Fruit Loops and Happy Meals

Another day traveling, and another food advernture.  This time it was Fruit Loops (with cow milk) for breakfast and a McDonald's chicken nugget happy meal for lunch.  I think my son was in heaven.  I once read that only 4% of the U.S. population does not visit McDonald's in a year.  We defintiely fall into that small group of people, so for my son this was a real rariety that he thoroughly enjoyed.  Funny thing is that I recall my parents taking me there atleast weekly and when I was 6  years old I was putting away a Big Mac no problem, my kid probably hasn't ever heard of a Big Mac. 

I'm seeing a pattern here...the more foods he can tolerate, the worse his diet is becoming. He actually does eat healthy most of the time, but it's nice that he can induldge from time-to-time.  This is what we've worked for!

Edited:  As suspected, I asked my son if he knows what a Big Mac is.  He had no clue, so we had to Google it.  He was shocked to learn that it was a sandwich with an extra piece of bread layered in it.  He quickly stated that he does not want one, but dad probably would!

Cow's Milk and Shredded Wheat

We have a new favorite in the house, real Shredded Wheat cereal.  My son tried some with cow milk while at a hotel.  It was my husband's doing, not mine as I would have waited on the milk until we were home in case things didn't go so well. Checking my blog, it was May 2011 when my son last tried cow's milk which resulted in a bad stomach ache.  This time he did great!  Funny though, how I've gotten use to the coconut milk myself, has anyone tried the So Delicious Mint Chocolate holiday edition coconut milk?  The name says it all, yum!

Stupid Cats!

An old problem reared it's ugly head this past weekend.  We were at a house with 4 cats for an early Christmas gathering.  My kid held his own for 4 hours.  When we left I thought his eyes were looking a little red, but then he fell asleep for the night.  When he woke up Monday he looked like Rocky Balboa after fighting Apollo Creed.  Had to ice him down before going to school and use some allergy eye drops.  This might be one of those allergies that just has to be managed with avoidance.

Another Win

Earlier this year my son had a bad reaction to a homemade smoothie I made consisting of whey, banana, and an Indian probiotic milk called lassi that is like a thinned out yogurt.  Usually I buy keifr which is almost identical in ingridents, but on this one occassion the store was out of kefir so I grabbed the lassi instead. Both the kefir and lassi are cultured milk, but very slilghtly in the cultures.  My son begged to try the smoothie (which I drink post-workout), and after a couple of sips he was having an allergic reaction--hives and vomitting.  Technically this could have called for an epi pen since there were 2 body reactions, but his breathing was okay and a benedryl took care of him.

After that incident he treated via NAET for the lassi and whey.  Today as I was making my Saturday post-workout shake, this time with kefir and whey, there he was again asking to try the smoothie.  He had a few sips and we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And nothing.

So either it was clearly the lassi (which had all but one different culture), or between the NAET and the NMT, and his maturing system, his body is no longer viewing these as threats.  Either way, we'll take it.

NMT just might be working

When we started NMT the practioner said she expect the process to take 6-10 treatments.  After the six treatement I was having a really hard time determining if it was working at all.  My son wasn't having any issues, so I just kept saying that he seems stable.  The one issue that he was having from time-to-time was that after eating processed food for multiple days in a row the back of his thighs would breakout with an eczema rash.  We could control this with diet, but it would flare when we ate out a lot.  I kept telling the NMT nurse that I expect that I'd know NMT was working if these spots cleared up.  Well after the 7th treatment the spots cleared (we had been out of town and ate out 5 days in a row.)  That was over a week ago.  And then with the Pizza Hut meal, I thoroughly expected the rash to return.  But nothing on the back of his legs.  He does still has a small spot on the inside of his knee, but that's it.  Between NAET and NMT we have watched him heal from his head on down.

Con Artist

My Little Con Artist.  Today he had a half day of school, and grandma picked him up for a fun filled afternoon.  The original plan was for them to come back to our house, eat lunch which I had prepared, and then go to the movies.  But when grandma arrived at school my son was dead set on going out to lunch--Pizza Hut to be exact.  Grandma was convinced that I had told him they were going out to eat, which wasn't the case.  Pizza Hut is a place we have not ventured out to yet, even though my son won a free pizza from his book reading club at school.  I just wasn't sure how he'd do there with the extra greasy pizza and breaksticks, but he's been begging us to go for 2-weeks.

So the little con artist swindled Grandma out of a small pizza and breadsticks.  Come to think of it, I bet he even got a soda pop out of it.  I'll have to ask him in the morning.  As Grandma was telling me this story, I asked my son who was sitting right there if he had ever eaten Pizza Hut before.  The look on Grandma's face was priceless, she hadn't considered that he shouldn't be eating it.  Hours have since gone by and he seems absolutely fine.  No unusual itching, skin irritation, or belly aches.  He just might have gotten away this scotfree.

New Changes

I keep meaning to write about the normal, everyday products that my son has been using.  About 6 months ago I started using regular laundry detergent, All Free & Clear.  He had been using a plant based powder for a number of years while we tried to figure out what was causing all his skin irritation.  He's also gone back to using some regular Ivory soap, no more specialty emu oil bars.  Most recently he's switched to Colgate toothpaste, even though I know that Tom's is better for him he prefers the minty taste of Colgate.  Those three changes alone are big money savers.

There are some things that we'll never switch away from as our new knowledge has proved too valuable.  We'll always shop for better organic meats & other foods when possible, we'll stay away from canned good and go with fresh or frozen (cans are lined with BPA unless you pay extra for Eden brand), we'll stick to using white vinegar for cleaning and as a substitute for laundry detergent (along with a few drops of eucalyptus oil), I'll always make my own chicken broths from organic chickens, we'll stay away from soy and other genetically engineered food, and we'll continue to supplement with probiotics, fish oil, and vitamin D.  Oh yeah, there will never be another vaccine to enter my son's body (per waiver of multiple MDs.)

Halloween 2012 a Success

Halloween 2012 proved to be a huge success for my TMNT (that's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for those that were like 'Huh?!')  We had 3 Halloween events and 1 Fall Harvest party at school (they do that instead of the traditional Halloween thing.) From the onset of these food allergies we've always made a deal with my son that he can go trick-or-treating, but he's not allowed to eat any candy while out and he has to turn all of his candy in for a trip to the toy store.  This has worked out well, and he prefers the toy hands down to any candy.  Three years ago I did let him try a Hershey's kiss, only to end up in hives.  This year he was allowed to keep some candy that which included Twizzlers, Starbursts, Skittles, LifeSavers, and Now & Laters as he does fine with all of them.  It's really weird though to watch his mannerisms with candy though.  For instance with Skittles, he will take a plastic container and pour them in, and ask how many he can eat.  I ask him how many does he want and he'll usually say 'three', and then I tell him go ahead.  He'll then proceed to put a lid on the bowl and be done with them.  I on the other hand would have eaten the whole bag and never stop to ask permission for another one. 

He did ask if he could try a KitKat, and he was absolutely fine with it.  I was thrilled and wanted to run out and buy him a whole bag.  But then I had to do the obssessed mom thing and take a closer look at the ingredients:

KIT KAT Milk Chocolate
Ingredient sSUGAR; WHEAT FLOUR; NONFAT MILK; COCOA BUTTER; CHOCOLATE; PALM KERNEL OIL; LACTOSE (MILK); MILK FAT; CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: SOY LECITHIN; PGPR, EMULSIFIER; YEAST ; VANILLIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR; SALT; SODIUM BICARBONATE

What's this 'PGPR' that I've never seen or heard of before?  Turns out that PGPR stands for Polyglycerol polyricinoleate, which is used by chocolate makers to reduce cost and according to Wikipedia, Hershey started using PGPR in 2006 to replace/reduce cocoa butter (you know, the stuff that makes chocolate healthy.)  So altough I'm thrilled he could eat a KitKat, they won't become a staple in our house.

NMT

With our NAET practitioner out of town, and the introduction to NMT, we decided to give NMT a try due to the success that my neighbor and her child has had with NMT.  My son has now had 3 NMT treatments.  The sessions are much longer than what we've experienced with NAET, lasting an hour although the concepts are similiar to some extent.  NMT is energy work (like NAET), and it's trying to reprogram the body (like NAET), but it looks and treats whole systems of the body, unlike NAET that deals with indivdual allergens.  The first treatment my son received was for body balancing, and the next two worked on his immune system and infectious agents. 

My husband decided to give NMT a try, also, and he's since had two treatments.  His first treatment dealt with the immune system, which occurred on the same day as my son's immune system treatment.  My son went first, and while in the waiting room my son's nose started to run uncontrollably which was out of the blue because he didn't have any issues up until that point.  Then my husband finished up his treatment and comes out saying that during his session his nose started running, and he had a lot of drainage in the back of of throat.  Strange coincidence I'd say.  Part of me wanted to think that there must have been something in the environment causing this, but we've seen these types of reactions with NAET.  After both my husband's NMT treatments, he's spent the next few days nausiated, extremely fatigued, alot of coughing, and aggrevated asthma.  This is what's known as a healing crisis, this is a natural process the body takes when it's trying to heal and balance itself.  My son doesn't seem to expereince such dramatic symptoms, aside from drainage.

Is it helping?  I'm not sure at this stage, but my son seems extremely stable right now.  He looks great, is using his daily asthma med minimally, is eating regular store bought bread, and just overall doing well.  Not to mention that he's putting weight on and has grown a bit taller.  What else can I really ask for?  My husband was on a business trip this week and said he had no issues with asthma what-so-ever, after spending last weekend down and out following his NMT treatment.

Our NMT practioner spent 30 years as an ICU nurse before getting into energy medicine.  She started with NAET, and her words to me were "I wish you would have found NMT sooner, it's so much faster and more effective than NAET."  She estimates that we'll need 6-10 treatements instead of the many, many NAET treatments we've gone through.  Time will tell.

Human DNA in Vaccines Linked to Autism?

There's a recent article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology titled "Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review." The author is Helen Ratajczak, a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm, who when interviewed by CBS news here stated "that for years while working in the pharmaceutical industry, she was restricted as to what she was allowed to publish. "I'm retired now," she told CBS News. "I can write what I want." "  Ms. Ratajczak went back to 1943 when autism was first documented and reviewed all the theories of its cause.  She also looked at human DNA being used in vaccines, which started after Thimersol was removed from most of them.  She found an increase in autism incidences corresponding with the introduction of human DNA. 

What I find amazing is that the doctor brought into counter the findings, Dr. Storm from Penn who sits on the Institute for Medicine's vaccine safety board, states that he's unware of any human DNA in vaccines.  But goes on to say that "Even if human DNA were then found in vaccines, it does not mean that they cause autism." Ratajczak agrees that nobody has proven DNA causes autism; but argues nobody has shown the opposite, and scientifically, the case is still open."

Here is another link to a story on the same article:  http://www.examiner.com/article/former-senior-scientist-at-pharmaceutical-firm-says-vaccines-could-cause-autism?cid=rss