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lymeeducator | 5 years ago

We noticed he was more tentative and starting to stutter around the winter holidays, but could not figure out what the pattern was. Then one early evening before dinner we gave him a slice of organic, orange American cheese (milk, salt, enzymes, annatto). He started stuttering shortly thereafter. He'd had ice cream the previous day with no issues. Then we noticed it after mac'n cheese. Upon reflection, his grandparents brought cheddar duckies to snack on during the holidays. At that point we started eliminating it and did not notice a stutter. Sometimes after pre-school, when he was stuttering, I asked him how his <non-orange> crackers were and he would always say "orange" crackers. We avoided anything obviously "orange" and the problem went away in a number of weeks. It popped up again while eating chicken tenders (cheap ski lodge food) and then we started noticing that the breading in many packaged chicken tenders had annatto for color. The same with cheap vanilla ice cream. He's all good now though -- we were lucky.

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dmitryminkovsky|5 years ago

Amazing! Congratulations on spotting it. How old is he now? Does the annatto affect him still?

Do you know if this is known in the scientific community? I am not a speech language researcher but I’ve never heard of allergy induced stuttering but the inflammation hypothesis really strikes a chord.

lymeeducator|5 years ago

He is 8 now and minor amounts of annatto, by accident, do not seem to trigger it. We taught him what to look for and avoid anything orangish in color without asking us. I do have a friend whose nephew throws up when he has annatto, but I haven't come across the stuttering connection. I should amend my comment above, we ruled out dairy as a cause given the milk, yogurt, kefir as well.

pishpash|5 years ago

This sounds like something that should be followed up with placebo experiments.

dmitryminkovsky|5 years ago

For sure, but how would that be possible with NIH human experimentation guidelines?

IggleSniggle|5 years ago

Fascinating. I also had an allergy to “orange” colored foods as a kid, but it looked like asthma, not a stutter. However, the very worst was orange soda, which was hospitalizing. I wonder if there was any relation to your son’s stutter.