A member of my group for parents of food allergic children had a terrible experience the other day. Her child is allergic to cinnamon, and she wears an EpiPen® in one of my medication belts for this reason. She noticed her daughter was having symptoms of a reaction, and she gave her Benadryl® (the adult formulation), which her daughter instinctively spit out. This resulted in a visit to the emergency room!
Happily, this child is now fine. Her mother checked her bottle of Benadryl and its carton, and there is no ingredient list on the package. I have a bottle in front of me as I type, and it says:
Antihistamine: Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride, 12.5 mg/5 mL
There is no disclosure regarding the other ingredients. She then went to the benadryl.ca website and located the ingredients list. Cinnamon is the second item on the list! (Click here to view the ingredients list) She confirmed this by telephone, and the person she spoke to was surprised that ingredients are not listed anywhere on the label or box. Her pharmacist was not aware of this either. He knew of her daughter’s cinnamon allergy, and he never would have recommended this product had he known.
Children’s Benadryl liquid does not have cinnamon (only “flavor” is disclosed on that ingredient list). This episode has been reported to the manufacturer, and hopefully the labeling will change.
I find the inclusion of cinnamon interesting, since it’s also an ingredient in the food allergy herbal remedy currently in the second stage of FDA testing. It’s called FAHF-2. It could be that cinnamon is part of what provides relief from allergy symptoms, not just a flavoring. There’s also orange, clove, coriander, cinnamon, and anethole in the adult strength elixir. I wonder if they’re in FAHF-2 as well.
I have one final safety note: This article is a must-read “The Side Effects of Benadryl in Children and Adults” (click here for article). There’s no need for alarm, but it’s a useful summary of its uses, who should not use it, and how to recognize toxicity. Please keep your Benadryl in a safe place: It is possible to overdose on diphenhydramine.
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A reader has asked me to share this information:
“I saw your post about a girl being allergic to Benadryl because of the cinnamon it contains, as part of unlisted ingredients. I had a nasty experience with my son two years ago, and just confirmed, via a hospital administered drug challenge using “pure” benadryl (assuming no fillers), that my son is severely allergic to it. He was stung by an insect two years ago; gave him benadryl and while the initial sting spot swelling went away, he went into near anaphylaxis(sp). Doctors and allergists have decried, with one voice that an allergy to benadryl is impossible, and now he has to wear a medic bracelet
because no one would take him seriously if he said he was allergic to it. In fact, when the initial incident happened, the doctor ignored my insistence that it could be due to benadryl, and that I did not want him given more, and requested an alternative. When he did the prescription for the nurse to administer, he prescribed benadryl, insisting that he reaction was a secondary one based on the initial sting. I had to fight with them to NOT put that in his IV and was treated very abrasively. The end story is that all skin and blood tests have ruled out any allergies to insect stings, so I know for a fact that the benadryl nearly killed him, and the doctor would have finished him off, were I not vigilant. Needless to say, after two
years, I shudder to think that my now 8 year old would no longer be here. Please share with your readers. Thank you!
This is a list of the ingredients in FAHF-2. None of them is a spice in the manner of cinnamon, as far as I can tell.:
Fructus Pruni Mume (wu rnei)
Pericarpium Zapthpxyli Bungeani (chuan jiao)
Rhizoma Coptidis (huang lian)
Cortex Phellodendri (huang bai)
Rhizoma Zingiberis Officinalis (gan jiang)
Ramulus Cinnamomi Cassiae (gui zhi)
Radix Ginseng (ren shen)
Radix Angelicae Sinensis (dang gui)
Ling Zhi– Ganoderma lucidum—also known as reishi mushroom
I wanted to share this: Cinnamon is an anti-inflammatory but only of course if you aren’t allergic to it! My son has multiple anaphylactic allergies and asthma. When his asthma is acting up I often make him a drink of warm cinnamon, honey and either rice milk or water. I suspect that may be a reason for it’s presence in the Herbal Formulation as well.
I had no idea that benadryl used all natural products as fillers. Good to know that there’s oranges in it too – major allergy for some people. Thanks for sharing the info!
Glad to hear the little girl is okay 🙂
We have a Hydroxyzine prescription, for an antihistamine alternative.
It was never suggested by our pediatrician, or allergist (we’ve seen 3). I’d never heard of it ~ BUT, following an Emergency Room visit after a bad reaction, the attending doctor suggested we keep it on hand.
When I took the prescription with me to a follow up Pediatrician visit, I was told “It’s the same thing” as Bynadryl. When I asked why the prescription ~ the Pediatrician said it’s just another option. I love vague medical replies!
I’ve honestly never used it ~ mainly because I’m kind of scared to try new things (includ. food or medicine?) unless I HAVE to.
Posted from a conversation on Facebook. I had to quickly copy and paste the message, duty calls.
“My benadryl is only the diphenhydramine hydrochloride oral and a non-corny, non-gluten/wheat, non-dairy filler (the filler is xilytol from birch trees, not corn). I get my advil compounded also. It’s more expensive but I don’t react to the medicine I’m using to fight off a reaction.”
cont.
“I don’t use a pharmacist from Walgreens, or CVS or Riteaid…they were useless. I go to a compounding pharmacy and the pharmicist there compounds all of my medications that I might… need. They know about my allergies (dairy, gluten, wheat, shellfish, cinnamon, cocoa, corn) and believe me about corn being in everything. Initially they compounded my benadryl and advil with acidophilus (not sure of the spelling) but that was dairy so they had to try again. They had xylitol from birch trees so they used that as the filler. I was afraid of the xylitol but I only react to corny xylitol. The advil is only ibuprofen; nothing else is in it. I carry both with me always, just incase I have to be hospitalized…they won’t have anything for me there. That was proven last year.
I hope that is enough detail. They also compounded some prednisone for me. They are in the process of compounding a fever reducer for my daughter, she has the same allergies and I need something for her in case she runs a fever. It was difficult to get them to compound the benadryl initially because of the dye-free benadryl on the market (they don’t like to compound if you can by something over the counter) but I called the company and found out all of the corny ingredients. I gave that information to the pharmacist and they compounded it within a few hours.”
I actually cannot have most Benedryl products due to their use of red dyes. I’ve been told that it’s a good idea to have the fast-dissolving sheets around – but I can’t use them. I settle for the “hypoallergenic” dye-less gel caps.
There’s all sorts of additives that food allergic people have to be wary of. Corn starch is a common one. I’ve heard that some even have gluten in them! I always recommend asking a prescribing doctor about additives.
One should ask about medicine/food families if one has multiple food allergies. I actually avoided a probable allergic reaction by doing my homework; the medication that my doc was initially prescribing was part of the same taxonomic family that one of my severest food allergies was in! We discussed other medications and found one that causes me no problems at all.
Medication can be pretty scary for those of us with lots of allergies.
Wow! Thanks for posting this. I shared it on my facebook page and twitter. Very scary!
That’s scary! Thank you for posting this Elizabeth! Already updated our member forum with a link to your post. I believe we have cinnamon allergies in our support group, so this is valuable information!