Since eosinophilic esophagitis is a life-long condition, finding the most appropriate eosinophilic esophagitis treatment for yourself can be a challenge. The process is long and requires you to have a great deal of patience.
Notably, eliminating food items that can trigger eosinophilic esophagitis from your diet is known to be the most efficient way to minimize the effects of eosinophilic esophagitis. However, there are also other ways that can be quite helpful when it comes to dealing with and treating eosinophilic esophagitis. Some efficient ways to treat eosinophilic esophagitis are:
Food Test-Directed Elimination Diet
If you tend to have certain food sensitivities after getting prick skin testing done, you may have to remove certain food items from your diet. Once you remove those certain foods from your diet, you have to wait to see if it will help in reducing eosinophilic esophagitis symptoms.
Notably, in some patients, food tested-directed elimination diet does help in controlling their eosinophilic esophagitis symptoms. However, in the majority of the patients, following this sort of diet has not been successful in treating eosinophilic esophagitis according to the research studies.
Empiric Elimination Diets
Another common way to treat eosinophilic esophagitis is to eliminate all of the major food items that can trigger the symptoms of eosinophilic esophagitis. The food items that are usually required to be excluded from the diet include fish or shellfish, peanut or tree nuts, soy, wheat, egg, and dairy. All of these diets have been proven to be effective eosinophilic esophagitis treatment.
However, many patients find it hard to follow these diets, especially when they try to do it by themselves, without getting a consultation from a dietitian. Since dietitians have vast experience in dealing with eosinophilic esophagitis, they can suggest best what kind of food items should you eat or should not eat.
Moreover, foods that were initially eliminated at the beginning for eosinophilic esophagitis treatments can also be added back if the patient is following up with their endoscopies and have already determined what foods are causing eosinophilic esophagitis or triggering it.
Elemental Diets
Elemental diets are known to be the strictest ones out of all eosinophilic esophagitis diets. For this kind of diet, the patients are quired to remove every source of allergens from their diet. The patient gets their nutrition either from only amino acid formulas or some simple foods that they often choose on the basis of their low likelihood of triggering eosinophilic esophagitis. All of the foods that have the possibility of being an allergen will be removed from the patient’s diet.
Importantly, young children who have to go through eosinophilic esophagitis treatment have to get the help of a feeding tube. Oftentimes, little children are not able to drink sufficient formula; hence, they don’t get enough nutrition for their bodies. In addition to that, this approach is mainly reserved for those children who experience multiple food allergies. These patients don’t respond to other various forms of treatment for eosinophilic esophagitis. Indeed, this would be an efficient way to treat eosinophilic esophagitis in children.