Eggs & Spices

I'm happy to report that my kid is now eating baked egg!  We've tried it a couple times with turkey meatloaf and eggplant parmesan, and absolutely no reaction.  He was also treated for the 2 NAET spice mixes on Friday as I've noticed a couple mild breakouts on his eyelid (his trouble spot indicator) after eating foods with chili and garlic powder.  Tonight for dinner I made fish tacos with homemade taco seasoning which consisted of :

• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

And there was absolutely no reaction. He was yelling "WE'VE GOT A WINNER!  THIS DINNER IS AWESOME!"  

In case you're interested in the rest of the recipe:

1 lb cod or white fish fillets, cut into 1-inch pieces 
1 Tbsp vegetable oil 
2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 t taco seasoning

In medium bowl, combine cod, vegetable oil, lemon juice, and seasoning; pour into large skillet.  Cook, stirring constantly, over medium-high heat for 5 to 10 minutes or until cod flakes easily when tested with a fork.

I made 'Riced Spanish Cauliflower' to top the fish:

1 head cauliflower, cut into florets

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 green or red pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
8 ounces canned tomatoes, chopped
Salsa to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

For the cauliflower, I use my mini food processes/magic bullet to grate it (small handfuls of florets at a time.) Or use the 'S' blade on your food processor.  Microwave in a glass bowl for 5 minutes.

MEANWHILE in a large skillet, heat the olive oil on MEDIUM til shimmery. Add the onion and green pepper and cook, stirring often, until golden. Add the garlic and cook for a minute. Add the tomatoes and stir in. When the cauliflower is cooked, stir it in and continue to cook, breaking up the cauliflower and tomatoes with the edge of a spatula while stirring. After cooking awhile, stir in the salsa. Keep cooking, keep tasting, adding more salsa and salt and pepper as needed. The dish is 'done' when the liquid has cooked off, the salsa and seasoning are perfect, and the rest of supper is done too!

I added 1-2 teaspoons of my taco seasoning that definitely gave it a kick!  You can top the 'rice' with cheese, salsa, sour cream, etc.  And it's all gluten free if you use lettuce wraps.

The Vitamin D Council Newsletter, Oct 2010

Vitamin D Newsletter October 2010

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Asthma, Eczema, and Vitamin D

Dear Dr Cannell:I have a few questions which I hope to you will be able to help me God willing:

Firstly, My wife is currently breast feeding our first child who is a 5 months old girl and she has is currently suffering from a very, VERY common condition called eczema or atopy, which seems to be affecting almost all new born babies and toddlers in the UK. She also has asthma, which is getting worse. My wife has cut out everything from her diet that it is typically linked to the causes of atopy and she is currently taking vitamin tablets which the NHS in the UK give out free to all women who are pregnant and are breast feeding the content of each tablet is as follows:

Vitamin D

10 ug (400 IU)

Vitamin C

70 mg

Folic acid (Folacin)

400 ug

and we are currently giving our daughter 'Children Vitamin drops' which we instructed to give 5 drops and the 5 drops contain in total:

Vitamin A

233 ug (700 IU)

Vitamin C

20 mg

Vitamin D

7.5 ug (300 IU)

Now would this amount be enough for both mother and baby's Vitamin D level and could there be a link between the eczema/asthma and Vitamin D level?

Secondly, I myself suffer from eczema for a long time since about 2003 and I am 30 years old now. It has been on and off and it especially flares up in winter indifferent places on the body, I have generally managed to control it by watching what I eat especially at winter, now I have read quite a lot from your website and as far as i can understand that i should be taking 1000 IU of Vitamin D for every 25 pounds of body weight and as for the blood test I should take that after 8 weeks of starting the Vitamin D supplement.

Thank you for reading my rather long email but I am learning to avoid that winter fatigue and maybe find out if I can get rid of a few other problems for myself and loved ones.Thank you Geoffrey Bingham Birmingham UK

Eczema is a form of atopy, a disease characterized by a tendency to be "hyperallergic". A patient with atopic allergies often has atopic eczema or atopic dermatitis since infancy and asthma as they grow older. Atopic eczema is an extremely itchy skin condition with a hallmark rash that can involve almost every region of the body. Crusty, scaly, flattened, reddened lesions of atopic eczema can appear almost everywhere, but are worse in certain areas or after exposure to certain irritants (e.g., allergenic soap, freshly cut lawns).

The single most important feature associated with atopic eczema lesions is that they are extremely itchy, and the itch can occur even before the lesions erupt on the skin and are visible. The itchiness often leads to secondary infections.

Atopy and asthma have a complicated relationship to vitamin D, with some studies showing vitamin D — especially cod liver oil in infancy — making eczema worse in later life. However, one would be silly to stay vitamin D deficient, and all that entails, on the chance your eczema will not worsen. Furthermore, in my experience atopy, including asthma, will slowly improve with physiological doses of vitamin D. Like asthma, eczema can become life-threatening if infection occurs. Such infections are thought to be secondary to reductions in the skin of naturally occurring antibiotics, such as cathelicidin.

Recently, Dr. Tissa Hata and a group at UC San Diego conducted a randomized controlled trial that demonstrated a remarkable seven-fold increase in cathelicidin in the skin after adult eczema subjects were given 4,000 IU per day for 21 days.

Hata TR, et al. Administration of oral vitamin D induces cathelicidin production in atopic individuals. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2008 Oct;122(4):829—31.

Even more important, Dr. Urashima and colleagues at the Jikei University School of Medicine in Japan conducted a randomized placebo controlled trial of young teenagers and found that those with asthma were much less likely to have an attack if they were on vitamin D. Asthma attacks are not an uncommon cause of death among children. They also found that vitamin D significantly reduced the risk of influenza A, which can be much more severe in asthmatics.

Urashima M, et al. Randomized trial of vitamin D supplementation to prevent seasonal influenza A in schoolchildren. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 May;91(5):1255—60.

Geoffrey, both you and your baby need to stop all vitamin A supplements, as they will interfere with the vitamin D, and begin taking vitamin D; your infant needs 1,000 IU/day and you need 5,000 IU per day. I wish I could tell you the eczema will rapidly disappear; it will not. However, over a period of several years I predict both the eczema and asthma will slowly improve. More importantly, both you and your infant will have a decreased likelihood of getting a secondary infection in both your skin and your lungs.

John Jacob Cannell MD Executive Director

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Peanut Patch?

Came across this interesting article:

Can your peanut-allergic child be treated by simply wearing a patch?  That’s what researchers at National Jewish Health are investigating.  National Jewish Health, along with four other institutions in the Consortium of Food Allergy Research (CoFAR), are currently testing the safety of a peanut patch.


The peanut patch would seek to desensitize allergic patients by exposing them to increasing amounts of peanut protein, similar to the way allergy shots can desensitize people to pollen. The protein would be delivered through the skin from a patch, like nicotine patches used by people trying to quit tobacco.


Read the full story at:
http://www.nationaljewish.org/about/mediacenter/pressreleases/2011/peanut-patch.aspx

Big Score Today at Whole Foods!

Each and every Friday morning starts off with a visit to the NAET doctor and then to Whole Foods.  Today feels like we struck gold at the store--3 new products to try!  Plus they had a bunch of samples out that my kid could actually enjoy--popcorn, beef sticks, and fruit.  The kid was grinning ear-to-ear!

We found a new item by So Delicious Coconut Milk--it's juice box style chocolate milk!  Last week we found the So Delicious Cultured Strawberry Coconut Milk which tasted like a thick smoothie, and this week we noticed a chocolate flavored one on the same shelf.  The other major score is an all natural jello without any fake dyes or gelatin, but uses a vegetable gum instead.  It's by Natural Desserts, and we picked up a box of raspberry and strawberry.  So exciting to find new, tasty foods!

As for NAET, we're still plugging along. Over the last few weeks he treated for artificial colors, artificial preservatives, and dried bean mix.  The bean mix contained various beans along with peas and chick peas, which the doctor didn't have vials to test specifically for so I brought in my own samples.  Turns out he needed to be treated for peas & chickpeas as well, which is what he did today.  Seems like it's a tough treatment for him, as he says he feels the itch, is rubbing his eyes, and wanted to take a nap.  Usually those are signs that it's working.

Egg Update

We've done a lot of work with eggs.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our first NAET egg treatment was in December 2009.  Egg is the second scheduled treatment in the NAET protocol because of the underlying proteins in them and how prevalent protein is in our diets.  When we started NAET, my husband and I were extremely skeptical, leery, and just plain desperate.  We didn't expect to really see results, but thought we didn't have anything to loose.  To our surprise, the morning after the egg treatment all the hives on my son's torso vanished and have never returned.  Mind you, these hives had been there for a couple of years and no matter what we tried or changes we made they persisted.  We were in awe, but still not completely sure if it could have been the treatment.  However, we couldn't deny that his body was now hive free.  Even though he passed the treatment we still were reluctant to trial any eggs given how reactive he was to most everything else, so we continued to avoid them.

Fast forward to last summer when I accidently gave him some soup that unknowingly contained egg.  It was Lemon Rice soup from a restaurant, which he tried and really enjoyed.  After a couple bites a small patch of hives appeared over his eye/forehead.  It's one of his main trouble spots that always flares when he has a reaction.  That's when we found out he accidentally trialed eggs.  The good news was there was no projectile vomiting like his first egg encounter.

This fall we continued to work on egg.  It took four times to pass egg yolks and egg whites with emotion combinations.  We have yet to try an egg.  However last night we were back at the same restaurant with the lemon rice soup.  He tried it again, loving every bite he took.  The best part---NO HIVES!  I'm cautiously optimistic.  Maybe now we'll be ready to try egg in baked goods?!  My mind still has a hard time picturing him eating scrambled eggs, it's something he's never done before.  Oh the possibilities.  But we'll still proceed with caution, we've come so far but still have work to do.

Granola Bars are "Super Duper Good!"

I posted my kid's old RAST results in the previous post to provide some validation that I'm not making this stuff up.  Something is working for him, and I've seen proof with NAET.  Today was a big day, he got to try my granola bars that he's had his eye on for quite some time.  Problem is that they contain oats and soy.  He had a NAET treatment to oats yesterday and soy a while back so we went for it.  But I should have probably started out with a more pure food like oatmeal in case there was a reaction.

Here's the ingredient list:

In the past he's reacted with hives and eczema to:  oats, soy, and honey.  His RAST rated oats a level 3, and honey & soy at a level 4.  He has had NAET treatments to oats, sugar (including honey), soy, salt, and soy lecithin.

Here's the granola bar trial.  I know I should have only let him have a crumb, but he was loving it and ended up eating one whole bar.  If he would have had any previous anaphylactic or breathing issues with any of these foods we wouldn't have tried these at home.  I'm looking forward to working with the allergist on such foods.

And the results . . .Granola bars are "Super Duper Good!"  It's been a few hours and NO REACTION of any sort!  Here it is from the 'horse's mouth' (excuse his bad manners, he was eating lunch):

RAST results

We had RAST testing done in August 2009 because I could no longer follow the allergist's advice of "if you think he's allergic to it, just avoid it."  Looking back, it was the day I jumped off the deep end but instead of a crash landing it turned out to be the start of a new beginning.  The test validated to me that I wasn't crazy, that I wasn't making this stuff up, and that I really needed to find health professionals that were willing to help.  My 3 year-old at the time had 4 vials of blood taken, and screamed all the way through it.  He was tested for 40 different food allergens at a cost of $1250.  When the results came back it was clear why we were having a hard time avoiding things I thought he was allergic to.  19 of the 40 came back at a level 2 or higher, 7 were categorized at level 3, 4 at level four, and good old peanuts at level 6.  Here's a partial snap shot of his results, followed by the rating chart:

It was also at this time that his eczema was at it's absolute worse to the point that the doctor suggested we consider flying out to National Jewish hospital in Denver to have him hospitalized for his skin:

Fortunately we found a wonderful Ped who deals primarily with inflammation issues such as allergies, asthma, and autism.  I'm so thankful for his open-mindness, persistence, and desire to get to the root of problems.  He's the one that started us on Probiotics, Vitamin D, LDN, and NAET and has given our family so much peace of mind.  I am forever grateful for his help.

Corn Flakes

Just had to share this little story that warmed my heart . . .

I bought some Organic cornflakes from Trader Joe's for my husband and myself.  Of course my kid wanted to try them, so I cautiously let him.  In addition to corn they also have barley malt which he's never had.  Well turns out he LOVES them.  And the best part about it as it seems to be a mutual relationship.  Last night at bedtime my son asks me, "Mom, how come the cornflakes don't make me itchy?"  Good question, as we are talking corn here--the stuff that usually causes him stomach aches, hives, and itching.  I can only chalk it up to NAET as he's been doing really well with all corn since the treatment.  It's just really cool to see him eat some 'normal' foods, and even better to not have to be medicating him with benedryl and atarax at bedtime (or anytime for that matter.)

Food Allergy Action Plan

For kids with food allergies, it's a good idea to have an action plan in place.  Even if you've verbally gone over one with a caregiver--I can't tell you how many times I've had to remind my own mother (who is very supportive with my son's issues) of what to do or what foods to avoid.  Here's a good place to start:
http://www.foodallergy.org/files/FAAP.pdf  (thanks to another food allergy mom who has this listed on her blog!)

I would also suggest keeping a list of allergic foods and benedryl on hand.  I have made an emergency pack from a plastic pencil holder kit that has benedryl, epipens, an inhaler (albuterol), and a list of meds along with doctor information. I taped the epi pen instructions to the inside lid so they can be immediately located--hopefully it's never needed, but always be prepared!

Moving Forward

Here's a brief update on what we've been up to.  We treated for artificial and natural flavoring last week, and within 10 hours my son had a fever of 102 and a terrible headache.  At first I thought the illness was related to his treatment since we've seen that in the past, however the fever lingered for a few days and then turned into a cold so he obviously had a virus.  The nasal congestion moved into his chest which always spells trouble for him, but not this time!!! He actually got a normal cough like non-asthmatics get.  There was no tightness or wheezing or breathing treatment.  This is the FIRST TIME EVER a cough didn't require any special care.  What a relief, as anyone who's ever dealt with asthma knows how scary it can be.

In other news, we've had success with the little guy taking krill oil which is a form of shellfish.  No reaction at all.  And we were able to trial his zinc supplement that has a "natural tangerine flavor" which every time he took it he'd break out into hives above his eye, but he did fine with it.  We also treated for soy lecithin, and today was a corn oil treatment.  Actually, I spent $20 on a slew of oils to take in and test against.  Of the 10 oils, he held strong to all of them but corn oil and palm oil.  We'll treat for palm oil next week, and then I'm hoping to move into oats and other grains unless something else creeps into the picture.  We've been at this for about 13 months now--I just counted 56 treatments!--but to see the change in him has been incredible.  The itch is controlled, lately he's been telling me it's gone but I think it's still going to be a while before this beast is conquered.  He's not covered in hives and his eyes aren't swollen.  This past December was the first time we didn't need to have his Christmas pictures touched up to remove the eczema (we always take our family portraits that time of year.)  The next couple of months will be very interesting as we move onto wheat and dairy . . .stay tuned!