Friday, August 19, 2011

Alinia

We've all been on Alinia, an anti-parasitic prescription medicine, for a little over a week and a half.  I'm honestly surprised that more DAN! doctors aren't using this in place of meds like Flagyl, which wreak havoc on the body.  They could kill two birds with one stone, because in addition to fighting parasites, it also kills anaerobic bacteria like e.coli and clostridia!

The pros we have seen, by comparison to using Flagyl:
  • no crazy die-off symptoms
  • minimal bowel changes (although they do exist, they are not nearly as bad or as frequent as with the Flagyl, but Gavin is having a lot of black specs in his stool)
  • only positive changes like more calmness, focused play, cooperative play with both boys, patience, increased compliance, happiness, no screaming for communication, better communication in general, bellies are lower, I could go on, but I think you get the point.
  • and the best news, it doesn't kill off good bacteria (only anaerobic bacteria), so it can be dosed with probiotics and won't compromise the already damaged intestinal landscape!
The only con is that this product cannot be compounded, which means you are either stuck with a suspension that has red dye and sorbitol or large tablets with a yellow dye coating, sorbitol and need to be split.  We chose the tablets, because both boys can swallow pills and red dye is the absolute worst.  We peel the yellow coating off, split the tablets into quarters and put the pieces in some pear sauce since they no longer have their easy-to-swallow coating.  Oh, there is one other con, they need to be dosed every 12 hours which means we are waking them up at about 8:45pm (they go to bed pretty early) every night for 32 days.  Then combine this with round the clock dosing on weekends for chelation and boy it gets fun around here!

We are really hoping this takes care of the parasite for Gavin, he's a different child right now, we feel like we've finally seen the real Gavin come out of his shell.  Even Grayson has been effected by it quite a bit, so we are wondering, if he had the parasite undetected or if it was still clostridia at play in low levels.  He had started to get a bit grumpy, argumentative and negative for a little bit, now we are seeing our happy-go-lucky boy again.  We thought it was age-related stuff, now I am convinced more than ever that the difficult behaviors we see in kids is more than age-related.  Every time I've ever thought we could be over-analyzing age-related behaviors, I am proven yet again, that the condition of the gut is in fact related.

3 comments:

Anne said...

This is amazing, so good for you. I hope the boys continue to improve. Nice w-e to you all ;-)

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

Was just looking for alinia information for clostridia/parasites and found your blog. Loved your comments on alinia. My son was taking the one with red dye and had horrible reaction to it. But after 5 days of stopping alinia, my son had absolutely no anxiety and his academic performance was great. I had to give him azithromycin for his pandas prophylaxis and anxiety has come back. I only used a 10 day course of alinia for him but I feel like it should be longer. My son weighs 72lbs. Can he have the whole tablet if I get the tablet this time to avoid the red dye(severe phenol sensitivity that is why we didn't see the gains till phenol load was reduced)? How much does your boy weigh?
Will really appreciate your comments.
J

Unknown said...

Hello friend! I so appreciate your post on Alinia. (I actually printed it off for my doctor). I have been struggling to find a doctor willing to prescribe Alinia for such a long period of time and was wondering if you could give me the name of your doctor? We are currently following Dr. Amy Yasko's protocol with really good results, but I feel like the cryptosporidium is another big piece of the puzzle. Thank you for any information.....we live in Chicago, but are willing to travel (we moms of spectrum kids are willing to do anything, right?)

Thank you, thank you!
Tracy
tracy.mccurley@gmail.com