A little piece of heaven

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Nathan wants to know who’s checking in on him. Say hi!

Thanks!!!

I had written this as a reply to Katy’s post a couple of days ago but just now had a chance to post it. I couldn’t post it on her blog because it was too long, so I figured I’d post it here. Katy is thinking about starting a special diet for her son Charlie and wanted to get some feedback from different people, so this was my reply:

This is a very extensive topic and requires a lot of education so I thought maybe I’d share a little bit about how we came to understand the relationship between health, development, and diet.

About a year ago I picked up Jenny McCartney’s book about her autistic son. She talks about curing autism with diet and she made clear correlations between the gut and the brain. I’ll try to simplify, but in a nutshell, the proteins in milk and wheat are quite large. When the milk/wheat is digested, it breaks down into smaller components, and the peptides that you get for them are very large. These large peptides have a tendency to perforate tiny holes in the intestines, causing something called “leaky gut”. Through these tiny holes, toxins, peptides, and other elements escape into the bloodstream. The immune system sees them as “offenders” as they are ‘out of context’ – they’re supposed to be in the digestive tract, not floating around in the blood stream. So the immunoglobulins (IgG) attack those substances, causing an allergic reaction. This allergic reaction releases histamine, which is a neurotransmitter that prevents the creation of other neurotransmitters including dopamine and serotonin, which are essential for proper brain development.

Another thing that happens is some of those peptides travel to the brain and in the brain they function like an opiate (like the drug opium) causing a hazy, foggy feeling that prevents proper brain processing and interaction (like being drugged).

Also, if there is constant inflammation, the immune system is always in overdrive, which in and of itself has serious consequences. Eventually they become immuno-suppresed, which leads to other problems.

Also, substances like milk and wheat feed fungus like candida, which releases a nasty toxin into the bloodstream.

I am trying to keep it simple so in a nutshell, wheat and milk are very difficult to process, even for healthy people, and can wreak havoc on children that already have compromised central nervous systems.

There are many books / studies talking about the connection between the gut and the brain. Without a heatlhy gut the brain is functioning at a much lower rate. That was my next step. Even though Nathan has CP, not autism, I made the connection between “compromised nervous system” and gut and a light went off in my head.

In the autism world they recommend the Gluten Free Casein Free Diet (free of milk and wheat). That seemed like my next logical step as they see miraculous recoveries in children with autism using this diet. Even though the symptoms in autism and CP are quite different, they are both CNS disorders so I figured that it was a good connection.

We went cold turkey. One day Nathan was eating cheese, chocolate, milk, and whatever we wanted. The next day he couldn’t have any of it. He had a rough couple of days but we stuck to it and on his 4th day he was okay with the new diet.

We cook everything from scratch. We don’t use anything with preservatives, or anything that may contain hidden traces of milk or wheat. Breakfast tends to be GFCF cereal (with rice milk) or GFCF pancakes (these are sold pre-mixed at health food stores). Lunch is usually vegetables, a grain like brown rice, quinoa, or millet, and a protein (fish, chicken or beef). We buy everything organic for him. Dinner is usually something similar to lunch. He gets 2 snacks which are usually fruit, or carrots, or millet with avocado, or rice cakes, or oatmeal. Nathan can’t chew well so everything is pureed.

The first 3 months were tough because he was detoxing. He was sick a lot. But then we added some of the same supplements used in the autism world (B vitamins, multi-vitamins, etc) and his immune system recovered. Starting Feb 09, Nathan has only been sick twice for a couple of days, he has much more energy, he is more connected, he understands more, he is trying to do new things, he looks rosy and radiates health, he is stronger. Just a couple of weeks ago I was able to see the true power of the diet. We had to break the diet because we are in a foreign country and it took us a little while to figure things out. So for 2 days he was allowed milk and wheat. On the 3rd day Nathan was pale, spacey, very low energy, and irritable. I could see instantly the poor effect these foods had in him. We want back to the diet and after 4 days of detoxing he was back to being connected, healthy, and happy again.

I cannot recommend cutting out milk and wheat enough, our kids have enough going on and don’t need more obstacles to their development.

Here are a few old posts I’ve written on the subject:

Nathan’s Menu

Nutritional Testing – Biomedical Protocol

Nathan’s Menu – some explanations

My little Chilean hospital adventure is now mostly over (I have to return tomorrow for IV treatments, I still have the IV line open). I got home about 30 min’s ago from the hospital from what it turned out to be my first hospitalization in my adult life (other than giving birth). It seems I picked up a bug in the water or food that caused severe infection in my intestines, spleen, and stomach. The actual diagnosis was Acute Infective Gastroenteritis. The good news is that this has almost no chance of affecting the baby, whose heartbeat was strong and growth still measured very good. The bad news is that it was a pretty traumatic experience for us both as the fevers would get quite high and I’d get awful chills, pain in my body, and vomiting and diarrhea. I was at the hospital for a total of 52 hours with virtually no sleep so you can imagine how shattered I am.

I was completely moved and blown away by the outpouring of kindness and support that we encountered during this ordeal. Sonia visited and spent several hours at the hospital every day, Cybell spent the nights with Nathan (and her husband Patricio stepped in to drive her and to take care of their daughter), Denise the nanny took complete care of Nathan during the day, and I had so many people calling and checking on us that it was incredible. Ramon’s son Alexis went over to the hospital to check on me, and Ramon’s daughter Claudia called several times a day to see how we were doing. Ulla and her son Yussef came to visit at the hospital and Tia Pao and Tia Bernie from Nathan’s preschool and many of our new Chilean friends called many times to check on us. I felt so supported in a situation which would’ve otherwise been impossible. My deep gratitude to everyone who called, helped, emailed, visited and prayed for us. I am so very very grateful to all of you. I can’t tell you all how much I appreciate every little bit of support and help that you offered.

Even though it was hard to feel so sick, I am grateful for what I went through as it allowed me to appreciate even more the incredibly wonderful people that we have around us.

Now I am on bed rest for the weekend but thrilled to be home! When Nathan woke up from his nap and heard that I was home he was positively radiant. He was laughing and smiling and I could just see how thrilled he was that mommy was there for him again! All is well now and I am hoping to enjoy a couple of days of rest.

Thanks again to everyone who supported us through this experience!