Thursday, September 30, 2010

Little Jake is Now a Happy Boy

Not Actually Jake but He is Just as Happy
It is a common misconception that we get sick or have allergy attacks only because of tiny "bad things" floating around in the air.  While that may be the case in some instances, it is very often not the case.  I have a friend who I agreed to not mention her name.  Her son, whom I'll call Jake, suffered through a long period of misery.  Conventional wisdom, in this case the pediatricians, put him through many comprehensive and expensive drug therapies.  You know what, she wrote out the whole experience in an email to me.  I'll let the story be told in mommie's own words.
"I'll try to make this as short as possible. It all started January 2010 when we were in Florida and Jake was coughing like crazy and ended up with pneumonia.  After our trip he continued with a chronic cough that we shrugged off because it was happening all the time.  He was constantly getting sick, but again we thought he was picking up everything from his older sister.  The last time we were on vacation in May he had another coughing attack.  He couldn't catch his breath and we had a Doctor come in.  They said he was probably suffering from allergies which was causing the coughing fits.  They diagnosed him with allergy induced asthma.  From then on we always carried an inhaler and also have a nebulizer at home.  
In June we were giving him a breathing treatment every other day.  I finally took him to his pediatrician and they prescribed Singulair.  I was very hesitant about putting him on a long term medication so I took him to a Wellness Doctor. There they did a stool sample and blood test to see exactly what he was allergic to.  When the results came back we were shocked.  He wasn't at all allergic to anything in the environment it was all food =  Wheat, Dairy and Eggs.  On top of that he never had asthma.  The Doctor said that we had to remove all products that contained these ingredients.  I was very overwhelmed, but realized I had to do this to keep him off any type of medicine.
 It's been over two months now and we've only had to give him one breathing treatment because he had pizza at a party.  It's been amazing the changes we've seen in him.  He's not tired, doesn't cough and sleeps through the night without waking up.  He's only 2 1/2, but he's realizing what kinds of foods make his stomach hurts and causes him to cough.  It's also been a great change for our family.  We hardly have any sweets in the house unless they are dairy, wheat and egg free.  Most of our diet now consists of all natural foods.  Rice, some type of meat and veggies. Jake hardly has any type of Carbs unless it's made from a rice base.  For example his pizza is a rice crust with rice cheese.  I'm shocked that regular carbs were making him so sick.  I'm hoping that eventually he'll grow out of this, but for now we've adopted a very low carb, no preservative diet and are feeling great!"
Wow, can you imagine the prospect of having your 2 year old child take medications for the foreseeable future just to function normally???  Unfortunately this just accepted as the way it has to be all too often.  Whether it be children or adults, people medicate themselves to mask the symptoms caused by eating foods their body cannot tolerate.  I see the symptoms especially in children because they don't do a good job of hiding their misery like adults are required to do for appearance reasons (you know the old term "put on a happy face").


Here is a list of just a few health issues improved by diet that we have discussed on just this site alone (we have only been around a little over a month so I am sure there will be many more to come):
It is time to be open minded to this alternative approach, especially in cases of long term medication.  If you or a loved one has minor or major health problems that just won't go away, it is time to consider whether the food is the root cause of the problem.  A lifetime of medication is a very risky and ultimately expensive proposition.   CP 
  

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