Episode #16: Will an elimination diet help my baby's eczema?

In this episode, Hannah and Victoria have the extreme pleasure of speaking with Dawn Whitten, a clinician, researcher, educator, and clinical mentor in naturopathic medicine specific to perinatal and early life health for over twenty years. (This woman knows her stuff, y’all.)

Today’s topic? Maternal exclusion, aka elimination diets, as a way to address eczema or other symptoms in the baby.

Does it work? Is it safe? What does the evidence say? What is Dawn’s clinical experience?

Learn more about Dawn here.

See all of Dawn’s publications here. 🤯

………….

Resources & research notes for this episode:

The Australian Breastfeeding Association is a wonderful resource—it's a volunteer-run non-profit organization that uses a peer-support model. They have put together many resources for parents and are a place to go for reliable information

And, of course, La Leche League.

The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is more of a professional organization, but they do have a find a practitioner function that can help parents find a practitioner fluent in breastfeeding medicine. They also have a few great handouts.

And they have some great parent handouts.

On maternal peanut allergen consumption while breastfeeding and infant allergy:

* Reduced risk of peanut sensitization following exposure through breast-feeding and early peanut introduction

* Reduced peanut sensitization with maternal peanut consumption and early peanut introduction while breastfeeding

On breastfeeding and the effect of policies and marketing of breastmilk substitutes:

* Why invest, and what it will take to improve breastfeeding practices?

* Marketing of commercial milk formula: a system to capture parents, communities, science, and policy

* Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect

(this is considered a seminal paper)

On donor milk:

* Australian Breastfeeding Association Position Statement on Donor Milk

* Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine’s 2017 Position Statement on Informal Breast Milk Sharing for the Term Healthy Infant