Brief Answer:
May be a gluten or other food type allergy

Detailed Answer:
Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Saghafi and I would like to suggest that based upon the history you are reporting of your 9 year old feeling ill immediately following dinner with several days of convalescence to follow together with a tingling sensation in his cheeks after eating cheese that he be considered for food allergy testing.

Having said one cannot rule out the possibility in a 9 year old that the symptoms of nausea, headaches, and dizziness for a year which come and go for several days at a time could also not be due to a headache syndrome of some sort (usually pediatric migraine).

Therefore, in addition to allergy testing for gluten and/or other foods (the possibility of a lactose intolerance of some sort could also be raised).

I believe your son would benefit from a 2 pronged workup. One would be a full nutritional analysis of the foods he eats at each meal and the symptoms he may be having as you describe. You may wish to keep documentation of this information as the nutritionist should be asking for the specifics. Make sure you know the brand of cheese, whether it's imported or not, and any other foods for which symptoms may appear....even if they're not that severe.

Do symptoms appear after he has breakfast or lunch? How about after snacks? How about if he were to eat strictly fruits and vegetables, do the symptoms come on?

The 2nd prong of the workup would be to see a neurologist, preferably a headache specialist who deals with children. Pediatric migraine more often presents with GI upset types of symptoms as the major feature of the disorder and can be even more dominant in many cases than the headaches themselves. It isn't until later that the pattern switches where the headaches begin to dominate. Again, a headache log which you can download from the internet for this type of data collection can be obtained. I also have logs that I'd be happy to forward to you if you'd like. I would simply need an email address.

Obviously, the way you tell your story I would guess that the food allergy would be the more likely problem causing his symptoms compared to the headache theory, however, I think it's also possible he could have 2 things going on at once.

If any of the information I've asked or provided has been useful to further your understanding or give you ideas as to which direction to turn next and you'd like to CLOSE THIS QUERY then, could you do me a favor and leave some brief feedback with a STAR RATING for the quality of the response.

Alternatively, we could continue this conversation and you may upload information if available such as lab tests, etc. and I would be happy to review them.

Please feel free to contact me at any time to ask more questions about this or any other topic you would like by using the following link:

http://doctor.healthcaremagic.com/Funnel?page=askDoctorDirectly&docId=68474

This query required 46 minutes of physician specific time to review, research, and compile the final draft for envoy.

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