My son's health declined significantly while wearing braces on his teeth. While wearing braces, I believe he initially developed oral Crohn's based on the striated sores in his mouth. After 14 months wearing the braces, he was finally patch tested and diagnosed with a nickel allergy. After the braces were removed, his mouth sores and chapping/redness all went away with no medication. However, he remained on a high nickel diet because our allergist did not mention that foods contain nickel. He had his first "flare" 3 months after the braces were removed. We started Crohn's treatment and a low-nickel diet simultaneously. He has been in remission for 19 months (since Crohn's diagnosis). I started reading PubMed after his diagnosis, and have found a lot of overlap with nickel allergy and Crohn's disease. I've come across this discussion several times, so I thought I would finally create an account to relay his story. Some of the foods we have eliminated from his diet include: Soy, chocolate, whole grains, legumes, raspberries, pineapple, scallops, and spinach. We do try to avoid most processed foods at this point. We use an app called Nickel Navigator that will tell you the nickel content in foods, which is based on the Rebelytics Low Nickel Diet Scoring System. Penn State Hershey also has a published low nickel food guideline. The most comprehensive information about nickel and Systemic Nickel Allergy Syndrome is from research in Italy. Would love to know if others have more thoughts on this. I know this thread is 5 years old. Thanks so much.
