fish contain a common protein beleived to be the source of reactivity to fish (parvalbumin).Now what happens, though, is that sometimes certain seafood, as you know, are notoriois for accumulating chemical contaminations which can cause a reaction. Some canned fish like tuna, for example, will be populated during processing with bacteria that can produce histamine. If the canned tuna is not heated properly the bacteria are not all killed and keep making histamine in the can. Ugh. A histamine reaction occurs and one may beleive oneself allergic or sensitive to tuna.Off the top of my head, since I am "on the road" thus not in my office where my references are, I cannot recall anything unique to fresh salmons as far as making it uniquely reactive compared to other fish. I will have to look when I get back. But if the salmon is eaten prepared, one should look to how it was prepared or otherwise preserved. The answer may lie there if the salmon is eaten prepared the same way each time (not uncommon for people to eat certain foods with the same recipe each time as it suits their palate).Also look at what your son eats with his fish. Does he always, say, have XYZ sauce with his fish or BAC vegetable or QRS seasoning regardkess of what fish he eats? Also, since food intolerances ar not like allergies, they are dose-dependent and delayed onset, sometimes we mistake the culprit to be something we ate in the last few hours when it may in fact be something eaten at another time. But since it is eatent routinely, and some other food may also be eaten routinely, and one is eatne for breakfast and the other for dinner, and we get sick in the night, we blame the dinner food and not the breakfst food (example). Then get flustered when we remove what we think the bad guy is and....symptoms persists. Then some genius comes along and says "See? its not your food its your stress over your food. Since you are obsessing over your food you are making yourself sick." Not that stress and anxiety do not produce nerve signslas which affect the gut, but the association is not automatically primary because the primary provocation is elusive.Now crustaceans and mollusks are whole 'nother kettle of fish.

RE the lactose intolerance: as real lactase-deficient lactose intolerance is actually a bit rare, what leads you to beleive you have this problem as opposed to some other dairy-fraction sensitivity? Just curious as sometime what we blame on lactose is in fact something else, so if we accidentally blame the lactose we go after that and keep eating the other thing which is the real culprit.MNL