If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you can read here!

What’s up with the Diet?

Diet to me is one of the most controversial topics in the Autism community. When it comes to diet, parents of children with Autism seem to split into two camps; the ones that do the diet and the ones that don’t. Because mainstream medicine doesn’t necessarily back dietary changes as a form of treatment for Autism (or most diseases for that matter), making the leap toward diet becomes a very difficult decision. Some parents will see results right away. Others that have made the leap and tried it report to really not see a difference. In our experience, we didn’t see substantial results with diet for a long time. I wish we had but we really didn’t. What I didn’t realize at the time was that healing the body from a disabling diagnosis, considered incurable, takes much more than just feeding the body the right foods for a few weeks, months, or even years in our case. I learned it takes a lot of time, persistence, flexibility, but mostly conviction. Luckily I was guided to find plenty of evidence of all the reason why diet was going to be the key piece to solve our Autism puzzle. Below is how I found the conviction to make that leap and stick with it even when the results were not that earth shattering at first.

Due to my pre-diagnosis reading I had learned it was very important to address the physiological symptoms we were experiencing, not just the behavioral ones. The most critical to me was the “picky eating”. If you read my post “So you have a picky eater! What to do, what to do….” you may be able to relate. Some people may consider picky eating a behavior, but to me there was something going on with our son’s body. As it turns out, my intuition was right! In my mind I couldn’t understand how diet could not be an important factor. We’ve all heard that saying “You are what you eat.” (Actually, we are what we digest but that is a topic for another time). I didn’t know what sensory issues were (something I will discuss later) at the time because I didn’t have another child to compare my son with. But he seemed to have an aversion to anything touching his mouth. He also couldn’t touch food, unless it was goldfish crackers. He couldn’t feed himself anything else and he also was not too fond of me trying to feed him. Mealtime was very stressful. As I was trying to feed him he kept shaking his head “no”, another skill that he came to lose in the course of that year and didn’t came back until much later.

Then I met a mom that introduced me to another mom. That is the way it works when you have a child with special needs or that is chronically ill. Mothers team up to support each other! But this mom was extra special. She had an amazing video blog about her son’s journey. That video changed the course of our lives.  In it she talked about a “Defeat Autism Now!” doctor. His name is Dr. Jeremy Baptist, one of the most generous people I have ever met in my life. He has an amazing foundation called “Finding the Cure” that helps children with Autism get the medical treatments they desperately need. He was the first specialist I met that believed there was a way to drastically improve my son’s life. He is an allergist and immunologist, just what we needed at the time. He was able to tell me why my son refused most foods. He had allergies, multiple allergies. The test results he recommended were so comprehensive that he might as well have been allergic to planet Earth. I think that because he was non-verbal at the time he couldn’t tell me the food I was trying to feed him made him sick.   Our son had chronic diarrhea since his first round of antibiotics at 3 weeks old. I think that was the main reason I missed the food allergy signs. Our pediatrician, at the time, told me that since he was breastfed, loose stools were common. Because of this, we jut got used to it.

Our test results also showed how deficient my child was on several of the most crucial nutrients that support the development of a healthy body and brain. My son was malnourished; he didn’t just have a mental/behavioral problem. The tricky part was that most people would never be able to tell by just looking at him. That is because his malnourishment was impacting his weakest link; his brain. That is how I can see why most specialists will refuse to test or choose to dismiss physiological symptoms in children with Autism. The brain doesn’t have any pain receptors, so patients can’t feel inflammation in the brain. Since Autism is categorized as a behavior disordered, doctors probably don’t see any reason to investigate any further. Interestingly enough, children with Autism have very similar symptoms, not just the stereotypical behavior. They choose an extremely limited diet, have pale skin, constipation or diarrhea, low muscle tone, dark circles under their eyes or puffy eyes, low cholesterol, hypoglycemia, seizures… and the list goes on. Unfortunately, insurance companies often deny claims that have to do with testing to address physiological symptoms for a child with an Autism diagnosis. Another reason doctors will shy away from testing. Some companies will dare to say they won’t even cover typical services such as speech or occupational therapy because Autism is a life long condition. Our claims have certainly been denied many times due to our diagnosis. In the meantime, these children suffer, many of them in silence.

Soon I realized that our diagnosis came with a catch 22. The services we qualified for were not helpful, but what was helpful was not covered by insurance. If a child is malnourished, insurance will cover treatments. But if he/she is malnourished with an Autism diagnosis, the testing and treatments are considered “experimental” and most often not covered.   So, we had to make a decision; either fund the treatments we felt were necessary or save money for a future that didn’t look too promising. After our test results were in we decided we needed to intervene with treatment right away. If things were not going to be covered we were going to find a way. The money was going to appear from somewhere. And so we began a new diet! One of the things I noticed as we made progress with it was that our child’s sensory aversion to food slowly started to fade away. We also began biomedical treatment and behavior therapy (also known as ABA). The later being one of the most difficult to endure for this mother’s heart.

To read part 3 click here!

A New Reality Unfolds

Autism is a diagnosis that is given with a bleak prognosis. For most parents it is given as a life sentence with no medical treatment or protocols. Welcome to the world of Autism! But this is not a sad story. This is a story of hope; this is a story of love and courage. This is the story of a family that took a chance and did things differently. We believed that healing the body would give us the best chance to heal the mind. This is our story of recovery.

“On March 27, 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new data on the prevalence of autism in the United States. This surveillance study identified 1 in 68 children (1 in 42 boys and 1 in 189 girls) as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD).” – Autism Speaks

When I was 9 years old I made my first and only friend with Autism. His name was Arthur, a 14-year-old boy that came to visit our school and stayed for a short while. He was tall and slender. My seat was next to his. His movements were uncoordinated and cumbersome. Arthur was non-verbal although he could make sounds. But we were friends in my world. He had a beautiful smile and some of my classmates would tease me saying he was my boyfriend. One day he was gone. I never saw him again. Back then meeting such a child seemed rare. Many years later, when I was in college, I overheard a friend talking about another friend’s child with Autism. She said she never wished that on anyone. Those two instances painted my picture of Autism.

During my pregnancy I heard of the word Autism a few times but still didn’t really know what it was. Today mainstream medicine considers it a mental illness. Our child psychologist, at the time of our diagnosis, called it “Regressive Autism”. She explained that a child was born completely normal, hitting a lot of their milestones and all of the sudden they regress into Autism.   I think she used the words “like Alzheimer’s”. That was her way of explaining how our son became Autistic. He was born a normal and happy baby. His first word was “Elephant” at 6 months; he sat by 7, crawled by 9 and walked by 13 months. By that time he had about 10 words. And then slowly he retracted into his own little world. The words were no longer there and his eyes were no longer bright.

When he was 18 months we took a trip overseas to visit family and friends.   On a visit to one of my friends, I met a little boy the same age as my son. I was amazed at how engaged he was with the adults around him. While my son spent most of the time looking out the window, this boy was very aware of what we were saying, looking at everyone and laughing. His mother kept describing how well he ate and how well they played together. I had this eerie feeling in my gut. Like I was there for a reason; to see that mother and that child together. I’d had a feeling something was not right for a little while. The skills he had lost, the words that were no longer there, the constant spinning, his fascination for flipping wheels on a car and pages on a magazine over and over… But our pediatrician kept assuring me he was right on target and not to worry because kids develop differently.

One day, my mother in law came to my husband and asked that we didn’t get upset but she thought our son had a hearing problem. She took him to the park and a dog was barking right behind him and he didn’t even flinch, she said. It seemed like he didn’t hear it at all. I had that same experience with him. I could call his name several times and it was like I wasn’t even in the room. He also had developed this strange tendency of walking around looking out the corner of his eyes like there was something there. So, our doctor suggested a hearing test and a vision test. All tests results were normal, but by that time I was hoping they weren’t. I needed something that could explain the odd behavior we were experiencing. By 24 months there was still no talking and no sign that my son understood anything anybody said. The only way to get his attention was by singing. Boy, he could sing the words of a song but he couldn’t talk. That was so strange to me. But the toughest thing for me was that I never knew when he was hungry or thirsty. Or when he cried, I didn’t know what was wrong. He would reject food like the plague, only eating two things; yogurt and goldfish crackers.

On our own, we decided to get a developmental evaluation by Missouri First Steps. The results were shocking. Our child was functioning at a 3-month-old level in some of the categories. We took the results to our pediatrician who simply told us not to worry about the results. I have to laugh about this today. The evaluator was trying to help us get some services in order to help our son and we were upset with her for the results of her report. Bless that evaluator, right? We were totally clueless. We were in the domain of things we didn’t know we didn’t know. Mommy’s intuition kicked in, thank God! One night searching for “24 month non-verbal child” I came across the word “Autism”. There was even a quiz you could take and I pretty much check marked every symptom. Needless to say I didn’t sleep that night. My father is my rock so he was the first person I told about that quiz. Then I told my husband. The waiting list to get an evaluation for an autism diagnosis those days was miles long. It’s probably worse today, but our amazing Missouri First Steps case manager got us an evaluation very quickly.

On January 27^th , 2011 our son was diagnosed on the moderate to severe range of the Autism Spectrum. I already knew it but couldn’t stop the tears. I had read enough about it by then and already had a plan in place. We were going to recover our son, even though he didn’t talk, he didn’t look or play with us, he didn’t eat, he didn’t say the word “mommy” and he couldn’t sit still for 2 seconds. He couldn’t hear anyone, not even me. He was lost in his own world. But from the beginning I believed this was not going to be a life sentence for him. And so the miracle began.

 

To read part 2 click here!

 

Do you have crazy food cravings that seem uncontrollable even for the most strong-willed? How about digestive discomforts such as bloating, acid reflux, diarrhea or constipation? Do you or your child have allergies, Autism, ADD, ADHD or autoimmune disease? Do you suffer from depression or mood swings? Gut Dysbiosis might be the culprit! But what is gut dysbiosis anyway?  From Wikipidia:

Dysbiosis (also called dysbacteriosis) refers to microbial imbalance on or inside the body. Dysbiosis is most commonly reported as a condition in the digestive tract. It has been associated with illnesses, such as inflammatory bowel disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, obesity, cancer and colitis.

There is a delicate balance of microorganisms that exist in our bodies, living together in harmony. They have a symbiotic relationship which means neither group can live without the other. They perform a number of vital functions, from digestion all the way to immunity.  We literally can’t live without them. The largest colonies live in our digestive tract in a very diverse and organized micro-world. Our gut’s micro-flora is constituted of these 3 groups: Essential or beneficial flora, Opportunistic flora and Transitional flora. A healthy adult carries around 4 pounds of them in their belly!

“All Diseases Begin in the Gut” – Hippocrates, 460-370 BC

The beneficial flora is the largest (or at least it is supposed to be) and the most important of the groups. The famous bifidobacteria and lactobacteria are among them.  One of their key functions is digestion and absorption of nutrients.  But they also serve as a protective barrier to our intestinal wall, making sure nutrients can come in but keeping everything else out.  When there is not enough beneficial flora to protect that wall, compounds that are not supposed to pass through this barrier are able to make their way into the body, over-stimulating the immune system. There is a lot of medical evidence indicating that this is how allergies and autoimmune diseases are born.   The over-permeability of the intestinal wall is a condition often referred as leaky gut. The transitional flora is comprised of the bugs we pick up, or ingest, coming in from outside of our bodies. Usually they go through our digestive track causing no harm. The opportunistic flora is also a large group, with a variety of microbes. Yeasts and Clostridia are some examples. In a healthy individual their numbers are usually limited and tightly controlled by the beneficial flora but when their numbers are low, the opportunist flora and transitional flora groups can get out of control causing an imbalance in our micro-flora called dysbiosis. The form of gut dysbiosis that is the most common is the overgrowth of yeast and bacteria in the small intestine. This condition is referred to as SIBO (Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth).

 “An extremely important, yet often overlooked, cause of gut dysbiosis is diet. Because the bacteria in your gut feed off the food you eat, what you eat can directly impact their numbers. This is especially true when it comes from grains, which our bodies are not well adapted to digest and which provide a large amount of complex carbohydrates to the microorganism in our guts. This excess food for microorganisms in our gut enables them to replicate beyond normal numbers – that is they overgrow – directly causing SIBO.” –The Paleo Approach by Sarah Ballantyne, Phd

Some of the factors that cause gut dysbiosis are: frequent antibiotic use and/or eating dairy and meat from animals treated with antibiotics, certain medications such as immune suppressants and birth control pills, stress, a diet rich in grains, sugar and starches and low in nutrients. All recipes in this website avoid all types of grains and I find it important to clarify why. Wheat, corn, rice, soy beans and any other cereal used as food (that includes gluten, which is a protein found in many grains) have been consumed for thousands of years. But grains are actually seeds, meant to produce a plant and not to be digested. In the past, grains were prepared very differently before they were consumed. They were soaked and then sprouted. You can think of this process as a “pre-digestion” since soaking and sprouting allows the compounds in the seed/grain to be broken down; making it a lot easier for them to be digested by the human body.

It’s also important to consider that a person who suffers from gut dysbiosis simply doesn’t have enough beneficial flora to break down grains properly before the intestinal wall can absorb their nutrients. This is true even when grains are soaked and sprouted. For this reason it is very helpful to avoid them until that flora is reestablished. The same is true for sugars and starches. As stated above, food that is not digested feeds the opportunistic flora, which loves to feast on sugars and complex carbohydrates, making it even more difficult to reestablish balance in the gut. You can view the avoidance of grains, sugars and starches as temporary, giving the gut a chance to get back on track. But the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem, right? So Take this quiz to find out if Gut Dysbiosis is an issue for you.

If you suffer from gut dysbiosis, and consequently leaky gut, what can you do? Here at the DelicateBelly our mission is to offer recipes and guidance so you can proactively heal your gut. We design recipes based on the GAPS , Paleo  and Paleo Autoimmune (also known as Paleo AIP) diet protocols. They include foods that are easy to digest such as broth, fresh juices, and dishes that are cooked with animal fats (which are packed with vitamins and minerals) and offer an abundance of vegetables and even some fruit. We also offer some dessert recipes, but those are foods to consume only once in a while.

To enhance your healing process we recommend the consumption of fermented foods and drinks such as kombucha, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables, raw milk, yogurt and kefir. These foods have natural probiotics and are great allies to bring beneficial flora back into your gut. You can add gelatin (from pasture-raised cows) to many drinks and dishes. It is a great gut healing food since it’s rich in collagen. You can pair this with digestive enzymes and supplements like MSM sulfur, probiotics, L-glutamine and colostrum.  Also think about adding in anti-fungals like oil of oregano, olive leaf extract and golden seal.  These tools will help heal and seal your gut in no time.  Any questions? Just comment below and we will do our best to help!