Our Journey with Food Intolerances Part I

There is a good chance this is going to be a loooong post with many parts.  So brace yourself.  I really want to document our journey for a few reasons.  1) It has been long and complicated and I want to keep track of it all 2) There have been a lot of questions from friends and family about it 3) I hope some of our story may help others who are heading down a similar path.

 

So here we go.  Part I

 

It started at the beginning of last summer.  At least I think so.  Maybe I had been entertaining thoughts about food affecting behavior for longer, but beginning of June or July is when we started implanting some changes into our diet.  I think I originally heard a woman talk at my Mother's Sharing Group at church about nutrition. She actually didn't talk about allergies or intolerances at all, but just hammered home the idea that the things we eat really do affect us and they can affect the way we feel.  Then through different blogs/articles etc. I looked into a book by Doris Rapp called "Is This Your Child"?  It is an older book but all the reviews were very positive and many people claimed to have noticed huge life changes through reading the book and pinpointing some foods that didn't sit well with them.  The book is pretty crazy actually.  It shows examples of how kids act and behave with or without the foods they are intolerant of.  Of course the entire process seemed (and still is) overwhelming.  They suggest either doing an elimination food diet (basically eating a very bland, strict diet of "safe" foods, and then adding food items one at a time and looking for any sign of a reaction).  This is definitely a thorough way to go, but honestly it was too much for me.  At this stage in my life I just knew I couldn't handle that big of a commitment.  It can take a month of longer to complete it and you can't cheat at all.  Yikes!  So I opted for another option.  the books says to pick a food group that is eaten often in your home and try eliminating it very strictly for 4 days.  Then after that give a large dose and watch for reactions.

 

Tavian has always been a kid with allergies.  I wouldn't have called them extreme, but he has always dealt with eczema to some degree, and also with  itchy nose and eyes.  It was this reason that almost 2 years ago we had brought him into an allergist in Fort Collins and had him pricked on the back and tested for different food and environmental allergies.  His results came back negative for all food allergies and positive for just an environmental allergy.  But again, this was for food allergies, which I have since learned is very, very different then a food intolerance.  Also, I started to have a mother's intuition that the things he ate could be affecting his behavior.  He is the sweetest boy with such a loving heart and is super intelligent and has an amazing vocabulary.  But for some reason out of nowhere his behavior would get erratic and it felt like he just couldn't or wouldn't listen.  For a long time I thought it was a parenting issue, which I'm not saying maybe didn't play a role, but the strange thing was other times the same parenting would work perfectly.  I used to tell Cole it was like a switch randomly flipping.  And he also did this weird thing where out of nowhere he would start talking nonsense.  We called it mumbo jumbo and it was super strange.  I would have to ask him to talk like a big boy or to please stop talking mumbo jumbo.  Very strange for a kid that is as intelligent and verbal as Tavian!  A lot of times it seemed like he didn't want to be acting a certain way.  As if he knew he was making bad decisions but couldn't stop himself.  Sometime, exacerbated, I would ask him why he was acting a certain way, and very defeated he would say, "I don't' know".

 

After reading parts of the book, we decided to pick dairy to eliminate from our diet.  We picked it because 1) it can be pretty easily removed.  We figured over the 4 days they kids might not even notice anything was different. (we weren't telling them what we were doing) 2) The book correlated allergies to common offenders and some of the stuff we saw seemed to correlate with dairy 3) It also said that often times the food you eat the most could be the one you are most sensitive to.  And let me tell you, we love dairy.  Cheese, yogurt, butter...yes, please!

 

Cole was pretty skeptical during this process.  Skeptical that anything would come of it, but totally supportive and on board for the 4 days.  Over the course of those days we often felt like we were noticing a difference in Tavian behaviorally, but we really didn't want to read into anything, so we didn't really mention much to each other about it.  I remember the morning we were supposed to reintroduce the dairy that we both didn't really want to.  It had been a lovely morning with Cole and Tavian and Felicity building blocks together, Tavian was super calm and being super sweet, etc.  Why mess with a good thing??!  But we knew this was the whole point of the last 4 days so we needed to follow through.  Cole poured Tavian a large glass of milk.  And pretty immediately things got crazy.  Tavian started talking complete mumbo jumbo, rambling non stop.  He walked over to the tower and for no reason knocked it down.  Then he gave his sister a shove.  Cole and I were so shocked!  We couldn't believe what we were actually seeing.  I knew it was a big deal when my skeptical husband pulled me aside and told me that the reaction was actually scaring him and that he never wanted to give Tavian dairy again! 

 

(there were a few other reasons I was in search of seeing if there was underlying issues bugging Tavian.  He was also always complaining or his nose itching and his eyes hurting.  He was rubbing them constantly.  We don't watch a whole lot of t.v., but if I turned something on in the morning he would instantly ask me to turn it off because it was hurting his eyes.  Not a typical response to a 4 year old watching tv.  I also ended up taking him to the eye doctor because of this to rule out any other issues.  They said his eyes looked great and that looking into allergies was probably the next best step)

 

Part II Coming Shortly