Friday, February 26, 2010

Is the diet for the whole family?

That is something each individual family has to decide, but one thing I know for sure, is that we are all a bit healthier, because of the influence of this diet. Both of our boys are GFCF at minimum, the rest varies per person. I quit dairy for the baby while I was nursing and although I will occasionally cheat, since I've stopped nursing, I am actually happier dairy-free! I am not gluten free and neither is my husband, but having GFCF foods around more frequently certainly lessens our exposure.

Even our little guy eats like us! Here is his plate full of food for lunch: bison, raw snap peas, a few raw piece of portabella mushrooms, homemade hummus and homemade almond bread. You can see what he reaches for first, we have a couple of carb junkies, the apple doesn't fall too far though (wink)!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

What do we do...all day? Wanna know?

A friend recently asked for some information about what we use with Grayson day to day and it sparked a thought, what a great idea for the blog, so here it is, our entire day broken down by the hour! All the times are approximate as you know with children, nothing happens quite as expected every day. I am going to refrain from giving specific doses at risk of "recommending" amounts which vary per child, based on need and size.

8am - upon waking, we give Klaire Interfase and ViraStop enzymes with George's aloe vera juice. (the enzymes are part of the biofilm protocol, they poke holes in biofilm to allow the anti-microbials to work and the aloe soothes and heals the gut)

8:30-9am - (30-60 minutes from giving enzymes) We give his natural anti-microbials which could be any combination of the following, depending on our rotation schedule:
- Bio-Alternatives oil of oregano (addresses yeast and bacteria)
- NOW Foods olive leaf extract glycerite (addresses bacteria and viruses - can also cause yeast to flare, because as viruses and bacteria die off, yeast grows in number)
- Caproyl, liquid caprylic acid (addresses yeast and bacteria, very strong anti-microbial)
- Thorne Research Berbercap, which is Berberine (another strong and very good one that deals with yeast and bacteria!)
- Nature's Way Neem (an ancient herb from India known to address bacteria)
- Nature's Way Uva Ursi (addresses both yeast and bacteria)
- NutriBiotic grapefruit seed extract (the only brand of this I would ever use, it's GREAT for yeast and also addresses some bacteria, but can on occasion cause some bacteria to rise)
- Barlow Herbs LDM-100 (this is some potent stuff and should not be used as a first line of offense, it will address yeast, bacteria, viruses, including major illnesses like strep and Lyme, but be sure to have other naturals in place first or the die-off will be too much for the body to handle)
- The vitamins Biotin, B-Complex and L-Glutamine (the latter should be taken on an empty tummy and it is used to heal leaky gut)

8:45-9:45 - Breakfast - usually one of the following: home made teff pancakes with pureed veggies hidden in them, steel cut or rolled Bob's Red Mill GF oatmeal with fruit, hot buckwheat with fruit, Perky's Nutty Flax cereal with unsweetened Manitoba Harvest hemp milk, organic, free-range eggs with nitrite/nitrate free bacon and sometimes sweet potatoes, or even left over dinner from the night before.

As he is eating, I immediately dose his vitamins: Country Life or New Beginnings DMG sub lingual tabs, TwinLabs Allergen Free vitamin C (because we have citrus sensitivities), Kirkman Labs molybdenum, Pure Encapsulations magnesium citrate, Green Pasture's Blue Ice cod liver oil (chocolate flavor, they love it!), Bio-Alternatives liquid CoQ10, milk thistle, New Beginnings Ionic zinc, Thorne Research K2, Pure Encapsulations D3, and Pharmax trace minerals.

10-10:30 - An hour after dosing all of the above, I give him 2-4 PectaSol C capsules to mop up the toxins from die-off (part of the biofilm protocol).

10:30-11am - Snack - usually some form of fruit, raw veggies and/or a seed or nut, for example, celery with my homemade nut butter or carrot sticks, cabbage, daikon, radish, with my homemade hummus or natural salad dressing as a dip. Anything with a dip interests him!

noon - Lunch - some form of organic or natural meat like bison, chicken, lamb, veal, turkey, beef and a veggie. I prefer raw whenever possible, plus a dip. He loves when I just puree a frozen berry to dip in!

12:30 - 2nd dose of anti-microbials with a No Fenol enzyme, because many of them have a high phenol content.

I finally get a break here most days, Grayson goes to school three days a week and his brother naps!

3-3:30pm - Snack

4-4:30 - 3rd anti-microbial dose

5:30-6 - Dinner

6:30-7:30 - the bedtime routine starts with a Kombucha drink and high doses of the following probiotics: Custom Probiotics D-Lactate, Culturelle, and New Beginning Probiotic Support containing Sacc. B.

8pm - WHEW!! Mommy and Daddy time....

On the weekends (Fri-Mon), we also administer oral-dose chelation (Andy Cutler style), every 3-4 hours, day and night, which means setting our alarm all night until Monday morning. That makes for a crazy couple of days, ha ha ha.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Chelation Round 20

Before we started this round, we had Grayson treated for DMSA and ALA on the BAX3000, in addition to that, he was treated for yeast, and the three bacterias that showed up on his recent stool test: clostridia, strep and e.coli. This should ultimately reduce his sensitivities to these organisms.

I don't know, if it's the fact that we have hit 20 rounds of chelation or having his sensitivities reduced for the things which most often cause him major irritation, but let me tell you, this round resulted in change! We are seeing an amazing little spitfire of a personality unravel in the process. In fact, just today, we were at the health food store where he was carrying his own little child-sized bin of groceries. As he was putting them up on the counter, he looked the cashier directly in the face and said, "We can't forget the milk thistle, of course!" with such enthusiasm and proper pronunciation. Her response was, "You don't hear THAT every day out of a child!" How many kids even know what milk thistle is or that they need it replaced? And each patron he passed in front of, he would say, "Excuse me please", all of this unprompted by me. He is so polite, creative, bright, determined, independent, silly and sensitive, such endearing personality traits that are often clouded by a haze of illness. The kind of illness that most people don't recognize. Neurological illnesses aren't recognized quite as readily as say a child with Down Syndrome, who very obviously has physical traits marking the illness. Children like mine appear normal from the outside, they function normal to the average person...so when they have a disproportionate meltdown in a store or at a friend's house, it's tagged as the parent's fault for not disciplining the child better or even worse, excused as part of the "age". I am truly appalled by the number of parents who excuse behavior like this as normal. What is normal anyway? It's what we, as a society, have allowed our ill-diets to create. The more we hear other people say that "it's normal, our son/daughter behaves like that too", the more we sit back and allow that justification to let us do nothing about it. It's how evolution works, ever so slowly. As we get sicker and sicker (with pollution and toxins invading our environment and bodies) we are more neurologically effected. These children are the worst case scenario, but it's all around us in adults too, int he face of mental illnesses, autoimmune diseases, Chronic Fatigue, Lyme and the such. Even with all of the sharing we do with family and friends, it's as if much of what we say isn't believable, that is, until they experience our children before and after an antimicrobial treatment. You can't deny what you see with your own eyes!

This round has ended so well that we may continue with chelation this coming weekend! We typically skip a weekend between rounds, because he takes a good week to regulate after the round, but this time, he has been perfect, better than ever before! We want to pick up the pace, using his cues that he can handle it, in the hopes of getting much of his recovery under our belts, before Kindergarten starts in the fall. We have been at this for over a year and a half now, yes, it's a long process. It takes years to get like this, it will take years to un-do all the damage that has been done.

There are a few things we have added or changed in our treatment protocol recently and I believe they hold a piece of the puzzle. We added a new probiotic called Custom Probiotic which offers over 200 billion CFUs per dose, that many organisms HAS to have some effect on the bad guys! He wakes up great each morning with an absolutely flat tummy, I've never seen him looking so skinny!! We have also added Berberine and LDM-100 which I believe have both really knocked down some of the gut pathogens. We are working up very slowly on the LDM-100, because that is some potent stuff, but even at the low, slow introduction, I really think it is making it's mark in our regimen. Our next step will be a parasite cleanse with Humaworm.

Little by little, we are tearing away the layers. I am grateful to have this opportunity to heal my child!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Interesting change of events

Since I wrote about our BAX update this morning, things have taken a turn for the worse and it has been dramatic enough that I am going to write about it, because we are wondering if the BAX has something to do with it. As I mentioned earlier, they had the best morning in a long time, which is pretty typical of the post treatment days. As the day progressed though, I started seeing our yeasty signs and before I knew it, we were up to our eyeballs in two yeasty kids!! Between the two of them I saw a lot of running back and forth, throwing themselves on the floor, the couch and anything around them, loud voices, spinning, the baby was VERY bloated, tip-toe walking a lot and only partially responding to his name being called...Grayson was talking non-stop, couldn't focus, scattered, making up words and laughing hysterically at himself, asking a LOT of questions, but not listening to answers, couldn't answer simple questions and by the end of the night the emotions were in full swing which of course means he is wired up in his room rather than sleeping. On our way home from tonight's treatment he was getting hot and itchy, which is our usual sign of severe die-off. Hubby and I were thinking about how this occurred so suddenly with no other changes to his diet, supplements or anti-microbials and all we could think was that perhaps the BAX treatment for yeast caused some sort of healing crisis or die-off. It will be interesting to see how he progresses from here.

Noticing trends with BAX3000 treatment, the latest

We have been through 12 treatments with the BioVeda BAX3000 so far and I am beginning to see trends that follow our treatments. Last night Grayson was treated for yeast and he added in DMSA and ALA to help with chelation. We are SO excited to see how our next round goes. Anyway, about the trends...every time we have a treatment, the next day results in a FLAT tummy and a healthy independence that isn't there regularly. Today, Grayson actually went up to his room alone in the early part of the day. He has never done this, never! He is usually attached to me at the hip. He said he was going to have some quiet time, he politely asked for a drink of water to take and he and his Leapster 2 went upstairs!! He spent at least 30-45 minutes up there alone. Wow! Then he came down to play with Gavin and I in the playroom where he proceeded to play WITH Gavin nicely, no demands, no taking toys....interacting appropriately and so nicely! He is also responding to my requests really well, no arguing, no crying...this is big!!

We have also treated for corn and I can't wait to see how the reintroduction of corn goes. We currently don't have anything with corn in it to give him, but as soon as we do, we plan on trying it out. Dr. Herman advised us recently to go VERY slow, as in - just bites at a time, to watch for reaction. I guess we learned that the hard way when we offered a plate piled with eggs after his egg treatment, lol. We immediately saw the behavior changes that normally follow eating eggs. I thought the treatment wasn't working, as you can see from my blog that day, however, after 4 incorrectly large attempts, we saw the amazing changes, NO REACTION!! We have even given him 2-3 eggs at a time and twice in one day, still no reaction. His body officially recognizes eggs as safe!

We have also been treating our younger son who recently had a major case of eczema, all over his thighs that was spreading daily. It was red, puffy and inflamed every day, even with my attempts to use the "soak and seal" bath remedy, lotion with every diaper change, I even tried Lotrimin, thinking it might be a fungal rash. Oddly, it wasn't anywhere in his diaper area, just all around it, then it even started spreading up and around his belly, over the top of the diaper!! It seemed like there was something new every time I changed his diaper, but never IN the diaper area. When we went to a BAX treatment last week, I showed this to our doctor who added "homeopathic eczema" to the treatment, he also used the laser directly on his lesions. I kid you not, the eczema has literally begun to dry up since then!! The spots that were red and inflamed are now skin colored dry spots. They aren't all gone yet, but some of the smaller spots are and the larger areas are looking great for the first time in many weeks!! My sister even witnessed this, she saw him before, saw his treatment at the doctor's office and saw how it lightened immediately following treatment.