One of the biggest challenges we are about to face is the Food Elimination Diet. This diet will help us identify any hidden food allergies. Each member of the family has their own challenges. David and I love coffee. Our daughter, Kaela, craves dairy and pickles. Jadon is not a picky eater, thank goodness, but he still likes may products that contain the foods we can no longer eat.
According to our elimination diet, we have to remove gluten, corn, soy, dairy, sugar, maple syrup, beef, eggs, citrus, strawberries, coffee/caffeine, and vinegar. Piece of cake, right? Now think about what your kids, even healthy ones, eat in a day. Think about school lunches, peer pressure, and preventing them from losing weight (our kids are already pretty skinny.) I panicked. Take dairy away from the child who would live on cream cheese sandwiches, cheese, and yogurt if she could? Take away beef from my son the steak lover? Take away coffee from me? OMG.
This elimination diet allows: chicken and turkey, all fruits/veggies/unrefined oils, spices, milk substitutes (coconut, rice, almond, and hemp milk), herbal teas, and any bread/pasta that falls in the above category. The only two sweeteners we can use are honey and stevia.
As much as I love HealthNow, they did not fully prepare us for a "kid's elimination diet." Maybe it is just me but I need a "how to" guide on this. I started doing some research to see just what we could make that our kids would eat.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
We Have To Do What??
Our son, Jadon, has had stomach aches when he wakes up for almost a year. It is not constant but when he is in a month or two of straight stomach aches, it is really hard for him. He also gets headaches on and off and we are at wits end. We took him to a Pediatric Gastroenterologist. The solution to the problem, in their view, was to just give him Prilosec. I don't believe in just medicating without knowing the cause of the problem. Long term Prilosec use is not documented with children and I didn't want Jadon to be a guinea pig.
Just to give a little background, his father, David, had an undiagnosed food allergy for a few years. We tried eliminating peanuts and a host of other foods with no results. While on a family vacation, we watched a presentation on gluten by his sister, Lia. We decided to eliminate gluten from his diet. David's symptoms completely disappeared. Our very fabulous brother-in-law, Dr. Sunjya Schweig, ran a test by Entero Labs to confirm it. (I really wish he didn't live so far away so we could just go to his practice. His website is: http://www.drschweig.com/.)
Recently, we saw a presentation at our local Whole Foods given by Dr. Vicki at HealthNow Medical Center (www.healthnowmedical.com). After listening to all of the different ways gluten and other foods can affect the gut and whole body, we decided to get the whole family checked out. We started with full medical evaluations with Dr. Carrie Mousseau. She was really great with with the kids. Jadon got a blood test by Cyrex Labs. This is a comprehensive gluten sensitivity and autoimmunity test that will tell us if Jadon is having issues with gluten. Just to rule things out he also had a stool test to test for stomach infection, parasites, and to measure the ratio of good/bad bacteria in his gut. We hope to get the results in the next week. We will find out what tests the rest of the family will take on Wednesday.
Just to give a little background, his father, David, had an undiagnosed food allergy for a few years. We tried eliminating peanuts and a host of other foods with no results. While on a family vacation, we watched a presentation on gluten by his sister, Lia. We decided to eliminate gluten from his diet. David's symptoms completely disappeared. Our very fabulous brother-in-law, Dr. Sunjya Schweig, ran a test by Entero Labs to confirm it. (I really wish he didn't live so far away so we could just go to his practice. His website is: http://www.drschweig.com/.)
Recently, we saw a presentation at our local Whole Foods given by Dr. Vicki at HealthNow Medical Center (www.healthnowmedical.com). After listening to all of the different ways gluten and other foods can affect the gut and whole body, we decided to get the whole family checked out. We started with full medical evaluations with Dr. Carrie Mousseau. She was really great with with the kids. Jadon got a blood test by Cyrex Labs. This is a comprehensive gluten sensitivity and autoimmunity test that will tell us if Jadon is having issues with gluten. Just to rule things out he also had a stool test to test for stomach infection, parasites, and to measure the ratio of good/bad bacteria in his gut. We hope to get the results in the next week. We will find out what tests the rest of the family will take on Wednesday.
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