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.

More questions, as usual

Another new layer unfolds. It always appears that with our gains, comes the confusion of additional changes. We have been seeing major gains in Grayson lately, he is just flourishing in between rounds of chelation, but with each round we unveil yet another new possible problem. It seems like we change his supplements monthly....talk about heavy on the wallet? And with each new issue comes the recommendation of more testing...also out of pocket expenses for us. We just can't keep going at this pace or we will be out of a house in no time! We are trying to pace ourselves, but this is something that is very hard to do. A parent wants to do EVERYTHING possible to help their child, NOW, not when the paycheck allows it. It is painful to know that we need to be doing more for him, but we are forced to decide on what is most important at the time...ya know, like eat dinner or try a new supplement that MIGHT work...pay the gas bill or run another test to see how his liver is handling the chelation. How does one prioritize these things when they don't have a decent flow of income, is beyond me?? I am grateful for our ability to at least do what we can.

So the antifunal and antibacterial meds worked wonders, wow, what a difference!! We see such marvelous gains in him, he is calmer more regularly, he is waking in a GREAT mood, sleeping well and until after 8am every day (heaven!) sometimes I even have to wake him after 9:15am! The down side to the meds is that they put additional strain on the liver, which mercury and chelation also do. This is such a balancing game. We have increased the appropriate vitamins: vitamin C, B and E three times a day, plus we have added an additional liver support, artichoke extract. We also figured out that he probably has adrenal fatigue, which would cause the severe mood swings so we added Adrenal Cortex Extract, perhaps this is the cause for our recent wows. He has been pretty amazing for the past three days or so...hmmm, yes, it might be the ACE after all! BUT....isn't this always the way, with all these great changes we have seen a significant increase in itching. Crazy, frustrating, nonstop all over body itching!! He uses the back of his hands rather than fingertips, he rubs under his chin, across his forehead, along the sides of his head and ears, up his forearms rubbing them along the sides of his body, then he truly itches in the classic sense, his shins and ankles, both sides at the same time. This goes on all the time lately and it has been irking me trying to figure out the cause. We have spoken with Dr. Woeller and Dr. Schmidt. We have considered allergies, although it's not consistent with anything in particular (we tried removing foods and using Benedryl, which interestingly sometimes helps for a while) but nothing seemed to be addressing the root cause. I posted this concern on the Autism-Mercury Yahoo Group site and one person struck a cord. He said that liver stress can cause whole body itching. Between chelation, heavy metals moving through his body and then taking the additional medications, this makes complete sense. Of course, he recommended more testing, but he also said that if we increase his liver support and the itching subsides, we have our answer. I tested this tonight and it seems to have actually worked!! Although, only for about 2 hours or so. I am going to work with his Milk Thistle (which I don't think I have been dosing enough daily) and artichoke extract and might even add in another liver support, maybe going back to the liver life. Even with this newest event, we couldn't be happier with the results of the medications! We have to go back on them for one more round, to be sure we got all of the spores in every stage of their life cycle. Then about 7 days after we stop the Flagyl this time around, we are going to do another OAT test and see how his levels have changed. This is all fine and dandy, but what I am really curious about is how we will keep them down naturally, after we have stopped all of the meds. That is yet to be determined and only time will tell, but for now, I am enjoying the ride!

Does he really need ALL of those?

I think I could write a book on Grayson's daily intake of supplements alone!  When a child needs so many healthy foods removed from his or her diet, supplementation is the name of the game.  The list is long and can vary from day to day depending on his needs for any given day. The usual looks like this: two enzymes for gluten and casein, two enzymes for carbohydrates, a No Phenol enzyme, two multivitamins, four cod liver oil gel tabs, two drops of grapefruit seed extract, liquid calcium, and one probiotic....on days when he is coming down with something or has a cold, we add zinc, vitamin A and additional vitamin C.   Another challenge with supplementing is that we need to be very cognizant of the ingredients to be sure they don't contain anything he is allergic to and just about every supplement has a filler of some sort, mostly likely containing gluten and/or casein.  Probiotics are often made from dairy and vitamin C from citrus.  Many, many children's chewables are made with "natural" citrus or pineapple flavors.  So we buy most of our supplements from specialty providers online, like Kirkman Labs and Houston Enzymes.

The role of enzymes in this diet is huge and may even allow us to reintroduce many of the foods he is slightly sensitive to.  If you were to ask Grayson what the enzymes are for, he will tell you that "they are for badestion", ha ha ha.  Translation = digestion.  The link between food allergies and the lack of enzymes is very common, so with the added enzymes every time he eats, they provide him with the ability to break the foods down further.  Leaky gut syndrome comes from undigested food particles which actually make their way out of the intestines and into other parts of the body!  Weird, isn't it?  There are enzymes for many different foods and just about EVERYONE would benefit from additional enzymes in their diet.  Enzymes are naturally occurring and are only available in raw foods so once you heat a food over about 100 degrees you kill the enzymes, which then requires your body to use it's "stash" to digest the food you've just eaten.  You can actually deplete your body's enzymes by eating only cooked foods.  Raw foods provide just enough of their own enzymes to break itself down, there is no excess.  So when your body is forced to give up it's enzyme stash to digest foods on a daily basis, other parts of the body begin to suffer and you become more susceptible to illness.  When you see a fruit decomposing, going bad, those are enzymes at work.  The reason you don't feed a baby from a baby jar, put it away and then continue feeding from that same jar again later is because of enzymes.  The mouth contains enzymes and when you put the spoon back into the baby jar, the food in the jar comes into contact with the enzymes on the spoon, digestion actually begins to occur, yummm!

This child never ceases to amaze me.  He saw me swallowing my cod liver oil and wanted to do the same with his, which are of course chewable.  I promptly explained that his are chewed and mine aren't.  He was content with that answer...that day.  When we ran out of his cod liver oil and again he witnessed me swallowing mine.  He said, "It's fine mommy, I can just take yours!"  I told him he would have to swallow it like I do and he very convincingly told me he could do it.  So who am I to hold back a child?  I handed him one and expected to see him gag and choke on it, but you've got to live and learn, right?  He immediately popped it in his mouth and like a pro, guzzled some water and proudly opened his empty mouth for me to inspect!!  Can you say determination??  Who said reverse psychology doesn't work??  If you want to get a three year old to do something, just tell him he can't and you will be greeted with childhood optimism I wish we all still had.