Green and Bitchy

"twinkies are healthy for starving people."

2012-01-26T07:30:00.000-08:00

i ran across a blog recently that purported to explain why there really is no such thing as "healthy food". the author went on to describe the contradictions and confusion that all of us feel when learning about so many different diets and philosophies about eating today. paleo, south beach, atkins, blood type-based, acidity-based, no-carb, low-carb, fat-free, organic, low-fat, full-fat, vegan, and so on and so forth. i was nodding along for a minute there until she summed it up by basically saying that people should just eat whatever they want - and feed their kids whatever the kids want to eat - because in the end there are no guarantees that eating healthy can actually keep you healthy.

she made a statement in there that basically said that even a twinkie is healthy for a starving person. i tried to shrug it off and understand that she might be confusing "minimally life- sustaining" with "healthy" (you know, like the difference between formula and human milk) and just walk away.

frankly, dealing w/ my own hyperallergic child's current health crisis is taking almost all my free time, so i really had no business looking at a blog that isn't related to my 2 narrow focuses in life right now - learning about safer, non GMO amd cleaner ways to eat and breastfeeding issues. i should really just stick to online materials about those 2 subjects - every time i stray into mainstream info and see what people really think about food, i am astounded. and not in a good way.

but the statement about the twinkies just stuck in my craw. could anyone really EVER think a twinkie was "healthy" ~ under any circumstances? i noticed in the author's bio, that she said she was a "healthy-eating" mother. when i browsed her site a bit more, i found references to "boxed mac and cheese", "drive thru meals" and "cookies". and i remembered the kind of "healthy" feeding i used to do for my 1st children myself. mcdonald's was okay because my kids weren't fat. we went twice a week on gymnastics nights. i knew vaguely that people said it was horrible, but my personal philospohy of "unhealthy food" was if it made you fat. i was uneasily and a bit guiltily willing to accept that french fries were a vegetable and hey - ketchup surely was - it was like, all tomatoes, right?

i watched the comments and replies applauding this open-minded and guilt-assuaging blog article multiply. mothers thanked her for permission to feed their kids what they truly wanted to eat. mothers pointed out that if their children were *such* picky eaters and had so many other issues that ALL they would eat was chicken mcnuggets morning, noon and night - then by god, chicken mcnuggtes are healthy for that child! it went on and on.

i tried to ignore it, reminding myself that there are also blogs where people say that elvis is still alive, too. and that the holocaust never happened. denial can be the best friend of many a harried mother and i lived right on those banks myself until my house tumbled splash into the river and it became a watch -your -family- sink- or -swim situation.

i went on about my schedule but at random times little snippets from the blog article & comments would pop into my head: "yes, i'm a fat woman, but..." "a growth-delayed, sensory-averse child..." "...mother to an underweight, extremely picky eater..." "...the best food for a person stranded on a desert island is hot dogs..." "...not only am i severely underweight...i also have GI issues..." i could go on and on. it's like an actual list of the symptoms of food allergies and intolerances and all the accompanying long-term health issues that result therein, all wrapped up in a justification for continuing to eat fast food, junk food, ramen noodles and mcdonald's!

"whatever's easy with all this stress and illness" are the only comments allowed through the moderation process. trust me, i tried. i know i must be like a dry drunk who thinks everyone that goes near alcohol has to be an alcoholic after all this time with my own food-damaged son, but seriously - reading this article and comments was like watching a drowning person demand a glass of water.

if twinkies are really the answer for starving people, shouldn't the red cross get with it and start shipping them over to 3rd world countries asap? i do concede that they might be ideal in that the expiration date is 'never' and even bugs wouldn't contaminate them. but... seriously?! twinkies for a starving person?? haven't any of these people heard of "supersize me" ?? can you imagine what it would do to a starved, depleted body to consume twinkies? they are hardly more than flavored plastic injected w/ sugar and chemicals! i can't imagine organ failure wouldn't set in within a week or 2 of trying to survive on a diet of twinkies - or hot dogs, for that matter.

and if mcdonald's is "healthy" for a sick, underweight person "who can't/won't eat anything else", then by the same logic, meth would be healthy for all the newborns born meth-addicted, right?

the irony here is that our society *is* starving to death on a diet of limitless twinkies. our bodies are so hungry for true nourishment, that people gorge themselves on whatever tastes good - mistaking overloading your tastebuds with more and more artificial flavor and your body with more and more bad fats, chemicals and genetically modified ingredients with eating something truly nourishing.

as people try harder and harder to sate that hunger, they are growing more and more depleted in vitamins, nutrients & energy while their bodies grow obese trying to store all the excess fat, salt and sugar. and we are only just beginning to get a hint of what the genetically modified ingredients are doing to us!

if people today would only take a few minutes to research what they are actually eating - and what effect it is actually having on their bodies - i have faith that no parent would continue to steadily feed their children the Standard American Diet (SAD). nobody wants to put forth the effort because modern food industries and today's mentality of immediate gratification and convenience assure that people are not likely to take the time to learn about and prepare wholesome, healing and nourishing meals from home. and so the justification and defensiveness about what we eat and feed our kids continues.

i know, i know, i should just stick to the breastfeeding and food allergy blogs out there - trust me, i won't be straying into the scary, Standard American Diet-loving forest of blogs out there again! i have a feeling i'll be seeing some of them again on other food allergy and clean-eating blogs when they finally figure out that their beloved "healthy" fast food is the reason for all their and their children's illnesses, though.

and in the spirit of *not* censoring out the comments that don't agree with a blogger, here's another comment on the article that was not published. the woman who wrote the following also spends her time trying to help people learn how to heal themselves and their children from the ill effects of today's frankenfood.

i may not know exactly which diet philosophy is better than any others - i actually suspect that different body types need different things at different times and no one-size-fits-all way of eating can work for everyone - but i DO know that eating convenient, artificial, chemical-laden and genetically modified foods isn't healthy for ANYONE.

jennifer tow is a good friend, mentor, breastfeeding expert and globally-renowned holistic practitioner on the interweb:

The problem with reading or posting anything on the internet is that you never have the backstory. I tend to ask a zillion questions whenever presented with a situation, which might just be a product of my work as a lactation consultant. So, I have no idea what you eat Arwyn and will not make assumptions. Nor do I need to know, because I can simply address the issue as you presented it.

You say there is no food that brings perfect health. Actually, you can never prove a negative, so I don't know if this is true or not and it doesn't matter. I do know this--that I have worked with tens of thousand of moms and babies over the past 20 years and every single issue that I have ever seen has gotten worse and worse in presentation during that time. Aside from cultural, marketing, economic and social issues that we all know impact birth and infant feeding, the single most significant issue that impacts families is poor nutrition. Or maybe, based upon this post, defense of poor nutrition.

Of course our perception of what is "good" or "bad" will surely have a context. For example, if someone has an allergy to brazil nuts, all the selenium content in the world does not make that a good food for that person. And, if your mother made you finish your least favorite dish as child, after it was cold and everyone else had left the table, I don't care how nutritious it might me, your emotional connection to it might make it toxic to you. After Fukishima, folks in Europe were told not to eat broad leaf greens because they collected too much contaminated rainwater. I get all of that and I agree. Food and its "goodness or badness" have context.

But, it is using these kinds of legitimate points to make such ridiculous rationalizations that really confounds me. And, sure people will get right behind you, because no one wants to do anything that is hard. They would rather believe it doesn't matter. Or at least not very much. I don't care if you are starving--a Twinkie is not healthy--it might sustain you, but it is not ever going to support health. Nor are the vast majority of non-foods people eat every day. As Mark Hyman put it "There is no such thing as junk food. There is food and there is junk."

I spend the majority of my practice helping desperate mothers undo the damage to their babies and children cause by our synthetic/GMO/processed/pasteurized/toxic food supply coupled with our toxic environment and our genetic imprinting from the damage done to our own ancestors by several generations of artificial feeding, medicalized birth, abx and other meds and vaccines. It isn't fun for them and it gets harder all the time and every parent who does not make changes--drastic changes--is adding exponentially to the problem.

We are currently birthing the first generation of children who will not outlive their parents and we are likely the most over-fed, under-nourished people to have every walked the Earth. And we have the wounds and scars to prove it. But, we would rather hide out and defend our addictions, even while those addictions make us sick physically and emotionally, while they fry our children's nervous systems and lead us to medicate them.

You can look at the battles that rage between the Paleo, vegan, raw food, etc camps as more support for your argument, but what I look at are the similarities, because I have no financial interest in any of them. The commonalities are real food. No room for fake food. None. Zero. Some might sprout grains and others say no grains. Some say raw dairy, others none. In the end, it depends on how much gut healing you need to do as to which works best for you, but they all use food that is not GMO or factory-farmed or packaged or processed to death (ours). Look at the similarities and you really can't go wrong. Once you start to feel your own body's true signals again, you can tweak it from there.

What absolutely works for no one though is the crap that the majority of Americans are addicted to, feed their kids and justify through absurd rationalizations, as you have in this post and others have in their comments. If your child only eats mac and cheese or chicken nuggets, then you have two options--rationalize that as good enough or bite the bullet, face your own addictions and get your child and yourself on a gut healing diet, so all of that pickiness disappears with the toxic gut flora and yeast that the fake food is feeding.

Do you have to be a perfectionist? I don't know. Do you want this planet to survive? When we make a mess this big, as we have, then yes, I think we need to be as impeccable as we can to fix it. Do we have to obsess about food. No, we just need to pay attention, become educated and leave the world of non-food behind. Of course, for most people, that's most of what they eat. So, maybe it feels obsessive.

I would say I don't really care what other people feed their kids, and frankly, I don't have much time to think about it if they aren't my clients, but we have come to a point where this human village is at too much risk--frankly, I do not trust sick people to govern this world. And that is where we are rapidly headed.

banned from facebook

2012-01-12T21:19:00.001-08:00

so here i am, in exile from facebook yet again - banned due to the breastfeeding picture above in back and white - the one where my newborn 5th child was just about to nurse for the 1st time after his breech home birth. that one has gotten me a 7 day time out - my longest banishment so far! the other pictures are previous ones i've been blocked from using my account for- as they were deemed 'obscene'.

i'm really confused about what exactly is obscene about the 2 with only my son. you can't see a bit of his genitalia or even bare bum. it did used to specify that nipple or areola was considered a violation of fb standards - did that include baby nipples and areola? because i guess you can see his baby moobs in both of those pics... i'm also confused about the banishment itself. i can't post or comment on my own page...but i can post new threads/topics in most of the groups i am in. i just can't comment. and i can still accept friend requests but i can't post links anywhere. if you really want to ban someone and censor them, why let them continue to post in their groups - a place they are most likely to garner support and rally activism against the unfair punishment? none of this makes much sense to me.

it's also worth mentioning that the naked pics of my son came from my "allergy" album and were mainly intended to show the condition of his atopic allergic reactions. both were pictures of him cleared up and doing well. they weren't meant to be "provocative". my fb page is mainly a place of sharing info amongst likeminded ppl on natural parenting and food allergy issues. anyone who spent any time on my fb account knows that these pictures were a joyous celebration of some of the rare times my son is out of pain and discomfort and has beautiful intact skin. to think that anyone could have found this "obscene" and could be looking at these innocent pictures with dirty thoughts in their mind only makes me question what kind of issues they might have, not think there is anything wrong with the pictures.

least of all this rabid and persistent persecution of babies and children feeding normally.

i know the founder of fb is a young guy. raised in america, where we prefer our breasts plumped up into gravity defying, silicon injected, physically preposterous standards for the titillation of adults only - and of course the sale of alcohol, body lotions and victoria's secret undergarments. babies hanging off of them kind of ruins the hugh hefneresque fantasy, i guess.

but when a large group of women show that they want to opt out of this american breasts-as-sexual-objects-only ideal and use them for their intended purpose - why not just go on about your business and let them?

i was young once, too - and raised in america. and oh yeah, had a couple of the dazzling funbags of my own that seemed to set the tone for how i was going to be treated (& expected to act - which is to say IQ need not exceed bra size!) for the majority of my interactions with people - especially men.

i used to work in a couture shoe boutique in an upscale mall. we had a gorgeous ladies lounge. chaise lounges, fine art, giant mirrors so we could pop in and make sure our balconet bralettes were doing their jobs. i remember the first time i saw a nursing mother in there. i had no idea what she was doing. i thought she was just snuggling her baby. then i saw bare breast and a baby attached to it. i'd never seen a woman breastfeed before that i recall, ever.

i was completely embarrassed and uncomfortable. i looked away too quickly and then felt badly that i'd done so and might make the mother feel badly so i tried to look back at her and give a weak smile, but my eyes went straight to that little bundle hooked to her breast and then i was too embarrassed to look at her face again...it was confusing and awkward! i didn't want her to feel badly for feeding her baby, but i thought it was something very private and i surely shouldn't have been looking with my prying eyes, but i couldn't help it because i'd never seen it before...and why did she look *happy*, anyway? didn't it hurt? wasn't it heinously uncomfortable, at the least? wasn't she totally embarrassed that she didn't have a cute bottle for that baby?

fast forward 15 years and i'm the one in the lounge watching the totally embarrassed sales girls hurry out, darting furtive glances at me. and then there were the times i tried to nurse in public and my husband would literally stand beside me, holding a baby receiving blanket up like a matador fighting a bull. i literally shudder to remember the lactational faux pas i have been complicit in! so in a way, i can kind of understand that fb is just a young company with a young owner who doesn't get it.

but even the most socially challenged person can see that the smut that *is* allowed all over fb is a direct slap in the face to those of us who keep getting banned for our breastfeeding pictures. i'm not the only one who feels this is the biggest outrage in the whole farce of 'community standards' and 'obscenity policies'. Emma Kwasnica, Breastfeeding Mom, Says Facebook Yanked 'Sexually Explicit' Pictures. if i'm allowed by the state and most of the country i live in to nurse my baby wherever i am allowed to be...and if those same laws say that if i expose my breast - even nipple and/or areola - while breastfeeding, it is *not* considered public indecency, then who is fb to say otherwise? what is this need to regulate rules about breasts and breastfeeding that are even more restrictive than the "real" laws? fb certainly doesn't do this with breasts in other types of pictures ~ especially sexy or sleazy ones! in fact, the majority of the breastfeeding pictures that have been deleted from facebook do NOT show nipple or areola! Photos of breastfeeding banned by Facebook, Page 1.

not to mention how far they will go to go after *anything* to do with breastfeeding, apparently.Facebook apologises for deleting photos of girls pretending to breastfeed | Life and style | The Guardian. the questions i can't get answered in the endless loop of vague and contradictory fb 'standards' are: what on earth makes a person *this* intent on eradicating all breastfeeding images? did something happen to traumatize the founder and CEO of fb? was he perhaps squirted by a lactating breast when passing by a nursing mother some time? could he have been assaulted and/or traumatized by a leaky mam somewhere along the line? where does this desire to eradicate all breastfeeding imagery come from in a young man who claims he values openness and the ability to facilitate sharing of information above all else? and what does his mother have to say about it? i'd *really* like to hear from her, she's a psychiatrist! or is it as simple as the usual problem in this country - that the formula industry is paying big bucks to have *their* product placement take precedence on fb via the ads? (i really wouldn't know as i delete them all as 'offensive' when they pop up on my page! :-P)

i try to take a zen approach to it when it happens to me now - which it does with regularity. i'm not sure if fb keeps rechecking the albums of past offenders, or searches through the friends of someone who currently got flagged (because it does usually seem that a whole group of us go down together), but it's to the point now that anytime i get the login prompt when i know i didn't log off, i steel myself for the warning and then violation notice. one time i got them but it never went into effect, but only one time. at first it made me furious. i mean livid. how dare someone call my feeding of my child obscene? or pictures of my child that do NOT show any genitalia or even buttocks, a violation of decency standards? the activist in me was seething with a need to clarify, rectify, terrify! someone for this. but there's nowhere to complain, nobody to question - no phone numbers, no email, no responses, nothing but a loop of endless links that don't really answer my questions at all. it's obvious someone isn't even really looking at the pictures they're punishing me for, because two of these don't even meet their standards for obscenity in any way.

so now i tell myself to enjoy fb to the fullest while i use it and take it a sign from the universe that i need to take a break when i get banned. its a good lesson to me not to put all my eggs in one basket, too. if it disables my communication with moms i am helping in my lactation counselor capacity, i was relying on it too much! if it hurts my sales for my allergy cookies to not be able to post on that page for a few days, then i probably should have an independent website for them! if it means i won't keep up with close friends during important times or events then i should be calling, emailing or keeping it more personal! i also made a vow to myself to make the temporary ban something that makes up for the time i do spend on fb.

for each day of the ban, i have to do one thing i've been putting off around the house and one special or putty-offy thing w/ the kids each day. today i cleaned and scrubbed under the stove and then got out the mending and sewing before bed and did mending projects w/ the kids and taught the little ones how to sew. tomorrow i will pull out the 'fridge and clean under there and either sew again with the kids before bed (they love it!) or make get well cards with them for my terminally ill mother. this way when i get back on fb, my karma is clean as i feel i 'earned' it..and i have also atoned for the fact in advance that i'm putting those pics right back up! :-P

it also helps to keep me from foaming at the mouth when this happens, to see what great company i am in.

Jodine's World: Facebook harasses moms over breastfeeding photos.

and if that isn't enough to set my attitude back on straight, this is:

Breastfeeding and Facebook - YouTube

~~~~update for friday, january 13, 2012~~~~

well, close your windows in case of flying pigs, but it appears that my friend emma kwasnica is actually making headway with her fight against the lactoferrinous discrimination on fb!

this woman is my hero. as i sit here, being all zen about it - she is (once again!) making online booby history! (85) Emma Kwasnica responds to Facebook after receiving apology. my chest engorges proudly at her persistence. or it might be nursing time for my preschooler. either way, emma would be gleeful!

i can just see her, championing the cause for dejected and persecuted mammaries everywhere. i picture her trotting down a line of female busts, with an encouraging word for all, emanating a unity that not even the widest cleavage could divide. she'd pat a billowing sideswell here, give an uplifting tweak to a downcast nipple there, and then trot off in full battle regalia for the worthy cause of hard working jahoobies everywhere! her cape, of course, would be the patchwork quilt made to honor her work - made up of breastfeeding images from all over the globe.

i might have sparkling appliances, mended laundry and occasionally lower blood pressure by not getting so riled up when i get banned (tho perhaps not, because one of the benefits of breastfeeding *is* those calming hormones!), but this woman has the heart of a warrior inside the body of a nurturer.

the founder of fb is quoted in wikipedia as saying his interests include "revolutions" Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia... well, hold onto your hairy milkless little moobs, mr. CEO of fb, because you let your revolution in by the front door when emma kwasnica signed on to facebook and found your discrimination against a baby's right to be fed normally and a woman's right to do so without being harassed!

thank you for all you do for the breastfeeding cause, emma - i'm proud to call you friend.

a reluctant update

2011-12-10T18:27:00.000-08:00

i don't want to blog this update. i've tried every way to avoid it lately. have you ever done that, and then gradually everything in your world points you back to what you're trying to ignore?

instead of blogging about how our food allergy guy is doing lately, i delved into my lactation counseling work, which has come to be about helping nursing dyads also dealing w/ multiple food allergies more and more. i followed up with one mom i'd worked with for almost 9 months and heard that they'd trialed his allergens back into her diet and he was now non-reactive to them - mom could lift the restrictions for both her and her toddler! most of the moms and babies i work with get to this point eventually.

happy as i was for them, i couldn't help but reflect that in over 4 yrs of radical restrictions, my son has never lost or "outgrown" an allergy yet, despite complete avoidance and gut-healing protocols. i think it might be time to blog it out, to finally just put it in writing and face it to deal with it. not only does my son have severe multiple food allergies, but they're not acting like "normal" ones at all. he can't try new things, he becomes allergic to them. they don't become milder over time, they become worse, his sensitivity to them increases and his sensitivity levels on tests gets higher the longer we avoid them.

i feel the normal frustration and confusion set in and push the thought of blogging about it away. putting it into text and white will make it real, allow others to bear witness, make me have to accept it. i don't want to accept it, we are muddling through despite the difficulties, i will write about it when we have a positive change or clear cut answer about his unusual presentation, to share.

i ignore my glaring monitor and beckoning keyboard to run some errands w/ my little guy while my other children are in school. we run into another mom i helped through breastfeeding difficulties recently. she stops me to catch up and her 16 month old toddler is taller than my 4 year old and outweighs him by over 10 pounds now. when i get home, i look through my records and realize that almost every single baby or infant i have worked with has surpassed my son in height and weight by the time they are 18 months - 2 years old.

i tell myself he's always been small and ignore the persistent whisper in my brain that reminds me that we now know he hasn't grown even of a fraction of an inch since last may (7 months now) and has typically not gained more than 2-4 oz per month since reaching toddlerhood - in fact, some months he has lost weight - despite my care to provide and track 1200-1400 calories plus unlimited access to breastmilk day and night. i've been nursing for 12 years straight next month and we know that human milk tends to grow fatter the longer a woman lactates, so i guesstimate he is getting at least another 200-600 calories from human milk on days that he nurses longer. i push down the burgeoning weight of the panic that wants to come when i see much younger toddlers surpassing his growth. i will write a blog entry when he's had a growth spurt, i decide.

we make a trip to pick up my daughter from kindergarten and 'lou builds a lego vehicle and tells a classmate of hers. the boy looks at me and exclaims "your baby can talk?!" we stop at costco on the way home and 'lou asks if he can run up and down on the grassy median next to our vehicle while i load up. i say yes and begin loading up only to hear someone calling out to me. an employee working in the parking lot jogs up and points at 'lou and exclaims,

"your baby, your baby!"

i'm puzzled and tell him,

"he's not a baby, he's 4. he's okay there, he knows not to step into the parking lot."

the man apologizes and explains that he thought i hadn't noticed my baby running off. now i recall & understand an incident inside the store. i'd agreed to let 'lou stand in the toy aisle and browse while i walked 20 feet away to look at bedding and towels. a woman had led him back to me by the hand and said,

"she wandered away!" (everyone thinks he's a girl right now - even when he's *not* playing princess dress-up with his sister!)

it sank in that i see him and normalize his size to match his abilities and development, but other people are perceiving his size to be much younger than his years now. i know a lot of children with food allergies - both in real life and in groups and forums online, but i don't know any who have had the slow growth and now apparent total lack of growth that my son has. i know children who have much much higher overall IgE levels who still grow. children who are anaphylactic and airborne, who still grow. children actually allergic to more things than my son and on more restricted diets, who still grow. children who are even allergic to things like heat and cold and their own sweat, but still, they grow.

i think about sitting down and putting this new issue on my blog - of wrapping my brain around it and trying to grasp it and speculate about it - but everything in me just pushes the thought away.

"i'll give it more time", i think.

"it's probably just temporary, once i can look back on it after having gone through it, i can write about it in a more helpful way, with more answers

for other people who might be in the same boat."

well, it's been 7 months now and it hasn't gone away. my son is stuck at 37" and 28 1/2 pounds at 4 years. in summer clothes w/ short sleeves and pants, he still fits in his 3-6 month infant outfits. in long clothes, he's in 18 months - 2t. i am always surprised when it jumps out at me in pictures with all of my kids together. they are all 15 mos- 22 mos apart with the exception of a 3 yr gap between #'s 2 and 3. but #2 is small and #3 is big, so they all end up looking like stair steps...and then there's 'lou, falling way down in the stair step design, also only 22 mos younger than his closest sib but looking 3 or 4 years younger. with 5 kids, you can sort of plot the genetic curve of your family and see when someone is popping up out of it - or falling down out of it. i remember before the food allergies grew like wildfire, their weights were at 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 pounds exactly. this greatly pleased the OCD side of me. now the other 4 are all still within 10 pounds of each other, but 'lou is 4 and his sister is 5 and he is almost 30 pounds less than her.

i still wasn't ready to blog about all that we're dealing with right now, until i got an email from a reader of my blog. she has a child with similar allergies to mine. she thanked me for blogging about it, she thanked me for speaking from the heart and sharing what has worked and what hasn't... but most of all she thanked me for just putting it out there because she said she'd never found another site that she could relate to. just hearing that she wasn't the only one, her child wasn't the only one, helped her so much. the dr.s don't know how to tell her to feed her child, they can't tell her why he's so allergic or when/if he'll outgrow it. she didn't need me to have all the answers, she didn't need me to fix her problems, she just needed to go somewhere and read that someone else was going through it, too. that someone else was as scared and as frustrated and as lost and determined as her. having a multiple food allergy child is a lot like being lost at sea. this is one diagnosis where the dr.s are possibly learning more from us than we are from them.

she is right, it's so important to share what we are going through - even when we're floundering, because we just might be able to learn from each other and find a better way - and we don't have to use our medical insurance or wait for 9-5 business hours to do so. i know sometimes when i search the other multiple food allergy mom blogs i don't want new recipes, i don't need updates on food allergy organization activities - i want to know what they're dealing with now. i want to know how their journey is going - what twists and turns their path is taking.

so, i'm going to write about where we're at and if i leave it unfinished, well...that's where we're at, too.

'lou is allergic to: corn, dairy, egg, soy, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, seafood, most beans, lentils and sesame as well as dogs and cats and the usual seasonal allergens like trees, molds and grasses. he's never had shellfish yet, but i know if i gave them to him, he'd become allergic. he has become allergic to most prescription medications i (rarely & only when absolutely necessary) take, even when compounded to remove all allergens.

for the last year or so (until very recently), i have been unable to get him to baseline for any consistent amount of time. i still breastfeed him and he and i avoid all of his allergens 100%. instead of just wheat, we are gluten free (everything w/out wheat uses soy or corn as a sub anyway, so it's not even really an option!) and i always err on the side of caution when i'm not sure if something could be making him react. we are also very lucky that the tests are almost always in perfect harmony with what i observe. (ie, if i suspect he is becoming allergic to beans, the test shows i'm right). we are even more lucky that none of his reactions are anaphylactic, like his big sister's peanut allergy is.

he almost always has a setback in summers. when he was younger, it seemed that multiple summer viruses were the trigger. viruses can set off reactions in children like him as if they've eaten a food they are allergic to. this past summer, i just could not get him cleared up. on my personal scale of 1-10 for allergy reactions and overall misery of life (w/ 10 being the worst), he was at a steady 7, sometimes 8. i just could not figure out what he was reacting so strongly to. his worst/most sensitive allergies are to corn, dairy, egg and dog. we had gotten a new dog (2 great danes now) but i've seen with my own eyes that he does not react to these low allergen dogs, so i knew it wasn't that.

eventually, his reactions got so bad that his swiss cheese skin full of open sores began to slough off in patches on his hands and feet and we had to do a round of oral steroids and antihistamines and practically bind him up at night to stop the incessant scratching. one day it hit me like a ton of bricks that even though we knew better than to take *him* near the public dog park (instant hives!), we were taking the new dog almost daily over the summer to help with her socialization. and then bringing the dogs home *in the vehicle 'lou rides in*, covered in the fur, dander, slobber -and sometimes worse!- of dozens of other dogs, potentially hundreds! we'd bring them home to spread one of his worst allergens all over the house!

as soon as i realized this had to be the cause of his misery, we stopped going to the dog park, deep cleaned the house (thanks be for all wood floors, i say this daily!), washed the dogs and waited to see if he improved. he did, rapidly and dramatically. before the dog park excursions, we'd had his overall IgE level tested and it was elevated, but not alarming. normal is around 118, and his was in the 300's, if i recall correctly. after the dog park excursions, we retested him and it was at 3, 776. this was the end of the mysterious allergy setback of summer, 2011.

we have been settling in for fall and winter and getting ready to enjoy 'lou's healthy time of year. this is when his weight gains and growth become consistent and bigger, this is when his skin gets healthier and this is when we can test with food trials to see if he's tolerating his lesser allergens yet (wheat, soy). but this year i'd taken him to a new dr., a holistic MD - during the height of the summer outbreaks, when we hadn't yet figured them out. we got the results of his extensive testing after 'lou was well on the path to recovery and we were as surprised as the dr. to hear the results. 'lou's blood tests had revealed markers and red flags for a rare, autosomal-recessive genetic disorder called Glutaric Acidemia II (GA2) , an inborn error of metabolism. he recommended that we take 'lou to a biochemical geneticist next.

the more i learned about the disorder, the more i noticed symptoms of 'lou's (and maybe even jonah's atypical seizure disorder and jake's atypical sleep disorder!) that could fit for milder forms of the genetic disorder. 'lou cannot ever go for more than 3-4 hours without food or nursing. at 4 yrs old, he still nurses multiple times a day (6ish on most days, more when he's not feeling well) as well as a couple of times through the night. at this age, most self-led weaning children will begin to avoid public nursing, but 'lou does not. he becomes frantic when he hasn't eaten and needs to nurse, saying things like, "i need mookies now, i'm gonna die, i'm gonna barf..." when he's symptomatic he also has mild/moderate exercise intolerance and muscle weakness and throughout his life there have been several times that someone has noted that he has acetone breath, including right after he was born and had nursed for the first couple of times. if it turns out he does have this or another metabolic disorder, i am certainly going to credit long-term breastfeeding with helping to keep metabolic and sugar crises at bay, because no matter where we are, no matter how far from food, i always have calories and nourishment perfect and ready for him.

by the time we got in to see the geneticist, 'lou was at baseline and as healthy as he gets. he was retested for GA II, but it came back normal. the dr. tells us that you have to test when the child is sick for accurate test results, so now we have to wait until he is sick again. which, it's my job to hope he never is again. in the meantime, his examination revealed several mild or benign genetic/birth defects that 'lou has which the geneticist felt could fit another genetic syndrome that includes lack of growth ("short stature" and "failure to thrive" were his official diagnoses of 'lou's size), so we agreed to test for that one, as well.

the test results for Russell-Silver Syndrome also came back negative and we agreed to see an endocrinologist to cover all the bases, until we can retest for GA II, when 'lou is ill.

he also has genetic abnormalities that match the description of Aarskog-Scott syndrome, so we will be testing for that next.

the endocrinologist said there could be 4 causes for lack of growth in a child:

1. severe emotional stress; like death of a parent, divorce, move to a new house, abusive environment, etc... none of which are present in our case.

2. nutritional deficiencies. not applicable in our case - which even the dr. agreed with after seeing all of 'lou's bloodwork for vitamin & mineral levels.

3. excessive steroid use. 'lou's only been on oral steroids 3 times and we don't use any other form, like sinus sprays - this isn't a factor for him.

4.inflammation. excessive inflammation with many autoimmune disorders can cause the patient to stop growing. i've known of many, many cases that were far worse off than my son's, who still grew - but i'm not sure if anyone can say what level of inflammation stops growth for any individual person - so i leave this one as a possible question mark.

what we do know for sure now is that his "short stature" is not what was genetically intended for him, based on the tests the endocrinologist performed. he said that 'lou's results came back indicating that he has the growth hormone levels of a person of average height. given his small size, the dr. expected to see levels for a person of short stature. which means something is interfering w/ the growth hormones actually getting to where they need to go to make 'lou grow to average height for his age. but it's not his thyroid or any other gland or organ that has anything to do with hormones or growth factors; they all tested normal. so this dr. has given 'lou 6 more months (5 at the time of this writing) to grow an inch. if he does not, his recommendation is for daily human growth hormone injections until 'lou is 16 years old.

i wonder what the consequences of forcing a body to grow taller when you can't get it to gain weight consistently could be. i don't want to make my son emaciated and weak by forcing his body to grow if it doesn't think it should expend the energy doing so, on its own. i'm very driven to find out the cause behind this lack of growth before i just start treating the symptoms blindly.

the endocrinologist agrees that we need to follow up with the geneticists and explore and rule out growth and metabolic disorders in the meantime.

we already saw a GI specialist for him when he was younger as well as a dietician/nutritionist. the GI dr. said he most likely has Eosinophilic Esophagitis. other than the poor growth and multiple food allergies, though, i see no symptoms of it whatsoever. so i declined the confirming biopsy because we already do what we'd need to do if he did have it, which is a radical elimination diet and oral steroids when needed. the dietician said his diet is fantastic and she'd like to share my blog with other patients.

we tried S.L.I.T. therapy this year, and the dr. said 'lou was the 1st patient he'd had with such an incredible sensitivity to corn. (we got to 1 part corn, 10 MILLION parts water and he was still having reactions). the dr. had to recommend we discontinue therapy, and said he'd not had a case he couldn't treat before, so he thinks there is something besides normal food allergy going on with 'lou also. even though it didn't work for us, i completely recommend this therapy (and this dr!) and would try it again in a heartbeat if 'lou were eligible. i did a lot of research into it before we attempted it and this local dr. in particular treated us and our unusual case with the utmost care, concern and careful research. i unhesitatingly refer any interested mothers i work with to dr. tulin-silver for this therapy locally.

so we've been muddling through dr. appointment after dr. appointment and blood test after blood test these past few weeks and all the while the actual allergy reactions really seem to be calming down. i would get 'lou to baseline, then he'd flare up and i'd figure out it wasn't a food, but fleece, which i had no idea is a known skin irritant! then it was any microfiber and wool. he hasn't had a reaction i would put above a 3 all of this fall. we've even had a couple of accidental exposures (white beans in some chili and citric acid in some pineapple) and his reaction was fleeting! instead of the 2-4 weeks of rash, sores, sleeplessness and itchy misery even the smallest ingestion of citric acid used to cause, 'lou was only red and itchy for 2 hours last week! the beans barely caused a blip on his allergy radar.

i've also noticed that 'lou is beginning to react to all kinds of synthetic fabrics just from touching them now. when we go to the drs'. offices or stores or pretty much anywhere outside our own home, he is at baseline when we leave and begins to flare up in the new environment.

he gets red and blotchy, sometimes with wide streaks going down from under his eyes to his jaws. he starts scratching and rubbing. even the rash is not in the typical pattern of a food reaction, so i can tell it's from contact. his nose will start running and yet sounds inflamed and stuffy at the same time. if he sits near a smoker or heavy perfume wearer, his eyes will start burning and he will start asking for a wet rag to put on them.

as soon as we leave, it will all start clearing up - literally while we are still in our vehicle, 10-15 minutes later. it is the most amazing thing i've seen. anyone with a child who has only had very long-lasting, very severe atopic reactions will know what i mean when i say that these temporary and transient reactions seem like magic to me.

perhaps the oddest and most instinctively contradictory part of this for me as a mother to an anaphylactic-reactive child AND an atopic one is that 'lou has also occasionally broken out in hives w/ this new pattern of chemical or environmental reactiveness and i have had to consciously remind myself that while hives are an emergency of the most dire kind in my daughter, they are nothing to worry about in my son and will fade away as soon as we get him out of the area where they started!

his allergist has been telling me all along that the general course these hyperallergic children seem to follow is if they are born with food allergies or develop them in infancy, then they tend to start outgrowing them by 2 or 3, whereupon they begin to develop seasonal/environmental allergies/asthma instead. he thinks these recent changes in 'lou's reaction patterns could indicate that 'lou is finally falling into line w/ the typical pattern, although he's doing it a little later than average and the dr. says most children like 'lou already had chemical sensitivities all along and don't develop them this late, at the same time as the seasonal ones. so we decided to test his allergies with a RAST blood test again and i just got the results the other day.

his overall IgE score has dropped from 3, 776 to 1, 180 (again, w/ around 118 being normal). i think this reflects us cutting out the dog park cross-contamination exposures, his allergist thinks it might signal the seasonal allergies abating w/ the colder weather (3,776 was august, 1,1,80 was december). so this was in line with what we expected and hoped for.

his allergy to dog has more than tripled and is now off the charts. it is literally not measureable anymore unless it comes way down and gets back onto the charts. (it went from 42.7 to over 150). this one didn't surprise me when you think there are hundreds of dogs that go to that dog park and my dogs were bringing home traces of them all, all summer. the allergist worries our own dogs are keeping this number so high, but i've seen with my own eyes how he reacts to dogs (hives, instant "sunburn" rash everywhere, itching) and he doesn't react to ours.

his allergy to cat went from 9.75 to 80 which added insult to injury as i rehomed my beloved cat of 15 years over 2 years ago because of his allergy and he has almost no exposure to cats, ever. he maybe goes into a home with cats in it once every 3-6 months, if that.

grass and trees are now really bad, which also lines up with what we expected.

what we didn't expect is what happened with the foods. dairy quadrupled. dairy has gone up as if he or i are consistently eating some form of dairy. he has never in his entire life eaten any form of dairy. he only got exposed to it through me in utero and then for 7 wks postpartum, through my milk. after that, i cut out every trace of it. the only way i can think he is getting exposed now is simple contact from the rest of the family eating it. his skin is as thin and fragile as rice paper, even when he's not reacting to something. it is always tight and dry, more like an elderly person's than a child's.

he is now also showing up as allergic to all the things we eat. bananas, beef, pork, coconut, avocados, garlic, even rice. he's beginning to have reactions to contact with some of these foods, like coconut. combined w/ the foods he's been allergic to all along, this doesn't leave us much to eat! i call this an "allergic crisis" and this is the 3rd time it has happened to him. we may have to put him on steroids, go down to eating only 2-3 or items that are safe for him for a couple of weeks and hope the steroids calm things down. it is interesting to note that he continues to gain weight through the previous 2 - and this - allergic crisis. he is getting harder and harder to keep at baseline, and he is beginning to wake at night with itching and crying, but he has gained 4 oz in 2 weeks, which is excellent for him. testing also showed that his vitamin d and niacin levels are currently optimal (they were low before and we began supplementation).

atopic children have extremely permeable skin and can transmit allergens directly into their bloodstream this way. 3 of his 4 siblings and his father still eat dairy in our home. the only way i can think of to stop these exposures is to ban dairy from our house completely. it puts a whole new perspective on things like the ice cream party my daughter just had in her kindergarten class. even tho i brought her her own rice milk ice cream, 29 other kindergartners sat around her, dripping and oozing dairy onto their faces, hands, chairs and tables. i've now come to view dairy the way other mothers might view, say, ebola smears.

he starts kindergarten next fall. if i think asking our school to go peanut free was fun, what would it be like to ask his classrooms to give up their pizza and ice cream parties? i guess i will just be keeping him home on party days if his levels remain this high.

all of his other food allergies have gone up, as well -although none so drastically as dairy. (those who know me well and recall that my first recommendation toward gut healing for *any* allergy child is to ditch the dairy (a known gut irritant) can perhaps appreciate the irony and my extreme irkability at this test result!)

wheat was almost close to being the first allergy he "outgrew", but it's back on the allergic radar now. corn is up, despite me seeing less severe reactions with accidental exposures.

his allergist is very surprised as we both expected all the foods to be lower as the seasonal went higher. i can't imagine a child this allergic to *everything*. thoughts of the bubble boy movie come to mind. i am holding out every hope right now that the test just hasn't quite caught up with the reality. and that his growth is also on a delayed reaction from the horrible summer and that soon it will rebound and he will have a nice growth spurt and we can be done with the scarier potential diagnoses.

although honestly, there have been times i've thought the shots and supplements and diets and protocols for those disorders would be easier than what we have to do right now - especially if treating the underlying genetic disorder helped to clear up the food allergies.

so that's where we're at, 4 years later and no clear cut answers or real improvement yet. still, i feel like we are on the edge of some kind of change and i am putting all my energy and intentions toward it being for the better. i'd love to hear from anyone with any similar experiences or insights!

and my best new tip is this:

make an album on FB to keep track of your child's (or your!) allergy symptoms. i went back and put in pics of all of 'lou's reactions and rashes, chronologically, right from birth - with a brief description and list of possible triggers/exposures next to them. this has turned into an invaluable tool for me. i scan through the pics in perfect order and pick up on patterns and triggers much more easily than from my food log alone.

for instance, i recently noticed that in every night-crying-and-scratching pic, he was sleeping in our microfleece sheets, but in good sleeping pics, they were cotton sheets! i also noticed which type of rash seemed to go w/ which type of allergen this way. and it has become especially helpful in meeting with new specialists. i email it to them before our appointment and a picture really is worth a thousand words as it saves us both time and effort in trying to keep track of and describe his symptoms. you can copy and paste the public link to allow anyone to view it, even people not on facebook.

and for anyone in michigan or nearby who thinks they might like to utilize the fact that our dr.s and pharmacy have already had to learn about corn and other "extreme" food allergies because of treating 'lou, here's a list of the dr.s i use and highly recommend:

Welcome to Troy Family Practice, PLLC » Troy Family Practice, PLLC ( dr. stacey beltz is a primary care physician who "gets" and works with concerns of a mother breastfeeding a hyperallergic child)

allergy/bahrainwalla (dr. abdul bahrainwala is the most patient and open-minded allergist we've ever met who has learned to think outside the 'prescriptions for symptoms" box for kids like 'lou & truly respect, value & listen to a parent as an expert on their child)

Bio Energy Medical Center 734-995-3200 (dr. james neuenschwander, holistic MD - not sure if i love this guy b/c i told him once i thought another dr. might be avoiding my calls and he laughed his ass off and said, "want me to call him and tell him that's not gonna work with you?" or because he's not just another pretty dr. face but digs deeper and looks for the main cause and not just the symptoms. if we find out 'lou really does have GA II, it will only be because this dr. took the time to look harder then anyone else so far.)

S.L.I.T. (dr. tulin-silver gets all of my referrals for local moms considering allergy shots as well as ones having unresolving food allergy issues akin to 'lou's.)

http://www.richmanrootdelaney.com/ (dr. delaney is a peds dentist whose entire staff consider and accommodate children with concerns like 'lou's.)

Physicians Compounding Pharmacy - full range of compounded medications, including cosmeceuticals, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals. (best compounding pharmacy ever! karen raetz has learned everything about corn terms right along with me, i trust her implicitly not to make a mistake or overlook anything in making our medications and supplements.)

being a mother.

2011-12-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

there are certain times when your status as somebody's mother hits you like a ton of bricks.
like the 1st time you hold, wear or catch the fresh warm offal of another human being.
you think,
"omg!! this is what only parents do, i'm really a parent now!"

or the 1st time you watch one of your children become gravely ill,
choke until they turn blue, or have a seizure or anaphylactic reaction.
and you think,
"my life depends on yours - if this child dies, i will die, too -
omg, i am really a mother."

or deep in the dark watches of the night, when lispy little declarations
of love are whispered fervently in the general direction of your breast.
and you think,
"i am your mother, what on earth did i have to live for before you?"

and sometimes you have to look a little harder for it.
like when you always hang your leather belt on the empty towel rod
in the bathroom, just so.

and one day you walk in and there's a miniature copy
of your brown leather belt hanging right next to yours, side by side,
hung just so.
and you think,
"i am her mother - she wants to be just like me. how lucky am i?"

Coconut Pumpkin Pie with Almost Graham Cracker Crust.

2011-11-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

i'm so excited to have finally come up with a pumpkin pie recipe that is totally alternative-ingredient based but still tastes enough like classic pumpkin pie to serve at thanksgiving. it's taken me almost 4 years to get it just right! this year i also finally found the perfect combo of spices to make the crust have that 'graham cracker' flavor - it's a sprinkle of allspice and a dollop of honey - who knew?! this pumpkin pie recipe is: dairy, egg, soy, wheat, gluten, peanut, tree nut, corn and GMO free, vegan and completely delicious!

Coconut Pumpkin Pie with Almost Graham Cracker Crust

crust:

3 cups 'bob's red mill' dairy free, gluten free all purpose flour

1/2 tsp 'real salt' sea salt

1/2 cup virgin, unrefined coconut oil

1/2 cup 'c2o' brand pure (single ingredient) coconut water or cold spring water

2 tsp allspice

a generous swirl of raw, (preferably local-grown) honey around the ingredients in mixing bowl (can try agave syrup if honey is not vegan enough, but this might reduce 'graham' flavor)

combine flour & salt in a large bowl. add oil & stir w/ a fork until flour forms 'pebbles'.

add water, mix further w/ fork & form into a dough ball. divide into 2 equal halves. roll our 1/2 of the dough - can use wax paper to prevent sticking (place dough b/t 2 sheets - a little water under bottom sheet will prevent sliding and a little dry flour on the surface w/ prevent sticking). roll out dough. peel back top sheet of wax paper & turn pie crust upside down into 1st pie plate. peel off remaining layer of wax paper. press edges of dough w/ fork or thumb around pie plate. prick bottom and sides of crust w/ a fork. bake for about 10 mins in a preheated oven at 375. repeat process w/ 2nd ball of dough - this recipe makes enough for 2, 9" pies.

pumpkin pie filling:

4 cups organic, single-ingredient pumpkin pie filling.

1 1/2 cups organic brown sugar

1 1/2 cups full fat coconut milk (i only use 'thai kitchen' brand in the can).

1 1/2 cups hemp milk (can sub rice/soy/almond/oat as allergy restrictions allow)

1 TBS pumpkin pie spice

6 1/2 TBS tapioca starch

combine ingredients in sauce pan. bring to simmer, stir until it reaches desired thickness. the thicker the consistency, the firmer your pumpkin pie. requires constant stirring once it begins to simmer, you can't walk away from this pan. pour into prepared crusts. bake at 375 and begin checking at 45 mins. depending on the combo of milks you used and oven, it can take from 45-60 minutes to finish cooking. i go by smell and darkness of the pie filling itself, as the crust may appear darker than normal due to the allspice. refrigerate overnight to set up. this is the closest i've ever come in texture to traditional pumpkin pie -and tho you may be tempted to try a less fat version of the coconut milk, i can tell you from experience, your pie will be soup without it. we warm up and serve w/ a dollop of softened coconut milk vanilla bean ice cream instead of whipped cream. enjoy!

2011-11-16T17:52:00.001-08:00

thank you all so much for all your support and votes in the contest. i still can't believe i finished 4th out of 114 contestants! these are some of the best blogs i've ever found for food allergy help and info - and clicking on this button will take you right to a list of the entire 25. if i had had this list somewhere when my hyperallergic son was 1st diagnosed, it would have saved me so much time and trouble. besides the increased exposure this contest has brought my site, i feel like the reward is having this list of the top 25 food allergy mom blogs, it's worth its weight in gold.

vote for green and bitchy!

2011-10-26T22:17:00.001-07:00

i am honored to have been nominated into 'circle of moms' top 25 food allergy mom blogs list.

if you enjoy this blog and like speculating beyond the food allergies, EE and other epidemic-proportion diagnoses our kids are getting these days to what might be causing them...and you suspect that finding more natural ways to nourish and nurture our children might be the key...then vote for greenandbitchy!

you can vote as often as once every 24 hours until 11/16. i'm delighted to have been nominated - thank you to whomever suggested my blog - and thank you all for the support!

this is a very exciting competition and we have a little less than 2 weeks to go! i have been hanging in at the top 3 spots by the skin of my teeth and even made it to #1 a few times - thank you for the support and votes and keep it coming!

~jack

Top 25 Food Allergy Mom Blogs - Circle of Moms

~jack

healthy tips for flu season!

2011-10-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

from a mom of five kids, four of whom are in public schools
during flu season in the midwest, USA, here are my pearls:

~cod liver oil (carlson's, lemon infused) - 1-2 tsp every night
(the vite d alone helps boost the immune system and reduce allergic reactivity- and this time of year in michigan, we ALL need more vite d - this is one of the best, most readily absorbed sources!)

~elderberry extract or concentrate, 2 tsp every night when everyone is healthy, 2 tsp 3-4 times daily or as symptoms pop up - you can't overdo this stuff and it's super YUMMY! (just google "elderberry & flu" and you won't b/l the amazing properties of this wonder food).

~saline mist as nasal flushing (we like 'ocean' brand available at costco). we do this every morning once we turn the heat back on in the house. (this helps to rinse away allergens, dust and mold breathed in while sleeping all night and helps to remoisturize sinuses dried out and irritated by the artificial dry heat.)

~lanolin or aquaphor to line nostrils, every morning. we use q-tips - if you don't like petroleum-based products, use 'lansinoh' brand lanolin. if you have hyperallergic kids, you might want to stick w/ the aquaphor. this lines and seals the delicate nasal membranes and prevents more penetration by airborne/environmental allergens. it also seals in the moisture from the nasal rinsing and is 100% effective in preventing winter nosebleeds if done at least daily! we do the rinsing & moisturizing 2-3X daily when the kids have very runny noses, especially if it turns greenish. with this routine, my kids never have more than clear snot for 2-3 days anymore, even with the worst flu and colds. this also prevents crusty, painful & irritating buildup -& boogers!- in the noses. i also apply a thin layer around mouths and cheeks in the colder weather to prevent dryness, chapping and cracking.

~slather the feet with vapor rub and cover with socks for congestion and coughs - especially at bedtime! it somehow penetrates and seems to work better - especially on kids who have sensitive skin and say that "it burns" on the upper body.

~peppermint oil in a tepid bath can help to reduce fever - and the anti-nausea part of the aromatherapy can help anyone around it!

~use pure hydrogen peroxide as a mouthwash once weekly, especially during times of illness. not only does it have amazing health benefits and kill germs and bacteria, but even only doing this once a week, i notice all the kids' teeth get whiter and brighter right away & any bad breath is eliminated and reduced for days! i don't recommend it any more often for kids, though - as it can cause tooth sensitivity.

~we use 'republic of tea' brand 'get wellness' & 'get soothed' teas for when sore throats and stomach upset creep in. chock full of beneficial healing and soothing herbs, they're the perfect remedy to stomach flu.

~coconut water for hydration during vomiting. loaded with essential rehydrators and electrolytes and nothing artificial, there is no match for pure coconut water during illness with vomiting and/or diarrhea. it has been used as an actual IV fluid in emergencies, it is so benign & beneficial to the human body. forget the bubbly corn syrup- laden clear sodas, this is best for sick people!

~ice chips spritzed with lemon juice and sprinkled with sugar is another aid i have found for children with stomach illnesses to help rehydrate them. doesn't leave a nasty aftertaste like 7up, and lemon juice is an incredible anti-bacterial and germicidal agent.

~'dr. bronner's' peppermint magic soap in a bucket for actual vomiting. perfect for kids who might not make it to the toilet. the uplifting, soothing fragrance is a known anti-nausea remedy and fills your house with much lovelier aromas than those that come with stomach bugs! also much nicer going down the toilet than a plain bucket of barf!!

these are the things we do in our house that we've found really work in a state of neverending flu season and very little sun. we also can't use traditional medications on our multiple, hyperallergic little guy, so these are the natural remedies we've found & tried.

a peek into my world.

2011-10-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

i had the following convo this am & had to share:

me: "it's time to go - "where are 'lou's shoes, you know - the doc marten's?"
jonah: "which are those? did they used to be jake's?"
me: "yes, the black hand-me-down shoes that he just grew into."
jovie: "and were they bo's, too?"
me: "yes, you know, they're black with thick soles & yellow laces, he wears them all the time now - have you seen them?"
jonah: "were they mine, too?"
me: "yes, you loved them & helped me pack them away for the next baby - do you know the ones i mean now? where are they?"
jonah: "were they get-wet shoes or not?"
me: "not, they'll get ruined if you get them too wet."
jovie: "were they mine, too - or are they just ugly boy shoes?"
me: "ugly boy shoes, you never liked them."
jovie: "was he wearing them yesterday?"
me: "yes! those are the ones! the doc martens! where did he put them?"
:::long pause as they all look at each other:::
jovie: "we have no idea what you're talking about."

:::fast forward 20 minutes and i have found them down in the costume bin:::
me: "THESE are the ones, THESE are the doc martens, NOW do you guys know what i was talking about?"

jovie & 'lou get those light bulb expressions and exclaim almost in unison:
"OH! you mean the waspy SPIDOODLE STRING shoes!!! why didn't you say so?!"

New Study on Allergies & Food Bans

2011-08-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll: One-in-Five US Households Have Food Allergies

Majority Support Bans on Common Food Allergens in Public Places

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- One in five Americans reports having at least one household member with a food allergy or intolerance, according to the Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090507/NY12658LOGO )

Thomson Reuters and NPR developed the monthly poll to gauge attitudes and opinions on a wide range of health issues.

The latest survey in the series finds that among the 20 percent of U.S. households where someone has a food allergy or intolerance, milk and milk products were the most commonly cited problem (36 percent), followed by fruits (19 percent), vegetables (9 percent), peanuts (9 percent), shellfish (8 percent), gluten (7 percent) and wheat (6 percent). Food allergies were far more prevalent among respondents under 35 years of age (24 percent) than those in the 65+ age group (15 percent). Approximately-two thirds of households reporting food allergies said they had been diagnosed by a physician.

Among all respondents, a 59-percent majority said they support bans on common food allergens (such as peanuts) in public places such as airplanes and lunchrooms. Conversely, 49 percent of respondents said they felt food allergy fears have been blow out of proportion.

"I'm intrigued by the significant difference in reported allergies among those under 35 years old and those over 65 years old," said Raymond Fabius, M.D., chief medical officer for the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters. "It appears that the younger generation is more acutely aware of food allergies and they are making dietary decisions based on this information."

"Parents hear a lot about food allergies these days as school systems exclude problem foods from their cafeterias and field trips," said Scott Hensley, NPR health correspondent and blogger. "These data show that most Americans don't object to the bans of foods, such as peanuts, from public places for safety's sake."

For a copy of the poll results, visit http://healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/npr/assets/NPR_report_FoodAllergies.pdf

To date, Thomson Reuters and NPR have addressed numerous healthcare topics, gauging sentiment on generic drugs, abortion, vaccines, food safety and other issues. NPR's reports on the surveys (including this latest one) are archived here:http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=137038712&ps=sh_sttag

Thomson Reuters also offers a library of past poll results: http://healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/npr/

The Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll is powered by the Thomson Reuters PULSE(SM) Healthcare Survey, an independently funded, nationally representative telephone poll, which collects information about health behavior, attitudes and utilization from more than 100,000 US households annually. Survey questions are developed in conjunction with NPR. The figures in this month's poll are based on 3,014 participants interviewed from June 1-12, 2011. The margin of error is 1.8 percent.

About Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs more than 55,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

About NPR

NPR is an award-winning, multimedia news organization and an influential force in American life. In collaboration with more than 900 independent public radio stations nationwide, NPR strives to create a more informed public - one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.

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More Green Tea Remedy!

2011-07-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've still been using the Green Tea to stop 'Lou's itching - especially at night to help him sleep, but he's begun to dislike being misted with it. It apparently has a cooling effect, similar to Noxema. Now that we have the air conditioning on, it really chills him to be misted with it when his skin is raw and inflamed and not able to maintain temperatures properly.

I've searched high and low for a cream, balm or ointment made with a base of green tea and nothing he is allergic to. The closest I came up with was a google search that returned info on a new prescription medicine for genital warts made from Green Tea. Interesting that even Big Pharma has caught on to its amazing properties, but not helpful to my toddler son's issue.

I checked with my wonderful compounding pharmacy and within hours they made me a heavy cream made entirely of Green Tea powder in Shea Butter!

My son's skin is actually too thin, inflamed and fragile for the Shea Butter base at the moment, so I need to call back and have it done with coconut oil or white wax or calendula or somesuch, but I am so gratified to have a resource like this! For $17.50, I got a jar of much more potent and concentrated itch relief for my little guy that will stay on his skin longer than the spray mist I have been using. This should also keep longer, as the tea I brew up spoils after a week or so at room temperature.

I'm sure this compounding pharmacy could ship it out to others wanting to try it - Physician's Compounding Pharmacy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. 248.758.9100.

It is "EGCG 1% in Shea Butter, 60 GM".

My little pill swallows a pill!

2011-07-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

My little allergy guy has been away from baseline long enough that he's starting to reach milestones centered around being broken out and flared up. His current big one is learning to swallow capsules at

3 3/4 years. Hearing his allergist say today, "That is not possible, he is too young to know how!", almost made me as proud as if it were just a "normal" milestone.

In addition to the antihistamine Cyproheptadine (corn-free Periactin) that he's been on since June for this current outbreak, we've also started him on Niacin as his levels are low on this restricted diet. The Cyproheptadine we always got in liquid as it was easiest to get into him, although so bitter it makes him gag. The Niacin I decided to ask for as a powder inside capsules, so I could dump it into a teaspoonful of applesauce or elderberry syrup. Then I decided to make it even easier and just teach him to swallow the capsule.

I showed him by swallowing one 1st myself, being careful to show him just where the pill has to lay (at the very back of the tongue) in order to be swallowed. I told him to be careful not to choke on the water as he uses it to "swim the pill down to his belly". I used my finger to make sure the pill is as far back on his tongue as it can go and had his cup of water at the ready. He got it the first time!

It makes our lives a lot easier, especially as he is beginning to show signs of infection at his hands and feet from this current renewed outbreak since stopping the Prednisolone and we are starting a new, stronger antihistamine, Hydroxyzine (corn-free Atarax) and may need to put him on corn free oral antibiotics if the topical ones we're starting today don't clear up the beginnings of the skin infection he's now developing.

One thing to r/m when going from safe, corn-free liquid or pure powder compounded medications is what the capsule is made of. I triple checked to be sure ours are made from gelatin and not plant-based materials. Plant based materials need to be thoroughly researched to be sure they are not corn-derived.

How Much Quality of Life is Negotiable?

2011-06-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

As a Food Allergy Mom, I find myself doing it all the time. Bargaining about the quality of life my food allergy kids have.

"He can't eat normal foods, but what he does eat is healthier."

"She can't do birthday parties, but she's better off not taking the risk."

"He's covered in a rash and is so miserably itchy he can't sleep or eat or play, but at least it's not Anaphylactic."

"She's got Anaphylactic Peanut Allergy, but at least it's only one food I have to worry about for her."

And then one day it hits me what I'm dealing with between the both of them. One can't eat anything and the other one can be killed by one of the most popular convenience snack foods in our country. And it also hits me that I've put on blinders and stopped even trying to think about what a life without food allergies coulda, woulda shoulda been like for them.

I look at 'Lou and think,

"Well, he looks terrible and he's broken out just about as bad as he gets, but this only seems to happen about 4 or 5 times a year now and really the itching is only terrible about 15% of his entire day...so, it's not so bad, lots of people have it way worse!"

I intentionally push away thoughts of studies showing prolonged inflammation being linked to higher risks of cancer and autoimmune disease. I consciously avoid calculating how much of his 3.5 yrs he's been healthy compared to how much of it he's been reactive and ill.

If I start to think about how freaking sick I am of he and I having to eat the same 24ish foods for over 3 years now, I sternly remind myself of the kids with EE who have permanent feeding tubes attached to little backpacks so they can still be mobile while they're getting their calories. They don't get to eat at all anymore, in many cases. They play with and smell food while their families eat, so they can get a sense of the ritual of it, but they can't even eat anymore at all. It's happening more and more frequently to kids with food allergies as multiple and sensitive as 'Lou's.

I also go to bargaining instantly when things get bad.

"Okay, here we go again, I don't know what he's reacting to now, but whatever it is, I can cut it out - we can be fine on one (or more) less foods - (Hey, we still have about 24 things we can eat in the whole wide world, why the hell not?) nothing can be worse than that first shock and the withdrawals from cutting out the top 8 allergens plus corn and beans, lentils & sesame, my beloved cat & all my favorite skin and laundry products - we'll be fine!!"

Once in a while, something just happens. Somehow the blinders get knocked askew. And I get a glimpse. I see a normal 3.5 yr old next to my guy. I see that other toddler is 2-3 times bigger than 'Lou. I can't tear my eyes away from his or her beautiful, intact, well-filled, rosy, gleaming skin. Suddenly he looks like I've raised him on fish food all his life. He's all dark circles, thin lifeless hair and red, inflamed, broken skin. His head is too big, too, while we're at it. He is the only child I have ever seen who can fall while standing flat on his feet in the middle of an empty room and land right on his head. He's like a human lollipop.

Or I'll be out in public with him and he'll see another child eating a soft serve ice cream cone or a bag of french fries and say to me,

"What's that, Mumma?"

He has no clue what the ice cream truck is - he calls it the 'Music Van'.

Or I'll watch my daughter light up like a light bulb upon seeing another little girl or baby...and then watch the light fade from her eyes as she comes over to ask me, "Can I touch?"

No public play areas, no birthday parties at ice cream parlors or most food/play venues, no birthday cake from bakeries - my 5.5 year old daughter already knows without asking these aren't options for her.

Once in a very great while, it really gets me down. It's not something everyone immediately understands or empathizes with. In fact, you can tell someone you have children with severe to life threatening food allergies and get anything from outright disbelief, misinformation about how they are overdiagnosed and your child(ren) probably really don't even have them, mild curiosity at the freakishness of being allergic to everything "normal" ppl eat all the time to defensiveness that anyone would suggest people can be allergic to something they themselves hold dear.

Sometimes I just get tired.

Sometimes I get angry at the unfairness of it. I never wanted this for my children. To be happy at the half-childhoods they are getting without normal activities or foods. To be at the mercy of ignorant people who want to put my children at greater risk rather than do a little research and learn what a valid concern this is. To learn to do without, to be left out, not to expect what others can take for granted...some days it gets hard to even call it bargaining when I can't really see the plus side for my kids in any of it.

I'm not pining to give my children the foods that probably made them sick in the first place, I'm just mourning at having to negotiate a percentage of my children's quality of life away.

So there's the moody preamble to my latest update on 'Lou and the Green Tea trial. Ooops, was my bitchy showing? Ah, well - it is part of the title of this blog, now you know why.

By day 5-6 of using the Green Tea twice daily, 'Lou broke out anew. Unlike his normal food reactions, this rash has covered him from head to toe in a beefy, inflamed rash with no individually defined bumps or sores. It's not concentrating at his hands and feet, like his worst food exposures do. It's also over his buttocks and even his nose, which I actually just realized I've never seen on him before. I began the oral steroid and antihistamine for him on monday, June 20, 2011 and the pics above are from today: Wednesday, June 22, 2011. They haven't touched it yet, at 48 hours.

However, I have to say the Green Tea may not be taking away the redness and inflammation with this new, more severe outbreak, but it is *still* helping with the itching. He's only itchy about 2 or 3 total hours out of 24 (See, there's that compromising and settling for less again -how much misery can my child deal with and I still have to call it okay?) and if I soak him with it before bed, we are still getting almost a full night's sleep with only about 1 or 2 wakings to comfort nurse.

The best discovery is that when I let him start spraying himself whenever he feels he needs it, he somehow doesn't feel so helpless, overwhelmed or victimized by the discomfort. I guess it's kind of like the way hospitals let patients start administering their own pain meds. Just feeling in more control can help with the perception of pain/discomfort. So, i'm still using it twice daily on him and letting him spot- spray itchy parts as needed any other time.

I want to take comfort that though these reactions are bad... and last a long time...and keep him from growing well... at least they're not Anaphylactic, that would be the scariest! And then I remember,

"Oh yeah, I have one of those, too!"

And she's starting school in the Fall and I get to deal with the worry and red tape over how to keep her safe and alive there while trying to keep him healthy and thriving at home. And it always happens when hubby is out of town for 2 weeks and I'm on my own with 5 kids out of school. (It really does! I looked up 'Lou's allergy log at a friend's recollection and we were doing this last year in June, too!!)

Some days are just made for the corn, soy and gluten free margaritas! What do other food allergy moms do when they're feeling discouraged?

Green Tea Healing Day 3 - Before & After

2011-06-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

These are the before & after pictures. I started spraying 'Lou twice daily with the Green Tea on Tuesday 6/14/11 and today is Friday 6/17/11.

There's been a delay in getting the steroid and antihistamine his Allergist prescribed, so I've just continued with the Green Tea this week. The night before last, He was so non-itchy after his morning spray, that I skipped his bedtime spray. He woke at 3 am and scratched incessantly until neither of us could sleep. He begged me to spray him again. We got up and put him in the shower and I sprayed him down thoroughly.

I did the blowdry from afar routine and then put a light, loose t-shirt on him and carried him back to bed with me. He was sound asleep while his skin was still slightly damp. I just can't get over what a miracle this is. I am used to kissing any sleep good bye, listening to him cry for hours, nursing all night, trying to find anything to distract him...and being a total mombie the next day. I couldn't even sleep after he fell back to sleep, because my body is so trained to stay awake when he wakes up itching like that! (Thank goodness FB is there 24/7!)

Now that it turns out his medication was never going to get here on time anyway, I am even more grateful my Dr. mentioned this remedy to me, because I know from past experience what

condition he'd be in by now after 3 days of a raging atopic breakout with nothing to help stop the reaction. His skin would probably be infected by now and he probably wouldn't be sleeping or eating and would have lost a lot more weight than he actually did this time. Now I'm actually sitting here thinking I may not need the meds at all !!

I've already written about how the Green Tea stopped the itching and inflammation, but I was worried it was drying out his skin to do so and we'd still be left with dry, fragile and flaky skin that was cracking and not healing - just as if he'd been on the meds. I have been frantically trying to think of a way to get the Green Tea into a moisturizing suspension like a salve or balm to help heal and moisturize his skin at the same time that it removes the inflammation and itch. His skin has been rough, flaky, peely and cracked at the creases and moving parts for the first 2 days of this treatment.

Today I am astounded to notice a normal bit of shine coming back to his skin. The tiny scabby reaction sores are completely gone. The cracks are getting smaller. When you run your hand over his arm or leg, it no longer feels like large-grit sandpaper - in fact, it hardly feels like sandpaper at all now. The flaking has also stopped and absolutely all the redness has been gone for over a day. He ALWAYS has pronounced red rings around his eyes and red streaks down his cheeks in reaction mode.

Just wanted to keep interested readers updated on this experiment and put up some

'Before and After' pics. As always, I'd love to hear anybody else's experiences with it!

Green Tea for healing Atopic Allergic Reactions

2011-06-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

We seem to be developing a pattern of losing baseline at this time every year. 'Lou is 3 1/2 now and I finally got smart and am keeping a running log with photos of all of 'lou's outbreaks and the products we discover along the way to manage them - in an album on FaceBook. I am hoping it will help me pick up on patterns more easily, be something I can email to new specialists we consult that will provide a brief and visual compilation of his allergy history and help other parents of food allergy children that I work with!

It finally got to the point of no return last Friday (6/10/11). He was reacting as if he'd been eating one of his top allergenic foods and I'd already ruled out all the usual suspects. His skin was developing tiny open sores and at risk of becoming infected and I couldn't clear it up with my usual natural remedies, so in we went.

At the end of the appointment, I mentioned that our previous Pediatrician had told me about a study in a medical journal citing Cocoa Butter as a wonderful reparative for allergy-damaged skin. Our Allergist got that 'light bulb' expression and told me that he'd recently read an article in one of his medical journals describing the benefits of Green Tea applied topically to skin ravaged by atopic allergies.

At this point, 'Lou needs oral steroids and a good antihistamine - but, due to his extreme corn allergy, we have to order them from overseas via a compounding pharmacy. It can take a couple to a few days to get them shipped to me. In the meantime, he's not sleeping more than 3-4 hours a night (which means I'm not, either), is scratching himself to bloody ribbons and is a walking, talking, rashy, exhausted, constantly nursing, itchy, hyperactive, aggressive, angry, miserable, weepy, whiny mess. Wait, I lost track - was I describing him or me by the end of 3 days without sleep?

So his Allergist could have mentioned rubbing Iguana feces on this rash being helpful and I might have tried it...but Green Tea - who could mind trying that? I ran straight to the health food store and got the powdered version of a full-bodied Green Tea. I boiled water, mixed it up, whisked it together and let it cool. Then I put it in a spray bottle and stood him naked in the shower. I sprayed him from head to toe, until little rivulets of grass blood were running down his body in streamlets. He was scratching all over when I started and when I was done, he was just standing there, standing still for the first time since 3 days ago, when it got really bad really fast.

I let him stand there until it dried a bit, then put a long loose cotton t-shirt on him from his big brother's drawer. He asked to nurse and then went and laid in his favorite little armchair to watch a 'Diego' episode before bed. I was on the computer and kept wheeling my chair over every few minutes, to make sure he wasn't dead or something (you know- rare, one in a million contact anaphylactic Green Tea allergy, because if there was one child in this country that would have it, it would be mine).

I couldn't hear the grunting and dry rubbing sound of his scratching constantly! I've even looked out there when the tone of the scratching changed and caught him sitting down, next to our giant Great Danes slumbering on the floor. He was propped up, half reclining, rubbing his legs furiously against their short bristly fur, crosswise to the stubby ends!

After the Green Tea, he was just laying there, *relaxing* and watching his show. He fell asleep and slept ALL NIGHT. He didn't wake up even once - not to scratch, not even to nurse. Any other atopic food allergic sufferer or parent of one will know how miraculous this is when you are right at that beefy, inflamed, angry, bumpy red stage of the rash.

He woke up this morning and I sprayed him down again. This tea is very strong - his skin is acting like I've applied a steroid or antihistamine directly to it, except I can't even do that at this point, because his skin is so fragile and inflamed that the topical steroid creams and ointments burn him. As does even the raw Shea Butter we love. The Green Tea is drying up the inflammation and taking the redness away completely without hurting him at all. In fact, he says it feels great. I have given him 2 full body spray downs - one late last night and one this morning. His skin is now dry and rough and flaky looking. He is at that healing, chalky state we usually get to after a few days on steroids and antihistamines. It hasn't renewed and repaired his skin. He still has cracks at all his creases and knuckles. The little sores are still there. It's still rough and bumpy. But the redness, inflammation and itch are gone - and as any food allergy mom knows - that's worth its weight in gold. He is sleeping, eating and playing - all without scratching.

I thought I'd be spraying a gallon of the stuff on him all day, but it really seems like a little goes a long way. It's so dark and concentrated, you can't see through it. It looks like blended grass. I bought the powdered tea and added boiling water. 1 teaspoon of tea: 1 cup of water. I whisked, allowed to cool and then put in a spray bottle. I sprayed it all over him, even directly in his face. The itching ceased instantly, as soon as all of his skin was wet. As the day has progressed, I've noticed his skin looks red and inflamed again upon showering, or excessive exposure to the sun. If he says it is starting to itch, I give him a little spot spray around clothing - only had to do this twice all day. (for mornings, I plan to let him shower with his allergy-friendly soap being used only on the most vital of areas, then pat him dry and spray him entirely again - I will give him the 2nd spray down before bed at night).

He says it makes him very cold, so I lay the bottle in a sink of hot water for a few minutes before applying. It goes on warm, but something about whatever it does seems to make his skin cool off quickly. Or maybe it's just that his skin is so damaged right now, liquid feels too cold, like when you have a sunburn. At any rate, I spray it on warm, then aim the hot blow dryer at him from about 3' away while he stands in the shower to help create warmth around him.

I don't know if this can take the place of steroids and/or antihistamines, but it sure is a lifesaver while we're waiting for them to get here! On a scale of 1-10 for reaction severity, this one was a 6-7. I might try to keep using it and see if a combination of the Green Tea plus the raw Cocoa Butter can heal his skin enough that he doesn't need the meds, but keep them on hand in case this takes too long. I am also thinking about trying Bentonite clay for him tonight, but want to hold off to see what the Green Tea can really do alone first.

I was so excited about this discovery (and it came from my child's mainstream Allergist, which is almost just as exciting!!) that I just had to post. I hope it can help anyone else in a similar boat. I would love to hear about anyone else's experiences with it, if you try (or have tried) it. I am sitting here wondering about the potential for mosquito bites and bee stings, chicken pox, poison ivy, etc..., too!

I have created that online album on FaceBook, detailing 'Lou's allergic reactions, tests and treatments with chronologically progressive pics of the reactions (including this current one, which by the way the Allergist thinks may be the epic onset of seasonal allergies!) - if anyone with a similar child would like to see it, please feel free to email me at Mumma2wldthings@mac.com.

Anti Cancer Author and Cancer Survivor David Servan-Schreiber

2011-06-11T01:49:00.000-07:00

Just saw this film and feel that everyone should watch this.

Anti-Cancer

Here is an interview of him on youtube

Part 1

Part 2

Eat to Defeat Cancer

2011-06-10T17:47:00.000-07:00

Eat to Defeat Cancer

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The following article was written by Lauren Gordon, who is PETA's celebrity marketing coordinator and also a certified holistic health counselor.

The latest weapon against cancer to gain buzz is not some fancy drug with a name that's difficult to pronounce … it's food! Everyone from Dr.Oz to famous chefs like Mario Batali are talking about how diet is an important weapon for fighting disease. The "Eat to Defeat Cancer" campaign is a new movement based on research from the National Cancer Institute, the American Medical Association, and the American Society for Nutrition. The campaign is based on the idea that certain foods have properties that can actually help prevent cancer. Prevention is the key to living a healthy life, and what we put into our bodies plays a huge role in overall health and wellness.

"Angiogenesis" is the body's process for creating new blood vessels, but cancer cells can interfere with this process and use blood flow to stimulate their own growth. Eating an anti-angiogenesis diet aims to starve cancer by cutting off its blood supply, inhibiting the production of cancer cells. Anti-angiogenesis foods include strawberries, bok choy, broccoli, soybeans (especially fermented soy products such as miso and tempeh), and tomatoes (cooked is better). Green tea, dark chocolate, and various spices such as cinnamon can also decrease cancer risk. Notice a trend? These body boosters are plant-based, not processed, low in fat, and high in fiber.

Foods rich in antioxidants and fiber have been shown to lower cancer risk, where as dietary and saturated fat have been shown to increase risk. Meat is a common source of saturated fat and cholesterol, and it lacks fiber. Studies have shown that vegetarians are 40 percent less likely to develop cancer than their carnivorous counterparts. People who eat meat daily have approximately three times the colon cancer risk compared to those who rarely eat meat, according to a Harvard study. The recently released documentary Forks Over Knives studies how removing animal-based and processed foods from one's diet can have a profound impact on one's health.

Nourish yourself and fight disease from the inside out. Pile your plate with fiber-rich fruits and veggies and add anti-angiogenesis foods to your meals. Why not fill your tummy with something good for you?

What's in your kids foods??? (TEDxAustin Robyn O'Brien 2011)

2011-05-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

Gotta see this movie!!! Forks Over Knives

2011-05-05T01:39:00.000-07:00

Look for it on May 13 at local theaters.

open letter about our school going peanut free

2011-04-26T18:46:00.001-07:00

I know what you're thinking.

I'm a hypochondriac mom.

Or I'm a helicopter mom.

Or I'm a stay at home mom who has too much time on my hands and likes to try and control everything having to do with my children.

Or I'm an attention hog who just wants everyone to focus on me and my child.

Or I'm a food zealot jumping on this "food allergy" bandwagon on a mission against peanuts.

Or I'm just selfish & like to throw my weight around because I can.

I'm probably even making up or exaggerating my child's condition to get my way.

Go ahead, pick your stereotype - I've heard them all.

And none of them are true.

I have five kids, aged 3-11. I don't have time to be a helicopter mom. In fact, I have hardly been involved in any school activities or functions of any kind during the seven years and three children I've already had in school.

I'm not a hypochondriac mom - I've seen my kids have seizures, high fevers with hallucinations, night terrors and sleepwalking, sepsis from skin infections, chicken pox that got infected, failure to thrive, a broken bone, more stitches than I can count, a near drowning and anaphylaxis from allergic reactions several times, to name a few emergencies. 911 has been called to our house exactly twice in eleven years of parenting through all these emergencies. Trust me, I'm not prone to becoming hysterical nor overreacting after this many kids.

And I definitely don't have too much time on my hands.

I'm not an attention hog, either - I don't feel the need to have other people focus on issues that are painful, or personal - especially when those other people are strangers to our family and circumstances.

I'm also not a food zealot because of food allergies - well, not willingly anyway. If you knew me before food allergies, you'd know I raised my kids on mac & cheese from the box, fish sticks, ramen pride noodles, boiled eggs and LOTS and LOTS of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.

I'm not throwing my weight around because I can, either. In fact, I couldn't - this wasn't my choice and this was forced on me just like it's being forced on you.

And I only wish I were exaggerating my child's condition.

Four years ago I sat in my childrens' Allergist's office with my mouth hanging open.

"NO peanut butter?! As in, like EVER?!" I repeated, astounded and dismayed.

"That's right", He confirmed.

"But what about my other kids, they can still have it, right?"

"It can't be in your home at all, ever." He told me gently.

"What if they eat it outside and come in after?"

"That's really not a good idea either, they will have residue on their hands & clothes & mouths and if they hug or kiss or play with her...it can trigger another reaction.", He explained.

"But, but...what if I wipe them down after they eat it?"

This was the conversation I had where I tried every way I could think of to compromise with what my child's Dr. was telling me. A few days before, my three year old son had given my eleven month old daughter a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a common occurrence in our family of no food allergy history whatsoever.

I'd gone downstairs to throw some laundry in and when I came back to the top of the stairs, she was holding onto the gate and making strange noises. It also looked like she'd gotten into some blueberries, because the corners of her mouth were bluish. As I was trying to get the gate open, I noticed the strange noises were her trying to cry and gasp at the same time. I saw her bare stomach sucking in and out and exposing her ribs while she tried to breathe. I scooped her up and noticed hives sprouting right before my eyes, all around her mouth and eyes. Her face was swelling, she was drooling all over both of us and her mouth was still tinged blue at the corners and it wasn't blueberries.

This was her first anaphylactic reaction. I wasn't even sure until we went to the Dr. later and had her tested that it was from the peanut butter in the sandwich. I'd also given her antibiotics for an ear infection about twenty minutes earlier, I was sure (and hoping!) that was the cause. Luckily the Benadryl I had on hand seemed to take effect almost immediately and she recovered quickly.

Our lives changed after that. The Dr. told us the new rules we had to live by which included making her wear a Medic-Alert ID tag at all times, asking people to wash their hands upon entering our home and always keeping an Epi-Pen near or on her person. Despite all of these precautions, she's had three more anaphylactic reactions in her five years. One was in the grocery store, after touching part of the grocery cart and then her face, and one was in a movie theater (even though we covered her seat with a blanket from home). The most recent one was in our home.

Each episode was absolutely terrifying and followed the same pattern. First she gets itchy and breaks out in hives. Then her face begins to swell. Next she says her throat is tickly, then her stomach starts to cramp and she vomits - then she begins to have trouble breathing. I've researched enough to know that the Epi-Pens don't always work, especially in cases where the allergy is very severe. We're told that our daughter's is the rarer and extremely severe kind. I'm terrified the Epi-Pen won't work for my child one day.

So we lived like quarantine patients for a long time.

My five year old daughter has never spent a night at her grandmother's house.

She's never been on a playdate in another home, nor a sleepover.

She's never allowed to step into a neighbor's home for a drink of water while playing outside in the summer. If neighbor kids congregate at our house, we have to ask if they've eaten peanuts or peanut butter recently before she can play with them and they have to wash their hands if they're coming inside.

She doesn't go to friends' birthday parties.

She can't eat bakery cakes or treats.

She can't have chocolate unless it comes from a dedicated, nut-free facility.

She can't play at the mall play areas.

We just tried letting her trick or treat for the first time in her life last year, with gloves on, and then gave the candy away. Every other year she's had to stay in while her brothers go trick-or-treating.

When she joins gymnastics, we ask the studio to go peanut free. They post signs, remove nut foods from their vending machines and have the other students in her class wash their hands before starting the lesson. Her dance studio does the same. When traveling, we notify the airlines and they make our flight a peanut-free one. When we take her places like Disneyland, they work with many food allergy organizations to ensure a safe and fun trip for even life-threatening level peanut allergies. When staying at a hotel, we ask for food allergy rooms and considerations.

We've learned to live with it. We're finding out she can still do normal things and have normal experiences, with planning and care. Sometimes this lulls other people into thinking we don't have to take special steps for her, because they might not realize all the planning and precautions that have gone on behind the scenes.

The biggest hurdle we face in raising her is people who just don't want to get it. Or who don't want to set aside their annoyance at how this inconveniences *them* to try and get it. I've had more people tell me than I can count how their child "won't eat anything else" but peanut butter and this would be an incredible hardship on them and their rights shouldn't be disregarded like this.

When faced with being told that my daughter's life is equal to a favorite convenience food, I just never quite know what to say - I'm astounded. As I mentioned, I have five children - and actually two of them are food allergy sufferers -and the total restrictions these food allergies place on us are nothing short of mindboggling.

Because of this, I've learned that kids will eat what is available to eat, eventually. There are also great alternatives today, like sunbutter (from sunflower seeds) and tahini (from sesame seeds). If my kids truly would not eat anything but one food item and their school suddenly told me that one item was no longer allowed to be brought to school because it could harm or kill another child...and they didn't want anything else...then I guess my children just wouldn't eat until they got home from school, if that was their choice. I doubt they'd choose that option for very long! No kid is going to starve to death without peanut butter. They'd find another option rather than go hungry, trust me on this.

I know people are going to be angry that our school is being made to go peanut free for my daughter. I know there's a lot of confusion and misinformation out there about food allergies. I know everyone knows somebody who says their child is allergic to a food and then sees that child consuming it, only to be told "It's okay once in a while - or in small amounts". This isn't the same thing. This is a true, IgE mediated, multiple test verified anaphylactic allergy. We tested her at eleven months and we tested her again at five, skin and blood tests each time.

The Dr. tells us with a case as severe as hers, there is no chance she will ever outgrow this. It's an incredibly helpless and terrifying feeling to know that my daughter can die from just touching something and then touching her face. Some days I don't even want her to leave the house, ever.

When her Dr. retested her at five and instructed me that her school would have to be peanut free, I was met with resistance. I was told how "inconvenient" the other parents would find it. I had questions fired at me like,

"How can you take her out in public, then?"

"How do you go to the grocery store with her - do you ask them to go peanut free?"

"I heard you went to Disneyland, how can you do that and ask us to go peanut free?"

"Why can't we just put her in an empty classroom to eat her lunch?"

I felt ridiculed, I felt disbelieved and I felt discredited. How anyone can think a quick trip to a grocery store could pose the same risk as being in a school with potentially 400 other students eating peanut butter, for seven hours a day, five days a week is beyond me.

Then, incredibly, the two school officials I was meeting with began discussing how hard it would be on their children not to be able to have peanut butter. They joked that their children would starve to death - they talked to each other and agreed that it would be awful not to be able to have peanut butter, that they wouldn't consider it a normal childhood without peanut butter. I sat there and wondered,

"If my child were in a wheelchair, would they tell me how awful it would be if *their* children couldn't run? Would they tell me how glad they were it wasn't their problem?"

But by the way, we still just want to discriminate against your child with her medical disability by putting her into a secluded room to eat her lunch instead of making the whole school safer.

Our school is supposed to have "nut free classrooms". One of the school's biggest objections to going peanut free for my daughter was that she will spend most of her time in the classroom, and they are already nut free. Just this past St. Patrick's Day, an assembly was held at lunch time, requiring that all students eat their lunches in their classrooms.

I have three children at this school currently and one of them came home to tell me that in his classroom, a child had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Another child spoke up and alerted the teacher that he had peanut allergy. The teacher sent the allergic child to the principal's office to eat his lunch, while the peanut butter and jelly sandwich was eaten in the classroom. Had that been my daughter, upon her return to the classroom if there had been any peanut butter residue anywhere and she touched it and then touched her face, she could have had a life-threatening reaction.

This is a perfect example of why the Dr. and the law can mandate that schools go peanut free for children with life-threatening cases of peanut allergy. Rules like special tables, special areas, special times that nuts are restricted are open to interpretation and subject to change based on changing circumstances. I don't know what happened in this case. I don't know if the rules were being flagrantly disregarded, misinterpreted or if this was an exception, but how would you feel if you were told other students could play with loaded guns around your child at your school? Dramatic example, I know - but this is exactly what it feels like to the parent of a child like mine upon hearing that half-measures will be taken.

I try, but I truly don't understand the objections of other parents, the anger and the protests I have seen in the press lately about cases like this. Before my own child was diagnosed and we had to accommodate another food allergy child in our first son's kindergarten class by eliminating not only peanut products but also egg, we were also annoyed. But we never formed protest groups, we never complained to the school or the teacher.

We asked more questions, we talked to his parents, we learned more about it! The bottom line was we didn't want that child to be hurt. And we certainly didn't want to be the ones that hurt him.

I wonder if people who trumpet and rave about their child's right to peanut butter have ever seen their child view anything traumatic in real life. I wonder if they know what their child is going to have to live with, if another student they care about and spend time with falls down and starts choking, vomiting and crying while scratching at their throat as they wet their pants and struggle to breathe.

I know what is going to happen to those children, because I've seen it happen to mine when my daughter has reacted. They are going to panic, they are going to be traumatized, they are going to feel immense guilt -even if they are in no way to blame - and they are not going to get over it for a long time. They are going to become afraid it can happen again, maybe even to them - they may want to avoid things that are connected to the incident, they could have nightmares.

Would you really rather risk traumatizing all those additional children rather than err on the side of caution and just stop sending something you've been told can kill another child, to school?! I have often had the macabre thought that I wish just one of my daughter's reactions could have been caught on video. One viewing and nobody would question what needs to be done for her.

I hope it helps the parents at our school to know that we do feel badly about this. I've dreaded this day since she was diagnosed four years ago. I hoped and hoped she'd outgrow this against the odds and we wouldn't have to deal with this in a school setting.

I spend my time helping other families learn about living with food allergies. I spend my time coming up with safe foods and finding ways to share them with others. I spend my time finding ways to educate others about this issue. I assure you, every step that could have been taken by us not to inconvenience others has been taken. And now we need your help. We can't keep her safe by ourselves anymore. I know you, you're our neighbors, you're our acquaintances, you're our friends, you're on facebook with me, your kids are in activities and on teams with my kids. You're our community.

I see you stand up for your children, I see you advocate for your children, I see you fight against the odds for your children. I see you keep your children safe and healthy. My husband and I have both always worked in the helping professions. We help keep our community safe and healthy both personally and professionally. All we're asking is that we all work together to keep doing this for ALL our children at school.

I'm 100% approachable on the subject of specifics about my daughter's care and condition, please feel free to email or comment if there's anything further I can answer or explain.

My email is MUMMA2WLDTHINGS@MAC.COM.

The Nuclear Accident in Japan: Impacts on Food

2011-03-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

The full impact of the Japanese nuclear crisis remains to be seen, but the health risks posed by radioactive contamination are well documented. In 2006, the National Academies of Science issued a definitive report on radiation exposure that concluded that even low levels of radiation can cause human health problems, including cancer, heart disease, or immune disorders.

The United States imports around 80 percent of its seafood as well as an increasing share of its fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, the FDA inspects less than two percent of these imports, leaving consumers at risk to a host of food-borne issues, which now includes potential radioactivity.
Take Action Now.

Radioactive emissions from Japan have been detected throughout the United States, from California to Colorado and as far east as Massachusetts. Monitors in the Carolinas have detected the presence of radioactive iodine, the first time this material had been detected there since the Chernobyl accident 25 years ago.
A major avenue for exposure to radioactive contamination comes through food and water. Decades after the Chernobyl accident, the United Kingdom still maintains restrictions on large sectors of the country’s sheep production because radioactive cesium—dispersed through wind and rain—still contaminates grazing lands.
The U.S. imported around 150 million pounds of food from Japan in 2010, a small percentage of what Americans consumed, but not an insignificant amount. Imports from Japan included nearly 600,000 pounds of crab and anchovies and nearly 5 million gallons of bottled water, soft drinks and other non-alcoholic beverages containing water, products that may be potentially higher risk if contamination continues to spread to the ocean and fresh water sources.
American consumers could be at risk through consumption of food products from other countries that experience radioactive fallout from the nuclear accident in Japan as well.

What We Recommend

The FDA should immediately ban all food and water imports from Japan, expanding on the FDA’s original step of restricting imports of milk and produce from the region near the accident site.
The EPA should increase its monitoring in the United States of air, water, precipitation, and milk for radiation.
The data generated by this environmental monitoring should be used by the FDA and the USDA to design sampling programs for soil, water used for irrigation, livestock or crop production, crops including leafy greens, and meat and milk in areas of the United States that are affected by radiation.
Congress should provide adequate funding for food inspection, both at home and abroad, instead of attempting to cut both USDA and FDA’s funding, which would weaken their ability to meet their current obligations even without the additional burden posed by this nuclear accident.
Congress should rethink our agricultural and trade policies, which encourage importation of an increasing share of our food from countries with weak regulatory regimes. If radiation from Japan ends up affecting these countries’ food systems, regulators there will not have the tools to ensure that food production is safe.

Learn More

from Food & Water Watch

Tandem & Triandem Breastfeeding through Pregnancy.

2011-03-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

the way my mind organizes these memories is into two distinct categories: nursing while pregnant during the 1st half of the pregnancies, and nursing during the 2nd half of pregnancies.

pgc #2 (nursing 1 toddler, 8 mos at conception, 16 mos at birth)

fear (can this really cause a miscarriage?)

guilt ( who am i shortchanging more - the baby that needs milk or the fetus that the ob says i am putting at risk?)

thirst !

love/affection for nursling

fierce protectiveness (i'm going to try to do everything i can not to take this (milk) from you.

relief (found LLL!)

~2ND HALF~

burgeoning confidence (this isn't as hard as i've heard!)

gratitude (body is making enough milk for toddler and keeping fetus healthy!)

fear and hope (i hope this pgc doesn't make you wean before you would otherwise)

worry (can't feel letdowns any more and it's becoming painful, is this normal?)

pain (it feels like gravel is passing through my nipples when you nurse !)

triumph and pride (you nursed through the whole pgc and i hung in there despite the cpl wks of discomfort! yay for us!)

pgc #3 (nursing one boy aged 3 and one toddler aged 1)

concern (can i nurse 2 thru a pgc and not be increasing the risk of miscarriage?)

thirst!

gratitude (a reason to sit down and rest when i have to nurse you both)

surprise (i really feel tightening of the uterus and an urge to pee as soon as you start nursing)

fierce devotion ( i won't let the imminence of a new baby change the way i nurture you)

pride ( i don't know very many ppl who've nursed 2 children while pg !)

~2ND HALF~

pain (oh, there's that gravel in the nipples again - i'd hoped that was a fluke !)

claustrophobic (oh no, here they come to nurse again and i'm so big and uncomfortable i feel like they're smothering me)

restless (are you done yet?)

skin crawly (what happened to the way they nurse ? suddenly they feel like they're all teeth and scrapy cat's tongues !!)

bargaining (if i can make it through just 10 more minutes, they won't wean b/c of the pregnancy)

relief (once you've nursed for a little while and i can hear you gulping, all the discomfort goes away and i am so glad to be breastfeeding you both still)

triumph and terror (neither of you weaned through the whole pregnancy and now i have a third!)

pgc #4 (nursing 4 yr old, 3 yr old and 6 month old)

determination (i've done 2, 3 can't be that much harder, besides the oldest hardly nurses much anymore)

concern (can nursing 3 finally be enough to adversely affect the pregnancy?)

thirsty !

have to pee as soon as they latch on

ever present nausea this pgc increases during nursing

suffocation (are they ever going to get off me ? i can hardly breathe)

hot flashes during nursing

skin crawly

underarms prickling as soon as they latch

panic (why is it so horrible this time, is something wrong w/ my hormones? with my pregnancy?)

exhausted

~2nd half ~

guilt (i hope you guys don't know how much i hate this, this pgc)

cyclical pain (every few wks the gravel-thru-nipples pain is back!)

contractions (constant during nursing this pgc)

gagging (nausea increases enormously during nursing)

resentment (why do none of you ever wean during pgc like the stats say so many do ?)

more guilt (i love you, i want to nurse you as long as you want to nurse, i'm sorry i'm not enjoying it any more)

bargaining (i will give you a sucker if you'll be done nursing for now)

violent fantasies (dear husband, if you tell my children to go ask me for milkies again like my breasts are yours to give out like party favors when you want to bribe or distract them, i am going to wait until you sleep and hurt you slowly and creatively for a long time)

constant worry (surely this time it's going to make the baby come too early, that must be what all these hormonal signs mean)

relief and triumph (i made it again and nobody got hurt or emotionally scarred or weaned!)

pgc #5 (nursing 2 yo and 1 yo)

nervousness (what if it's as bad as the last pgc?)

self-reassurance (it can't be as bad - i'm only nursing 2 again and they are older and on solids so won't need to nurse as much)

thirsty!

tired tired tired

grateful (for the chance to sit down and rest while nursing)

guilty (this pgc is such a surprise, i didn't want to possibly cause you guys to wean, i really hope it doesn't make you wean)

fiercely protective

weepy / emotional

~2ND HALF~

pain (gravel through nipples again but only for a short time mid-pgc, not recurring like last time)

random contractions

smothering (i'm so big and you guys are so big, i feel crushed under all of us)

determined (not much longer and we'll have our family all completed and i'll have no regrets if i can stick it out one last time!)

extreme weepiness

confusion (why am i so weepy when they nurse ?)

more weepiness (why am i so confused i don't even know why i'm crying ?)

profound gratitude (i'm so lucky i've been able to do this so many times, i have to cherish this, it won't last forever)

pride and triumph (made it again, about to be nursing 3 again)

whew! i have to print that out for posterity, it was very intense going back there, i thought about it all day and am so surprised i clearly r/m how very different the experience of bfing was w/ each pgc ! i just wanted to add that no matter what i went through while bfing during pgc, it was all worth it when the older nurslings got their 1st feeding of 'new' milk after the birth. every one of mine almost completely gave up solids for a cpl days when my 'new baby milk' came in and it was sheer heaven to hold them (one at a time on the 'toddler boob') next to the newborn and hear them gulping and sighing in unison w/ eyes rolling back in ecstasy as they stroked the new baby's silky head. if i am lucky enough to be able to prepare for it when my time comes to leave this earth, this is the memory i will conjure up and take with me, it is the very essence of why i work to help women breastfeed.

Skinny Lou Allergy Cookies !

2011-03-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

in the last 3.5 years of trying to find foods safe enough to feed my multiple allergy child that are also tasty enough to keep him interested, i've perfected a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe. i've been tweaking and simplifying it multiple times all along. the less ingredients, the better, but i wanted him to have the same ooey gooey, sweet and chewy delectable goodness that my other kids are lucky enough to get with "normal food". he loves them - he will literally eat over a dozen a day if i let him. and since they are bean, applesauce and coconut based, i can let him! :-)

i knew i'd reached and possibly even surpassed my hopes when i started sharing my latest incarnation of this recipe. people who don't even have dietary restrictions or allergy concerns rave about these cookies. it has gotten to the point that every time i make a batch, i know the neighbors will want some, the friends we walk our dog with, the chiropractor, the pediatrician, etc... and i am always making a ton extra for everyone else that loves these.

people are always saying to me, "you could sell these!" "you should market these!" "i would pay for these, no problem!"

so i've finally taken their advice and begun selling and shipping my cookies. i mostly do it through my facebook page or email, but will also be opening an etsy store soon, if orders stay at a stable number. i am also very interested in a financial partner that can help me professionally market them.

our pediatrician actually has a contact he thinks might be interested and i am waiting to hear back on that.

in the meantime, i've looked into the laws and rules and decided to start selling them on my own and building a customer base and collecting reviews and feedback! so here is the basic info on the cookies - if anyone wants to place an order, feel free to email me at 'mumma2wldthings@mac.com'. or friend me on FB under the same email addy. i tend to bake on mondays/tuesdays and ship on tues/wed.

basic info on the cookies is:

these cookies are 100%:

vegan

dairy free
egg free
corn free
soy free
gluten free
peanut free
tree nut free
seed free
GMO free

these cookies are made with organic:

gluten free oats
bean-based flour
allergen-free, corn- free chocolate chips
coconut milk
coconut oil
applesauce
sea salt
brown sugar

(also a little organic cane sugar & baking soda).

1st time orders get a 'tester' price of $12/doz.

send me a pic of someone eating the cookies

(or just the cookies if you are camera-shy)

and a review, and you get a 2nd order for $12.

after that, normal price is $14/dozen

(and that includes shipping w/in continental U.S.)

please feel free to email me w/ any questions, i know i'd have to really look into this and know all about cross-contamination precautions and every ingredient before buying for my son!

Toxic Plastics Chemical in Infant Formula

2011-02-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

Toxic Plastics Chemical in Infant Formula by EWG

Executive summary

By Jane Houlihan, Vice President for Research and Sonya Lunder, Senior Analyst, August 2007

August 8 2007. Laboratory tests of canned infant formula conducted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a certified commercial laboratory reveal that a plastics chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) leaches from metal can linings into formula. According to a new EWG analyses, the amount of BPA ingested by some bottle-fed infants exceeds the doses that caused serious adverse effects in animal studies.
EWG's analyses of BPA levels in ready-to-eat and concentrated formula, paired with government data on infant formula consumption show:

One of every 16 infants fed ready-to-eat canned formula would be exposed to BPA at doses exceeding those that altered testosterone levels, affected neurodevelopment, and caused other permanent harm to male and female reproductive systems.
Infants fed concentrated formula mixed with water would also be exposed to potentially unsafe amounts of BPA, in excess of standard government safety margins. While water added to concentrated formula lowers BPA concentrations in the final mixture, our analyses still show that one of every 16 infants fed concentrated formula would be exposed to BPA at doses within a factor of 2 of harmful doses.
At the highest BPA levels found in formula, 17 parts per billion (ppb), nearly two-thirds of all infants fed ready-to-eat formula would be exposed above doses that proved harmful in animal tests (Figure 1).

These analyses, coupled with exposure estimates in other studies, demonstrate that bottle-fed infants likely face higher BPA exposures than any other segment of the population, and highlight the urgency of setting standards for this chemical to protect babies who are overexposed through canned liquid formula.

Figure 1. BPA has been found in infant formula at levels ranging up to 17 parts per billion, a concentration at which nearly two-thirds of infants would exceed doses shown to harm test animals.

Source: EWG analysis of BPA exposures based on government and commercial lab tests of BPA in formula, and formula consumption rates and body weights measured in government surveys. This graph reflects procedures described in the methodology section of this report, with the exception that exposure estimates for individual infants created in the exposure model were based on incremental, assumed BPA concentrations in formula, and grouped as a function of BPA concentration for purposes of graphical display. Estimated single-day exposures are compared against BPA dose of 2.4 ug/kg body weight / day linked in lab studies to alterations in testosterone levels and referenced as "toxic dose" in figure above (see Section 3 of this report). Note that results shown above will underpredict infants exposed above even lower doses found harmful in animal studies, including a dose of 2.0 ug/kg/day linked to permanent damage of reproductive system from in-utero exposures.

Failures to protect infants from BPA risks. FDA last assessed the safety of BPA in infant formula in 1996, based on tests of 14 infant formula samples (Bailey 1996). Dozens of peer reviewed studies published since that time reveal adverse effects of BPA at exposures dramatically lower than those known at the time to be harmful, and, significantly lower than exposures for infants drinking BPA-contaminated formula.
Yet despite scientists' dramatically altered understanding of low-dose BPA toxicity, FDA has not tested additional samples of infant formula for BPA, and has failed to reassess the safety of BPA-contaminated infant formula since its original assessment 11 years ago. FDA does not require infant formula manufacturers to test their products for BPA.
Instead, in 2006 the federal government launched a BPA health risk assessment under the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR). From the outset the assessment process has been plagued by concerns over scientific credibility and conflicts of interest:

The contractor in charge of the assessment both helped form the panel, which lacks BPA experts, and prepared the initial draft assessment for the panel's review. This contractor was subsequently fired by CERHR over concerns about potential conflicts of interest, but the panel was allowed to continue with its initial membership, working from the draft assessment prepared by the fired contractor.
In external review comments submitted to the panel, BPA experts revealed that the CERHR assessment appears to contain nearly 300 errors of fact and interpretation; is biased, inconsistent, incomplete; and clearly fails to meet the most basic scientific standards. [see EWG's full review]

What could have been the first opportunity in a decade to advance public health protections for this problematic chemical instead ended in CERHR issuing a final assessment on August 8, 2007 that fails to support stronger public health safeguards for bottle-fed infants, pregnant women, and other at-risk populations.
BPA has been detected in thousands of people worldwide, including 93 percent of 2,500 people in the United States. More than 100 peer-reviewed studies have found BPA to be toxic at low doses, some similar to those found in people, yet not a single public health agency has updated safety standards to reflect this low-dose toxicity.
This country's toxics law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, fails to require that chemical companies prove thier products are safe before they are sold, even when these chemicals end up in people's bodies, as is the case for BPA. This law was passed in 1976, and 31 years later is the only major public health and environmental statute in this country that has never been updated. This panel certainly has not done their part to help fill the gaps in this broken system of public health protections.
As a result of these policy gaps, BPA is now one of the most widely used industrial chemicals, is found at unsafe levels in people, is allowed in unlimited quantities in a broad range of consumer products including infant formula, and is entirely without safety standards. BPA provides irrefutable proof that our system of public health protections must be strengthened to protect children and others most vulnerable to chemical harm.

Resources

Lab tests of canned food — BPA contamination in more than half of 97 name-brand canned foods: http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola
EWG comments to CERHR summarizing nearly 300 errors of fact and interpretation in BPA assessment identified by BPA experts: http://www.ewg.org/node/22333

product review/rave!

2011-02-16T18:52:00.000-08:00

i have been struggling to get and keep my allergy guy, elijah (3) at baseline since last june, when we lost our tenuous hold on it after several viruses invaded our home and he suddenly became allergic to nearly everything left in our very restricted diet. once the illnesses and consequent testing and re-testing for false positives were over, we had lost most beans, lentils and sesame (in addition to our forbidden top 8 plus corn) but were otherwise able to get back to "our normal"/restricted diet.

i just haven't been able to quite get him all the way back to baseline, no matter what i try. we lost shampoos, conditioners and soaps for him shortly after last june - his scalp began peeling and then cracking and bleeding even with only weekly washings. we now anoint his head with raw virgin coconut oil and use a fine tooth comb to section and comb it throughout. then i put a little knit cap on overnight, rinse it in a hot shower the next day and he's great! no more cradle cap at all. we have to do it 2-3 times weekly. we also discovered 'kiss your face' brand aloe and olive oil soap and use that only on the parts that really need it - just water for the rest.

still, on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst, he's remained flared up and broken out at a out a 3/4 until recently. i'm still not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but a facebook friend (thank you again, lynette!) posted about hazelwood jewelry and its purported ability to absorb excess acids in the system that can lead to things like eczema, rashes, reflux, etc...

i've embraced heartily the philosophy of, "if it can't hurt...why not try it?"

so i did!

i have to say, the next day, he was down to a 1 on the breakout scale. i ended up putting 2 of them on him at once. he's been at a ZERO ever since!! the company i ordered from was fabulous - a tiny piece of wood broke off the first necklace and i sent them an email with pictures of it. they promptly sent me a replacement at no extra charge. i got it from www.hazelaid.com and plan to keep one on him indefinitely.

i'm usually a total skeptic about these things but it's really the only new thing i've done in the last 6 months - this is not a child you can introduce new things to as far as diet and personal care products. i'd love to hear it if other people have had other experiences or if you decide to try it as well

-leave a comment and let me know how it went!

candy in schools rant

2011-02-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

below is a response i posted on my fb profile about an article i reshared on gluten issues. it's just after valentine's day and i've been grappling with my every-holiday frustration about the schools providing my kids with candy for the occasion. as well as ice cream with candy toppings this year. @@. i got the expected dissention on my profile and told i need to lighten up about the issue, but i just can't. i'm trying to examine why.

all i can come up with is: if you've ever done weight watchers or any other type of intensive diet, you might understand a little. your world narrows down and you get tunnel vision about food. you obsess over it, you think about it constantly, you have to train your mind to be brainwashed into accepting the new restrictions. it's insanely hard, which is why everyone i know who lost weight on atkins & south beach has now gained it back and then some. you have to go through your anger, your grieving, your relapsing, your seeing through eyes that decide everyone else has the same issue you do, but don't know it (you know, like recovered alcoholics that are sure everyone else is an alcoholic, too!), and finally to acceptance and resigned self-denial. well, i don't know if most fad diets last 3 years, but part of what happens when you have to do it this long is some level of intolerance.

i feel very intolerant of someone else feeding my kids crap i know is harmful. when i've had to be this rigid for this long, it's pretty hard to make my mind flexible again around the concessions i've already made.

i have had to go on the most extreme elimination diet of just about anyone i've ever heard of - starting 3 yrs ago. we now have to completely eliminate:

dairy, corn, egg, soy, wheat (gluten 99% - b/c i don't have to worry about cross-contamination) seafood, shellfish, peanuts and tree nuts, most beans, lentils and sesame.

and i consider us lucky, b/c there was a time last summer when we had to go down to nothing but rice and a few fruits for over a week, when 'lou became allergic to everything on the limited menu we had been eating!

so, imagine the mindset it takes to maintain living this way for this long. if you got all emotional about giving up your favorite foods for atkins or weight watchers or south beach, imagine what i went through. there's no days off for me, no reward days, not even any cheating, ever. i tried that the 1st few wks and watched what it did to my son and the guilt was hideous.

i have to spend a huge chunk of my free time learning about foods today. trying to understand why 2 of my kids could die from eating foods that should nourish them. finding other families with kids like this so i can learn about and from them, too. and oddly enough, as a lactation counselor who mostly gets clients through word-of-mouth, i seem to be attracting mainly new moms that have just been told their babies are allergic to one, several or many foods the mom eats. so you could say my whole world is pretty much about these issues for the past 3 yrs or so. so this could either make me a real radical...or a lay expert, depending on if you want to learn anything about (or agree with) what i'm saying.

one thing it doesn't make me is someone who can afford to lighten up about it.

with my oldest three children (11, 9.5 and 6 now) -they can eat almost anything they want w/ no ill effects (except dairy - they all get sinus and ear problems from it). even before food allergies, i never allowed any of my children to have straight cow's milk, ever - nor did i ever drink it myself - except before i was too young to have a choice. they've never had soda or juices or much candy at all. i definitely bought into the "they're not fat, so we can do fast food" philosophy and absolutely hated cooking and fed them from boxes and cans and thought it was pretty normal and even healthy!!

( "there's tomatoes in spaghettios!! tomatoes are very healthy"!!)

it's been hardest on them to convert to this restricted diet and all the home cooked meals. they remember the addictive trash food more than the younger kids. i've made a compromise with them. they have to eat as we do at home. but for school, i still use more traditional foods in their lunches. i buy the trader joe's or annie's organics spaghettios now and then. i make wraps with "normal" tortillas as well as spinach or tomato ones. but *i* choose when, how much and why.

just like i imagine spankers who got up in arms about the schools paddling their kids back in the day, so do i feel about the schools giving my kids candy and junk food. it upsets the balance i'd already decided i could live with. and truly, our school is pretty excessive about it as far as i can tell when comparing with other parents. and I'M the parent and they're MY kids - nobody else gets all the rights i have to make these decisions for my kids. i think the problem is that most other people don't even realize that standard food is pretty much like poison for families that have to live as we do.

anyway! rather than absolutely forbid my kids to ever experience the temptations out there, i do see they need to learn moderation (my definition of moderation might differ from most people's, i know - LOL!) and learn how to navigate social pressures about food choices for themselves. i'm trying to find ways to help them make better decisions when on their own rather than push my doctrine onto them further.

for example, knowing the school party was going to be another sit-in-the-classrooms-and- gorge-yourself-on-candy event, i told all 3 of my sons that if they politely declined any and all candy and donated what they received from friends back to the teacher, i would reward them with a $5 bill and immediate trip to spend it after school. only my oldest took the incentive, but the wails of protest from the other 2 told me i might have more takers for the next party!

it was a valuable lesson for my oldest and it was interesting to hear his perception of resisting the junk food. there were no other activities available in the classroom, everyone was eating candy and ice cream. he sat at his desk and read his ebook. his teacher came up to him several times and asked if he was feeling all right and urged him to go get some of the treats. they had all been ill recently, so i understand her concern over how he was feeling.

i am so proud that he resisted her urgings toward the junk food. jake is a real people pleaser. it's very important to him to be well thought of and have adults happy with him. he felt he was somehow disappointing, worrying or inconveniencing his teacher by not doing as the other children were. but he politely stood firm and didn't eat any of it and i rewarded him immediately after school, as promised.

i don't blame the teacher here or think in any way she was trying to harm my son - i honestly think she wanted to give the kids a treat and a fun day and everyone knows kids love candy and ice cream best. she's just being nice. and honestly, it's the room moms who organize and bring the treats in - the teacher just goes along with their choices. if i really want to change things, i know i need to become a room mom and lobby to bring in healthy treats or take the emphasis off food as a means of celebrating and do crafts or games or ask that they exchange things like silly bandz instead of candy or something.

but guess what? i don't want to be a room mom. i don't even particularly want to be much of an involved school mom. i don't want to fight the norm and upset everyone and ask for all these changes. my plate is already more than full w/ the educating and advocating i do elsewhere in my life. my kids are top students, completely independent, well-adjusted, socially responsible little people (thank you, APing!) and i don't need nor want to hover. my free time is used helping a much more needy and fragile demographic - new babies that need their moms to breastfeed them and learn how to eat, without eating things their babies are allergic to. i need my kids to learn how to make good decisions for themselves now that they're old enough to. i haven't succeeded as a parent if i have to go to school and remove every obstacle for them. besides, i'm going to have to whether i like it or not when my allergy children start school, so i really need to make sure the other 3 can make good decisions on their own.

this doesn't mean i won't rant and rave about it when i hear how much temptation and pressure their school puts on them toward unhealthy foods, though!! with the diabesity epidemic our kids are dealing with today, i'm shocked every time i hear another candy-filled holiday party is scheduled or another pizza party for meeting some goal during the week is coming up. i can't believe other parents aren't protesting it.

so, there's the background on the facebook rant and here's the rant. i think it's worth preserving for days when i feel like i just can't do this anymore...and if it helps someone else along the way, even better. if it offends you or makes you defensive and you just don't think any of it will ever apply to you or your family - ignore it. but know i can't let it go or shut up about it, i'm stuck living this way with children who are harmed by what has happened to food today...and i spend my time helping other babies being harmed by it and i need to speak up or spontaneously combust sometimes, it's just how i'm built. if you can still be my friend despite our differences of opinion on such incendiary matters, we have a resilient friendship indeed & i will try to return the favor. :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it is a slap in the face, isn't it? i r/m when i 1st started learning about all this stuff...i absolutely did not want to hear it and didn't really b/l it, either. i would get so overwhelmed i couldn't even absorb the facts. i'd push it all away and decide it was radical, biased, hyped up BS -just scare tactics. i'd cheat "just a little" on the diet restrictions and watch my son get sicker.

i know it pisses ppl off and annoys them, makes them defensive and makes them roll their eyes or think i'm some crunchy radical treehugger when i go off on my tangents about foods and the school feeding my kids junk... but how can i unlearn what i've learned? how can i unexperience what i've experienced?

how can i not be territorial and possessive about what someone gets to feed my kids when i know what i know? it's one thing for ME to decide to take exactly so much risk in letting the non-allergic ones have 5 or 6 pizza and ice cream days a yr...i can prepare for it, monitor it, and make myself okay w/ it b/c it's in such moderation. but to think of someone else like the school doing it...w/ no moderation, little monitoring, at the drop of a hat w/ no notice or permission from me...just drives me crazy.

as a parent today, i've learned that i have to worry about melamine in the food supply, GMO's, now plastic particles in chinese rice (!!) besides the allergens that are an every meal concern...there's no way a teacher can check labels and ingredients for all that for 25-30 kids.

w/ the rising rate of food allergies and strange new GM foods being made today, i simply don't think anybody should be feeding kids except their parents or caregivers, for liability reasons, if nothing else!

what if jovie had had her 1st anaphylactic reaction at school during a holiday party instead of home? what if it happened when she was way out on the playground, behind the trees? how long until some kid *does* have their 1st reaction at school? is the teacher going to come to the hospital and stay there w/ my kids until they're recovered? is the school going to help pay for dental care for cavities back when they had a party nearly every day for student bdays? help my kid lose weight when they get fat from pizza parties every friday and then some? no? then guess what? if you're not going to address the issues harmful food is going to cause for my kid - and it's going to be MY problem if you unknowingly feed them melamine chocolate or something - then YOU shouldn't be feeding them!

we just don't know what's in the food today, let alone how ppl are reacting to it - it should be up to me what my kids eat and how often i'm willing to let them get the crap. i don't need the schools or anyone else stacking the deck towards more potential harm for them.

ppl want to pretend it's just about too much fat and preservatives in our foods and decide that moderation is okay -"my kid doesn't have a weight problem, we can do mcdonald's a cpl times a wk" but it's not about trans fats and preservatives anymore. the food we eat today is almost unrecognizable as the food we ate when we were kids and nobody has any idea what it's really doing to our kids. the saddest part is ppl really don't want to know. which is why our food industry gets away w/ feeding us slop other countries won't even take from us for their animals.

wake up and smell the GMO's, peeps - we're one sick nation.

reallergic peanut allergy update

2011-02-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

jovie had her retesting done on jan 18th. it confirmed severe (level 3) peanut allergy.

so, just like that, we are back at square one and i am left confused and wondering how she could have truly been over the allergy and is now right back where she was. her allergist says he has only read of such cases, but it does happen. i wish i'd never given her any peanut and just left well enough alone when he told me she was no longer allergic. at least now she'd be walking around w/ a little bit of a buffer for accidental exposures. i mean, if it took 3 or 4 instances of directly and intentionally eating almost a tablespoon of peanut butter, she could have had quite a few tiny accidental exposures before she would be immediately anaphylactic again. now i've used up that buffer b/c i gave that much to her every single week.

and if she overcame it with 4 years of total elimination of peanuts once, can i expect that with 4 more years of avoidance, she might outgrow it again? her dr. says no, that it is a lifelong allergy now...but can he really know for sure? i'm not looking for my child to someday be able to eat peanut butter on a regular basis, i just want that buffer back - so she isn't always one crumb away from choking to death from her airway closing up. i'd give anything just for a little buffer again.

one good thing to come of it, however, is that her dr. discussed the case with his fellow allergists in their practice and mentioned my recommendation that all severe allergy cases should have TWO food challenges in their office before being declared "cured" of their allergy, since the 1st exposure would count as the (new) sensitizing exposure in a child that had outgrown an allergy to the offending food. the next exposure would really be the telltale one. had we been in a controlled environment and looking for it, the dr. would have caught jovie's 1st reaction at her 2nd exposure to peanuts. we were very lucky, her most recent (anaphylactic) reaction could have been much worse or even fatal.

i didn't think the dr. would take my suggestion seriously as it is evidently so rare for any person to become re-allergic like this - so soon and so seriously - but her allergist told me they have changed their policy at their practice to adopt my suggestion and it's already in practice! i LOVE a dr. who is open to learning from his patients!! it makes me feel like we are truly in the same boat and working as a team - we are all learning as we go along and open to listening to each other's viewpoints.

the next step is meeting with her school about going peanut free, which i am hoping will go smoothly as our high school already is and it seems pretty inevitable anyway. so far the 504 coordinator has been nothing but helpful and concerned, so i am encouraged.

i am still left pondering why my children always seem to be the ones that never fit in w/ the way things usually work. if there's a rare side effect, it happens to them. if there's a "variation of normal", it's them. if there's a "one in a ten/hundred/thousand/ten thousand" chance, it happens to my kids. at times it's made me really insecure, self-conscious, be called a 'munchausen-by-proxy mama' or even ignore or downplay my children's symptoms b/c i don't quite believe it myself or want to be "that mom" who always has the weird issues.

but i'm beginning to formulate a theory about what might be behind it all and am putting my thoughts together for another post all about it - stay tuned! :-)

60 Minutes Report : Phthalates: Are They Safe?

2011-02-08T10:54:00.001-08:00

What are you doing to change your receipt handling?

2011-01-28T17:45:00.000-08:00

Register Receipts May Be A Source of Bisphenol-A

NPR interview with Janet Raloff click on link to listen to Science Friday interview.

Three studies point to receipts as a possibly significant source of the chemical bisphenol-A, according to Science News. While bisphenol-A isn't regulated, the government has suggested minimizing exposure to it. Science News senior editor Janet Raloff discusses the finding.

and as you already know DO NOT RECYCLE YOUR RECEIPTS if you do not know if they contain BPA or not.
Here's a link on that information:

Trashing BPA Receipts

Milk on Drugs

2011-01-26T13:27:00.000-08:00

F.D.A and Dairy Industry Spar Over Testing of Milk

Dennis Curran for The New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration is concerned that antibiotics might be contaminating the milk of American dairy cows.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: January 25, 2011

Each year, federal inspectors find illegal levels of antibiotics in hundreds of older dairy cows bound for the slaughterhouse. Concerned that those antibiotics might also be contaminating the milk Americans drink, the Food and Drug Administration intended to begin tests this month on the milk from farms that had repeatedly sold cows tainted by drug residue.
But the testing plan met with fierce protest from the dairy industry, which said that it could force farmers to needlessly dump millions of gallons of milk while they waited for test results. Industry officials and state regulators said the testing program was poorly conceived and could lead to costly recalls that could be avoided with a better plan for testing.
In response, the F.D.A. postponed the testing, and now the two sides are sparring over how much danger the antibiotics pose and the best way to ensure that the drugs do not end up in the milk supply.
“What has been served up, up to this point, by Food and Drug has been potentially very damaging to innocent dairy farmers,” said John J. Wilson, a senior vice president for Dairy Farmers of America, the nation’s largest dairy cooperative. He said that that the nation’s milk was safe and that there was little reason to think that the slaughterhouse findings would be replicated in tests of the milk supply.
But food safety advocates said that the F.D.A.’s preliminary findings raised issues about the possible overuse of antibiotics in livestock, which many fear could undermine the effectiveness of drugs to combat human illnesses.
“Consumers certainly don’t want to be taking small amounts of drugs every time they drink milk,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. “They want products that are appropriately managed to ensure those drug residues aren’t there, and the dairy farmer is the one who can control that.”
The F.D.A. said that it would confer with the industry before deciding how to proceed. “The agency remains committed to gathering the information necessary to address its concern with respect to this important potential public health issue,” it said in a statement.
The concerns of federal regulators stem from tests done by the Department of Agriculture on dairy cows sent to be slaughtered at meat plants. For years, those tests have found a small but persistent number of animals with drug residues, mostly antibiotics, that violate legal limits.
The tests found 788 dairy cows with residue violations in 2008, the most recent year for which data was available. That was a tiny fraction of the 2.6 million dairy cows slaughtered that year, but regulators say the violations are warning signs because the problem persists from year to year and some of the drugs detected are not approved for use in dairy cows.
The question for the F.D.A. is whether cows that are producing milk also have improper levels of such drugs in their bodies and whether traces of those drugs are getting into the milk.
Regulators and veterinarians say that high levels of drugs can persist in an animal’s system because of misuse of medicines on the farm.
That can include exceeding the prescribed dose or injecting a drug into muscle instead of a vein. Problems can also occur if farmers do not follow rules that require them to wait for a specified number of days after administering medication before sending an animal to slaughter or putting it into milk production.
“F.D.A. is concerned that the same poor management practices which led to the meat residues may also result in drug residues in milk,” the agency said in a document explaining its plan to the industry. In the same document, the F.D.A. said it believed that the nation’s milk supply was safe.
Today, every truckload of milk is tested for four to six antibiotics that are commonly used on dairy farms. The list includes drugs like penicillin and ampicillin, which are also prescribed for people. Each year, only a small number of truckloads are found to be “hot milk,” containing trace amounts of antibiotics. In those cases, the milk is destroyed.
But dairy farmers use many more drugs that are not regularly tested for in milk. Regulators are concerned because some of those other drugs have been showing up in the slaughterhouse testing.
Federal officials have discussed expanded testing for years. But industry executives said that it was not until last month that the F.D.A. told them it was finally going to begin.
The agency said that it planned to test milk from about 900 dairy farms that had repeatedly been caught sending cows to slaughter with illegal levels of drugs in their systems.
It said it would test for about two dozen antibiotics beyond the six that are typically tested for. The testing would also look for a painkiller and anti-inflammatory drug popular on dairy farms, called flunixin, which often shows up in the slaughterhouse testing.
The problem, from the industry’s point of view, is the lengthy time it takes for test results.
The tests currently done for antibiotics in milk take just minutes to complete. But the new tests could take a week or more to determine if the drugs were present in the milk.
Milk moves quickly onto store shelves or to factories where it is made into cheese or other products. The industry worried that, under the F.D.A. plan, by the time a load of milk was found to be contaminated, it could already be in consumers’ refrigerators, and that could lead to recalls.
One Northeast cooperative, Agri-Mark, sent a letter to its members last month instructing them to dump milk if it had been tested by the F.D.A. “Agri-Mark must ensure that all of our milk sales, cheese, butter and other products are in no danger of recall,” the letter said.
Other industry executives said that processing plants would refuse to take any milk from a farm that had been tested until the results showed it was drug-free, meaning farmers could end up dumping milk for a week or more while waiting.
The F.D.A. plan was also criticized by state officials that regulate the dairy industry.
In a sharply worded Dec. 29 letter, the top agriculture officials of 10 Northeastern states, including New York and Pennsylvania, which are both leading dairy producers, told the F.D.A. that its plan was badly flawed. Among other problems, the letter said, forcing farmers to dump large quantities of milk could create environmental problems.
The F.D.A. said it would consider the regulators’ comments as it reviewed its testing plan.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2011, on page B1 of the New York edition.

Jovie's UN-cured Anaphylactic Peanut Allergy

2010-12-30T20:01:00.000-08:00

on december 5th, i gave jovie her 3rd dose of peanut butter at home, as was our new sunday schedule. i like doing it then because we're usually home all day and i can watch her carefully for any reactions. which, by now, i really wasn't worried about. until she came upstairs about 15 minutes after eating it with a bright red, clownish rash around her mouth again. it wasn't the rash that worried me, we'd been battling that same irritation around her mouth for a couple weeks now, it seemed to flare up when she used certain toothpastes and had happened to my other kids from new toothpastes when they were younger, too. it was the fact that she said her whole body was itchy.

sunday is housecleaning and animal washing day (we have one low-allergen great dane and 2 ferrets and all hardwood floors, so even my very dog-allergic multiple food allergy guy is hardly bothered by the animals) and she hadn't yet had her shower and was still in her long nightgown, so i wondered if it might be just from the cleaning going on, the dry forced heat or from not showering yet and feeing ashy.

i lifted her gown and checked, everything looked fine. i told her not to be silly and go play. she kept hovering, scratching and rubbing ceaselessly, all over her torso, neck, face, arms and legs. then she began saying her throat tickled and itched. now a red flag went up in my mind. i brought her into the room i was in and stopped what i was doing and looked at her carefully. she was beginning to get red bumps down her forehead and cheeks.

as i watched, they bloomed across her chest, shoulders, thighs, back...everywhere. i still wasn't panicked because they just looked like red flea bites or something... but i started dialing the after-hours allergy office number and grabbed my camera to document it for her allergy dr. i imagined trying to explain a fleeting, brief outbreak of little red bumps after the peanut butter sandwich and wanted to make sure i could show him exactly what was happening.

as i took pictures and put my number into the pager, the bumps swelled and merged and took on a yellowish, pressured looking outline and turned into hives. now i began to panic. i kept taking pictures, waiting for the dr. to call back. by the time he called just a few minutes later, the hives had elongated into welted lashes like she'd been whipped and i was wondering if i needed to run for the benadryl or the epi-pen first.

i kept asking her constantly, "how do you feel?" "how's your throat?" when i answered the phone and it was dr. b himself, i shocked myself by bursting into tears. i just had such a horrible, stifling guilt that i had done this to her. that i had fed her something i knew could kill her for the last 3 years just because she passed a couple of tests with the dr. my first instinct when he said she was over this allergy was to still keep it away from her, but i didn't listen to my instincts and fed it to her and now she might die.

i sobbed my fears into the phone and dr. b. snapped me into action by barking at me to get the benadryl and an epi-pen. i hadn't even showered yet, so i called don after dosing her, to come home and rush her to the ER while i showered and dressed and met them there. by the time they left, her stomach was cramping and she felt like vomiting. affecting more than one system is a sign of anaphylaxis. for her, the next step is the throat tickling gets a lot more intense and then the wheezing and blue lips come after vomiting. the benadryl wasn't touching the spreading welts and hives after 15 minutes, when don got home.

they gave her steroids and antihistamines in the hospital and she looked almost completely normal by the time i got there. she never made it to the vomiting point (the hospital is less than 10 minutes from our house). this is one of those times this natural-minded mama is absolutely in love with modern medical interventions!

dr. b. was just beside himself with concern and confusion on the phone. he kept saying, "it can't be the peanut butter, i'm thinking it must be something else, she was truly not allergic anymore!" and i said, "then i guess we made her allergic again, because it was all she'd eaten in the last couple of hours and the reaction started 5-15 minutes after." (her brothers were downstairs eating with her while i cleaned upstairs and said they noticed her mouth getting red immediately after finishing it).

he called again late that night to check on jovie and ask us to come in in the morning to see him. he told me again it couldn't be a reaction to peanuts as she'd had no reaction in his office. i thought about it and said, "but i thought the first time someone gets exposed to something they are going to be allergic to, they don't react? it's the sensitizing exposure and acts like a freebie, you don't know they're going to be allergic to it until the second time, isn't that right?" and he said, "yes, usually - but she didn't have a reaction until now, after 3 weeks of exposure, it doesn't make sense, i don't think it was the peanut butter. we'll talk about it more tomorrow and try to figure it out."

i thought about this conversation all the way in to his office the next morning on december 6, 2010. i had don print off the pictures of the reaction to take with me. as i was looking through them in the waiting room, it hit me. i was staring at the one of her face when the hives started around her forehead. at that mouth. that clownish rash all the way around her mouth.

i realized in a dismayed rush that the last two times she'd had it had not only been days that she might have used other toothpaste, *they'd been peanut butter days, too - sundays*. i hadn't put it together because the first time i was just so secure and safe because she'd just eaten some in her dr's office the tuesday before that sunday and had no reaction whatsoever and i'd given her the wrong toothpaste myself. and the second time, we were on vacation and i was frazzled and she probably used the wrong toothpaste again...and the tickly throat on the drive home, that was probably part of her reaction and not just the chlorine from the hotel pool, too.

it all clicked and i realized she really may have been over the allergy, but we resensitized her in his office and she had her first reaction the first time after that and i missed it. then she had another, with slight respiratory involvement, and i missed it again. and the third one was a big one.

when i told dr. b what i'd put together, i saw his face fall as he allowed, "then i think it does sound like she is allergic to peanuts again - i just don't know how this happened or why, i can't explain it, this is very rare, this never happens like this." he told us that now her peanut allergy could be much worse much more quickly and that she is almost certainly going to be dealing with it for the rest of her life, she won't get over it again.

i lamented to him that we never should have given her any peanuts, but he insisted firmly that it is absolutely the right thing to do, the recommended treatment to keep her from relapsing into life-threatening peanut allergy. i asked him, "then how come it didn't work? how come none of this stuff ever works like it should with my kids? why are they always the exception? what's wrong with my kids that the rules don't ever apply?" he had no answers.

i told him he should change his protocol for testing life-threatening allergic kids that appeared to have outgrown their allergies. he should do TWO food trials to be completely sure they don't react, if the first exposure is always the sensitizing one that doesn't cause reactions. seems like basic common sense to me.

we would have caught that first reaction to her second dose of peanut butter in his office. if the third dose and this reaction had proved fatal, it could have saved her life. i told him this fervently, like i thought a light would go on in his head and he'd say, "my god! you're right! we should always do two trials to be sure!" instead he said, "but this never happens. if a child goes through all those tests and isn't allergic, they don't become allergic again at the first exposure." so i guess changing a whole medical protocol for a practice for one quirky kid is silly. and i'm back at square one, trying to understand *why* my kid(s!) is/are so quirky and how to find my way in keeping them safe between the dr.s recommendations and my own instincts.

we retest her on january 18, 2011 to confirm the re-allergic status. we have to give her system a few weeks to calm down and reduce chances of a false positive. dr. b promised to handle any arrangements with the school if accommodations need to be made, he says he feels it's his responsibility. he's a great guy, i know this wasn't his fault and i almost feel badly for giving him two patients that confound all his learning and experience.

i asked him the question about not knowing which to trust when it comes to my kids anymore: my instincts or the dr.s. he gave me an interesting answer. he said, "you trust both."

Food Allergy Vacation Spot !

2010-12-30T15:56:00.001-08:00

this thanksgiving, we decided we wanted to take an affordable staycation somewhere in michigan. it would be the first time we were looking to stay in actual hotel accommodations with our multiple severe food allergy guy, 'lou - who just turned 3 and is test-confirmed as well as food trial-confirmed allergic to: corn, dairy, egg, soy, wheat, peanut, tree nuts, seafood, lentils, beans (white, kidney, navy, lima, pinto) and sesame. and that's with all the false positives from last june's huge reaction ruled out and tested back in !

however, the bright side was we were not going to have to worry about our almost 5 year old daughter as much now. she used to have anaphylactic-reactive allergy to peanuts but had just been pronounced "cured" by her allergist after a skin test, a blood test and a food trial in his office confirmed it.

we gave her her 1st dose of peanut butter at home, on sunday, november 21, 2010. we were planning to do it every sunday, so there'd be no confusion or over-dosing - we weren't taking any chances! i specifically remember her frist peanut butter at home, because i wanted to take a picture of her holding the jar of organic peanut butter to put on facebook with our happy update about her first eating of peanut butter in the house again, but i'd used a new toothpaste on her that day and she had a big red rash all around her mouth and looked like a clown, so i never took the picture.

we decided on great wolf lodge in traverse city, michigan for our weekend-after-thanksgiving trip with our close friends (and neighbors). i don't know if i was more excited or nervous. i had no idea how i was going to feed 'lou and myself away from home for a whole weekend. i decided to contact the chef there on the very small chance he could make some of our allergy food in his kitchen and enable us to eat in a restaurant like normal people for a change.

i was called back by executive chef greg nicolaou and couldn't believe my ears. he was willing to make 3 meals a day for the entire weekend for our needs and to our specifications. which included doing all the shopping for our very hard-to-find (corn-free especially!) items! i was sure the more i told him about our restrictions and the extent you have to go to to avoid corn, that he would back down from his offer. he never did, and in fact went out and bought items he'd found on his own that he thought we might enjoy!! in all my years as a food-allergy parent, i've never ever come across an establishment or person so accommodating and concerned about our needs.

as it worked out, we didn't end up needing (which is my genteel way of saying we couldn't actually afford) to eat every single meal for a family of 7 in the hotel's restaurant - we brough a lot of snack items and i made a big batch of stew to bring along for 'lou and i to eat in the room (with kitchenette), as well. but the meals they *did* prepare for us were phenomenal.

chef tom made our quesadillas and 'lou proclaimed them better than mine! chef greg made our pancakes and seated us in a private dining area and they were the best allergy-friendly pancakes i've ever had! we were charged prices comparable to similar items on the menu and i brought my own ingredients for much of it to save on paying more for those. my leftover ingredients were returned to me, professionally wrapped and carefully saved.

one night i even decided to let my hair down and see if they could make my margarita from scratch. food and beverage manager valerie micham was there every time we came to the restaurant and was completely accommodating and understanding. she made me 2 margaritas and i don't know if they tasted better because i was on vacation or because someone else made them for a change!

i can't recommend great wolf lodge in traverse city highly enough to any of my michigan allergy friends. of course, it's great for anybody, but food allergy families especially know how hard it is to go out to eat and how terrifiying it is to trust someone else to handle and feed your child something that could potentially make them very ill or even kill them.

after speaking with greg several times before we even arrived at great wolf lodge and then seeing how carefully he'd relayed all instructions and concerns to his very capable staff, i knoew i could let my worries go for the weekend and truly relax. this was the 1st and only time i've been able to do so since having this allergy baby and not staying with friends and/or family and it is one of my most cherished family vacation memories already!

the rest of the vacation went off without a hitch, with the exception of two things: on the way there, everyone voted to stop at a denny's to eat. of course i had brought along food for 'lou and i, but i had to call ahead to every place we considered and ask if they'd warm it up for us. some places will, some places won't. they say it's a health hazard to let anyone else bring in their own food. sometimes if you keep it in your own container, they can microwave it, but the food itself can't touch their griddles or pots and pans. denny's was okay with microwaving my glass dish of stew. (we call it sloppy 'lou stew, like sloppy joes).

as he sat at the table, waiting, he began itching and scratching, it got more and more frantic. soon he got red and splotchy and hives began to form down his forehead and cheeks. he was scratching ceaselessly and literally couldn't sit still. i realized it must be his egg allergy. the place was positively sticky w/ them, they were being served all around us.

i should have wiped down every surface near him, but we hadn't eaten out in so long, it just didn't occur to me. plus i hate looking neurotic and really hadn't known him to break out in hives just from touching them, it previously only happened when he ate them and he got exposed through my milk. (he tested allergic long before he ever got to eat them on his own - he's never had them.) we left as quickly as we could and he was completely cleared up in 20 minutes! you can imagine how concerned i was that we were about to be spending a whole weekend of this and how relieved and overjoyed i was to end up having a completely opposite experience.

the second thing was really minor. i was so proud of myself for remembering to bring jovie's peanut butter so she could have it on sunday before we drove home and i wouldn't disrupt her peanut schedule, but i forgot her toothpaste. after using the hotel's brand, she once again had that clownish red rash all around her mouth for the rest of the day.

our only other single complaint about the place would be the time of year we went. we were stuck inside the whole time and mainly let the kids play in the water park. the chlorine was so incredibly strong, it left you with a sore throat, sensitive skin and some of the kids with a dry cough. there were also a lot of sick kids there this time of year and the water area was shut down twice for barfing incidents. the only one of my kids to be bothered with the cough seemed to be jovie, who kept saying her throat tickled on the long drive home, but it cleared up by the time we got back to our own house.

all in all, a fabulous staycation and one we hope to turn into a tradition!

Jovie's "Cured" Anaphylactic Peanut Allergy

2010-12-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

jovie had her 1st anaphylactic reaction after eating a peanut butter & jelly sandwich at 11 months old. when i looked back on it, this happened in november '06 and i had been eating reese's peanut butter cups from the halloween stockpile daily for a couple weeks. i had also noticed from halloween to her reaction in november, that she began to have episodes of vomiting in her sleep, after nursing to sleep. the scary part was she'd vomit everything in her stomach and not wake up - i'd find her sleeping in it still when i came in to check on her before i joined her in bed or at naptime once. i'd called the pediatrician about it and we were going to set up an appointment to discuss reflux. it didn't make a lot of sense to me, because she'd already completely grown out of that baby spit up stage and i wouldn't have said she could have reflux or GERD at this age.

then the fateful bite of a brother's sandwich (she'd had peanut butter several times already) and within 20 minutes her face was swelling, she was crying and coughing and wheezing and her lips were beginning to tinge blue at the corners. i'd also just given her a dose of antibiotics for strep and wasn't sure what was causing the reaction, but an urgent call to the ped and some benadryl while i kept an epi pen right in my hand all the way to the hospital took care of it.

testing confirmed severe anaphylactic peanut allergy and we went peanut free. (i laugh now at what a hardship i thought that was!) over the next 3 yrs, she had 2 accidental exposures. one in the grocery store when she rode in a shopping cart shaped like a truck and rubbed her face and eyes while in there. her eyes swelled 1st and we caught it quickly enough that benadryl stopped it before it got worse. the next one happened in a movie theatre, when they either used peanut oil on the popcorn (we asked, they said it was soy but i wondered if they were mistaken) or she touched peanut butter residue on a chair.

she started having the reaction while we drove home in the dark and she was sleeping in the car. it seemed to progress differently in her sleep, because it took longer to progress and our 1st sign was that she vomited up the entire contents of her stomach about an hr after leaving the movies. then she began to cough and wheeze in her sleep, her lips swelled, hives appeared up her neck and face, her lips started to tinge blue and we had to use the epi-pen. that was about 2 yrs ago.

which brings us to current times, last october, 2010. she turns 5 at christmas and my mind has been worrying about when she starts school. our school is pretty allergy aware, but only the classrooms are nut free. nuts are permitted in the lunchroom. if someone has a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and touches something like the faucets in the bathroom or the door handle after lunch... and then jovie comes along and touches them and then rubs her face and it gets into a mucous membrane, that's it, she can have an anaphylactic reaction. her allergist felt we should wait until before she starts school to retest her peanut allergy levels as even the pinprick skin test is exposing her to peanut enough to potentially sensitize her further and make it worse.

so i called and made an appointment to have her retested for school, so i'd know exactly what accommodations i might need to make - or ask the school to make - for her. honestly, i'd read that extended nursing can help with severe food allergies like this and had heard specific anecdotal stories from other parts of the world about children her age overcoming allergies like hers completely (ie, pecan allergy in africa) when the mother cut it out of her own diet completely as well and continued nursing long-term. since there are no studies available on women who nurse this long in the U.S., my daughter's allergist couldn't offer me hope that it would help, but he also said, it certainly couldn't hurt. so i was definitely harboring a secret irrational hope that i had helped "cure" her by nursing this long. he told me something like 95% of all children this allergic remain so for life, but you know what they say about hope. it springs eternal.

so, on november 2, 2010, we took her to our local hospital for a RAST (blood) test. this way it wouldn't expose her directly to peanut protein. it came back completely negative for peanut allergy. i was ecstatic. her dr. cautioned us that it could be wrong, could have been mishandled somehow...he said he was shocked to see that result and wanted to follow it up with a skin scratch test, which he feels is more accurate. i agreed and made cupcakes to celebrate what i just knew was going to be confirmation that breastmilk's magical, living properties had rewired and healed her immune system to respond normally again. the skin test on november 9, 2010 was also negative and the dr. was speechless. she did come up moderately allergic to cashews on this test, but i hardly cared, i was so excited about the negative peanut results. i passed out homemade organic corn, egg, dairy, soy, gluten, peanut, tree nut, bean free cupcakes to all the staff in celebration. jovie declared, "this is the luckiest day of my life."

while we sat in the office, awaiting dr. b's final instructions, don asked me what this meant as far as how we proceeded with peanuts for jovie now. i didn't know, but i said i guessed we'd still not feed them to her directly (why tempt fate, right? and if she was that allergic once, it seemed to make common sense that she'd be at more risk to become so again... (and hadn't i read somewhere like FAAN once that some deaths happened because people thought they were cured of a serious allergen like nuts of seafood/shellfish and were eating that item regularly with no epi-pen on hand and suffered life-threatening reactions? still not sure if i actually read this or just imagined i did...) at any rate, i said, "i bet he comes in and tells us we just don't have to worry that she will die at school from accidental exposure, we don't have to make the school go peanut free in the lunchroom now, she doesn't have to carry an epi-pen anymore and we don't have to live in terror that she can be killed by a random smear of food! but i bet it's not like she can eat it again or anything and i don't know if he'll say we should bring it back into the house for the other kids, we'll have to ask him."

dr. b. still just couldn't believe the results. when we asked him about jovie and peanuts now, he held up his hands and said he didn't want to assume she was truly over her allergy until she did a food trial with peanut butter in his office. he said this was extremely unusual and almost unheard of, for a child her age, at her severity, to overcome it so quickly. we agreed to the food challenge and set the appointment for november 16, 2010. she stayed there for over 2 hours and had no reaction whatsoever to first the smear of peanut butter on her lips and then from a spoon.

we were ecstatic, dr. b. shook his head in disbelief even as he gave us the final verdict, grinning all the time. imagine our surprise when he told us what we had to do now was give her peanut butter every week, to keep her body used to it, recognizing it and staying 'immune" to it! i asked if he was sure this was what we needed to do and expressed how scary it felt to give it to her like that, but he assured me this is the protocol for anyone who's overcome a serious peanut allergy. so, away we went to embark on our life with a "cured" life-threatening peanut allergy child!

Hexane Free Guide for Vegetarians by Cornucopia

2010-11-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

View online guide – Does your brand contain Hexane? →

Cornacopia's Egg Scorecard... Rates Organic Eggs

2010-10-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.cornucopia.org/organic-egg-scorecard/

Organic Egg Report and Scorecard

September 22nd, 2010

The Cornucopia Institute’s report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture, will empower consumers and wholesale buyers who want to invest their food dollars to protect hard-working family farmers that are in danger of being forced off the land by a landslide of eggs from factory farms.

The accompanying organic egg scorecard rates companies that market name-brand and private-label organic “shell” eggs based on 22 criteria that are important to organic consumers. The scorecard showcases ethical family farms, and their brands, and exposes factory farm producers and brands in grocery store coolers that threaten to take over organic livestock agriculture.

Some of the factory farm operators literally raise millions of birds (both conventional and organic) with as many as 85,000 “organic” hens in single buildings.

With this Web-based rating tool, you can see which brands of eggs found in your region are produced using the best organic farming practices and ethics. Based on more than a year’s research into the organic egg business, the scorecard rates almost 70 different name-brand eggs and additional private-label products.

Both the report and scorecard highlight the good news in the organic egg industry by showcasing the true heroes, including national and local producers that are supplying ethically-produced organic eggs and are worthy of consumer support.

Organic Egg Brand Scorecard
Full report
Executive Summary
Photo Gallery: Industrial-Scale Egg Production—Masquerading As Organic?
Photo Gallery: Small and Medium Scale Egg Production with Permanent Housing
Photo Gallery: The True Heroes in Organic Egg Production
Proxy Letter: Please Make Your Voice Heard!

TED Next Generation : Tricia B's 11 yr. old son Birke B. on GMOs and our food system

2010-09-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

There is not such thing as cheap food.....

2010-09-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

by Mark Hyman, MD

I was in a grocery store yesterday. While I was squeezing avocados to pick just the right ones for my family's dinner salad, I overheard a conversation from a couple that had also picked up and avocado.

"Oh, these avocados look good, let's get some."

Then looking up at the price, they said, "Two for five dollars!" Dejected, they put the live avocado back and walked away from the vegetable aisle toward the aisles full of dead, boxed, canned, packaged goods where they can buy thousands of calories of poor-quality, nutrient-poor, factory-made, processed foods filled with sugar, fat, and salt for the same five dollars. This is the scenario millions of Americans struggling to feed their families face every day.

The odd paradox is that food insecurity--not knowing where the next meal is coming from or not having enough money to adequately feed your family--leads to obesity, diabetes and chronic disease. Examining this paradox may help us advocate for policies that make producing fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole other foods cheaper, while rethinking the almost $300 billion in government subsides that support the production of cheap, processed food derived from corn and soy.

At the same time, a Food Revolution, along the lines of that advocated by Jamie Oliver, a radical chef, can help Americans take back their table and their health from a food industry that has driven us to eat more than 50 percent of our meals out of the home compared to less than 2 percent 100 years ago. And most of those meals eaten at home are produced in plants, not grown on plants, are from a food chemist's lab, not a farmer's field. Cooking and eating whole fresh foods at home, can be cheaper, more fun, and simpler than most people think.

So I would ask you to consider: Have you ever made poor food choices because of cost? What is the REAL cost of this cheap food--the cost in dollars, on our health, on our environment, and even on the fraying fabric of our social and family systems?

This is what you need to remember:

1. The true cost of unhealthy food isn't just the price tag--in fact, the real costs are hidden.
2. Eating healthy doesn't have to cost more.

Sure, it seems cheaper to eat a burger, fries, and a soda from McDonald's than to eat a meal of whole foods, but there are healthier options. Let me review why the true costs of eating unhealthy food are hidden, and give you some suggestions that will help you save money and suffering by eating well for less. Poverty or financial limitations do not preclude eating well, creating health and avoiding disease.

Let's start by looking at how our economy and public policy are geared toward the production of cheap, unhealthy food.

Government Policy Supports the Production of Unhealthy Food

Unhealthy food is cheaper because our government's policies support its production. We're spending nearly $30 billion a year to subsidize corn and soy production. Where do those foods go? Into our food supply as high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil (trans fats), that are the foundation of almost all fast food and processed foods that are "manufactured" by the food industry.

Since the 1970s--when our agricultural policies where changed to support corn and soy farmers--we're consuming, on average, an extra 500 calories (mostly in the form of cheap, artificial high-fructose corn syrup) per person.

Corn and soy are also used to feed cattle for the production of meat and dairy. In fact, 70 percent of the wheat, corn and soy farmed in this country is used to feed animals used for our food. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--more than the entire human population on Earth!

So, when our government helps pay for these foods--well, of course they're cheaper! That explains the low price tag. But what about the OTHER costs to you?

The Hidden Costs of Eating Poorly

We all know that bad foods are bad for your health. It turns out they are also bad for the national pocketbook. For example, one expert has estimated that healthcare costs related to obesity are $118 billion per year. That's nearly 12 percent of total healthcare expenditures--and more than twice that caused by smoking! Seventy-two percent of Americans are overweight and over one third are medically obese. One in three children born today will be diabetic in their lifetime and the life expectancy of our population is declining for the first time in human history.

A report from the Worldwatch Institute called Overfed and Underfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition documented the real costs of obesity related to poor diet--and this does NOT include the other effects of poor diet such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, autoimmune diseases, and osteoporosis. Here were some of the conclusions of that report:

• Obese people account for a disproportionate share of health-related absences from work.
• Obesity accounts for 7 percent of lost productivity due to sick leave and disability.
• 7 percent of all of North Carolina's healthcare expenditures are related to obesity.
• Obese people visit their physicians 40 percent more than normal weight people.
• Obese people are 2.5 times more likely to require drugs prescribed for cardiovascular and circulation disorders.
• Liposuction is the number-one form of cosmetic surgery in the US, with 400,000 operations a year.
• Over 100,000 people a year have gastric bypass surgery.

According to a recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine (i), we're spending about $20,000 per person for each extra year of life gained from medical interventions like drugs and surgery ... as if that's something to be proud of!

That doesn't even take into account the $282 billion in costs resulting from medical interventions that go wrong--hospital infections, medical errors, deaths from drug reactions, bedsores, or unnecessary surgeries.

And what if that $20,000 per year was given to each person during his or her lifetime to support better nutrition, lifestyle, and stress management? My guess is that we would save trillions of dollars in health care expenditures on chronic disease!

As these numbers prove, the costs of eating fast, junk, and processed foods are often deferred until later. And that's the key point: When you go to McDonald's for a cheap burger and fries, you might immediately compare that lower price to whole organic foods which are more expensive in the short term. But the total cost isn't reflected in how much you pay for your meal in the immediate moment, it's the cumulative cost of what those decisions cost you over a lifetime.

For example, when you eat unhealthy foods like these, the costs of medical visits, co-pays, prescription medications, and other health services skyrocket. There are other non-economic costs of eating poorly as well. You reduce your ability to enjoy life in the moment due to increased fatigue, low-grade health complaints, obesity, depression, and more.

The biggest advantage of eating well now is not just preventing disease and costs later, but simply enjoying each day to its fullest. You can make that happen. Eating well doesn't have to cost more.

It's true that there are very few, if any, subsidies for the production of produce or healthier alternative foods. And the same government agency that supports the production of the ingredients for junk food provides less than $300 million for education on healthy nutrition.

But change is in the air. Dean Ornish, MD, has shown that a program to teach people to eat better, exercise, and learn stress reduction can prevent heart disease and reduce the need for heart bypass or other treatments. Insurance companies are starting to take notice as some cover the costs for that program. Paying $5,000 for such a program now, Medicare has finally recognized, is better than paying $50,000 later for a cardiac bypass operation.

A number of us advocated last year that a "health council" be established to coordinate and develop national polices that create and support health for Americans. This was part of the health reform bill and the National Council on Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health was created by executive order of the President in June. Drs. Dean Ornish, Memhet Oz, Michael Roizen and I, among others, have been nominated to be on a twenty-five member advisory council that helps guide the council. The council is made up of all the cabinet secretaries in charge of departments that in some way affect our health--agriculture, health, transportation, environment, trade, labor, and more--and will be chaired by the Surgeon General. This provides a way to influence national policies to support and create health--including our food and agriculture polices--for the first time.

The idea that you can save money by eating well is further supported by studies like the one published by the American Dietetic Association (ii) that shows eating well to lose weight is actually cheaper--or at the worst, no more expensive--than eating poorly! The authors of the study concluded that "adopting a lower-energy, nutrient-dense diet did not increase dietary costs over time. Consequently, cost should not be a barrier in the adoption of a healthful diet."

That's powerful evidence that eating well is not just good for your body, it's good for your wallet, too! Here are some ideas to get you started.

Four Tips to Start Eating Healthy for Less Today

1. Listen to Gandhi. Yes, Gandhi! He said that we should never mistake what is habitual for what is natural. Case in point: Some Chinese are very poor and yet they eat extremely well--small amounts of animal protein, with an abundance of vegetables.

2. Be willing to learn. We have to learn new ways of shopping and eating, new ways of ordering our priorities around our health and nutrition that supports our well-being, even if it is hard at the beginning.

3. Do your research. There are ways to find cheaper sources of produce, whole grains, beans, nuts, and lean animal protein. You just need to seek them out. It doesn't all have to be organic. Simply switching from processed foods to whole foods is a HUGE step in the right direction.

4. Make an effort. Eating healthy does take more planning. It may require you to find new places to hunt and gather for your family. You might have to reorder your priorities regarding where you spend your money and your time so that you can make healthier eating choices.

Remember, eating healthy foods without spending a lot is possible--and you can do it.

Now I'd like to hear from you...

What do you think about the long-term costs of eating poorly?

Do you agree or disagree that eating poorly in the short-term has dramatic long-term consequences on your health care costs?

What other costs of eating poorly have you seen or experienced?

Are you also worried about the exploding costs of health care, whether insurance, medical, Medicare or other costs?

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

References

(i) Cutler D.M., Rosen A.B., and S. Vijan. 2006. The value of medical spending in the United States, 1960-2000. N Engl J Med. 355(9): 920-7.

(ii)Raynor, H.A., Kilanowski, C.K., Esterli, I., et al. 2002. A cost-analysis of adopting a healthful diet in a family-based treatment program. J Am Diet Assoc.102(5): 645-650, 655-656.

Mark Hyman, M.D. is a practicing physician, founder of The UltraWellness Center, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and an international leader in the field of Functional Medicine. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on YouTube, become a fan on Facebook, and subscribe to his newsletter.

From the Huffinton Post article

Still eating canned foods????

2010-09-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Which Canned Goods Contain the Most BPA?

— Stephen St-Maurice/iStockphoto.com

The surprising list.

— By Kiera Butler

CONSUMERS UNION recommends ingesting no more than .0011 micrograms of BPA daily per pound of body weight. But it found at least 20 times the limit for a typical adult in a single serving of several canned foods it tested.

Product/Model	BPA PER SERVING (AVERAGE IN MICROGRAMS)	EXCEEDS DAILY LIMIT BY A FACTOR OF
Progresso Vegetable Soup	22.0	115
Del Monte Blue Lake Fresh Cut Green Beans	14.9	77
Campbell's Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup	10.2	53
Annie's Home Grown Organic Cheesy Ravioli	7.70	39
Hormel Chili with Beans	6.10	31
Green Giant Whole Kernel Sweet Corn	3.80	19
Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli in Tomato Meat Sauce	2.50	12
Nestle Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Apple	2.3	11
Libby's Corned Beef	1.8	8
Vital Choice Tuna	1.15	5
Similac Advance Infant Formula (concentrated, liquid)	0.85	3
Slim Fast High Protein (extra creamy chocolate, liquid)	0.78	3
Bush's Best Original Baked Beans	0.6	2
Swanson White Premium Chunk Chicken Breast	0.47	1
Starkist Chunk Light Tuna in Water	0.2	Less than Limit
Valley Fresh White Chicken in Water Organic	0.19	Less than Limit
Eden Baked Beans with Sorghum & Mustard Organic	0.15	Less than Limit
Hunt's Tomato Sauce	0.04	Less than Limit
Source: Consumers Union; based on limit for a 173 lb. adult. Full article: http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/09/plastic-bpa-in-cans

If you haven't gotten rid of all your teflon pans....

2010-09-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

Study links cholesterol and nonstick coating chemical

Advertisement | ad info

By Julie Steenhuysen

updated 9/6/2010 4:10:12 PM ET

CHICAGO — Chemicals used to make non-stick coatings on cookware and to waterproof fabrics may raise levels of cholesterol in children, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Children in a study with the highest levels of these compounds in their blood had measurably higher levels of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein, or LDL -- the so-called "bad" cholesterol -- compared with children with lower readings.

The findings do not prove exposure to these chemicals, called perfluoroalkyl acids, caused the higher readings, but they show a link and suggest the need for more study, Stephanie Frisbee of West Virginia University and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The researchers studied perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA and perfluorooctanesulfonate or PFOS. They make their way into people through drinking water, dust, food packaging, breast milk, cord blood, microwave popcorn, air and occupational exposure, according to the researchers.

Studies in animals suggest perfluoroalkyl acid can affect the liver, which could result in changes in cholesterol levels.

Frisbee and colleagues examined cholesterol levels in blood samples taken from more than 12,000 children in the mid-Ohio River Valley who had PFOA in their drinking water.

Children and teens in the study had more PFOA in their bodies than the national average, and a PFOS concentration about the same as the national average.

Children and teens with the highest PFOA concentration had total cholesterol levels that were 4.6 points higher and LDL levels that were 3.8 points higher than those with the lowest PFOA levels.

The team said the findings suggest an association between the compounds and higher cholesterol, but it would take more studies to prove chemical exposure was the cause.

Bernard Weiss of the University of Rochester in New York, an expert on toxins who was not involved in the research, said perfluoroalkyl acids are a known neurotoxin.

"They interfere with brain development, which leaves its mark on later behavioral functions such as cognitive performance," he said in a statement.

The potential health effects of chemicals, such as the plastics chemical bisphenol A used in baby bottles and other products, is becoming a growing concern among U.S., Canadian and European health officials.

Recent studies have shown subtle effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals and U.S. health officials in January launched a broader investigation of environmental health risks to children.

post steroid & dietician update

2010-08-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

it has been nearly a month since 'lou finished the 7 day course of corn-free steroids (prednisolone) and antihistamine (cyproheptadine) on july 29, 2010. i am amazed and extremely gratified to update that this entire 3 weeks, he's been off both medications and remained almost totally clear and baseline-ish!

i am left assuming that either:

a. the steroids and antihistamine did their magic and reset his immune system, which was just in over-reaction mode from fighting off all the viruses we'd had in the house when this all started

~or~

b. he truly had become allergic to the beans and lentils that were such a staple in our diet and eliminating them as i've done has cleared up the reactions.

if it's a., maybe most (or all?) of those new positives on the RAST test are false...

if it's b., maybe all but the beans and lentils are false...

either way, we still aren't having any luck getting in to the specialist at u of m any earlier than late september, so i am wondering if i should call our local allergist back and see if he thinks we should do the more accurate skin test and recheck those new allergies. wouldn't it be wonderful if they truly weren't a problem? especially if we could have lentils back, which i'm not going to try feeding him until we retest, as they scored pretty high as an allergen for him.

any way it turns out, we are overjoyed to have our happy, healthy little hobgoblin back. he laughs and plays all day again, he rides his big brothers' impossibly oversized scooters around the neighborhood like an imp of satan himself - causing concerned and amazed neighbors to gawk and gasp.

as for the dietician appointment i was so hopeful and excited about, it ended up being somewhat of a draw.

she was a very warm, concerned and professional woman who took an amazing amount of time with us, but it became obvious right away that she hadn't dealt with anyone with corn allergy as severe as 'lou's. many of her initial suggestions (back to neocate) were simply not possible or have already been tried (or both!) for 'lou, so we spent a lot of time backtracking and explaining why that already hasn't worked for us.

she suspects that 'lou has EE and suggested we do the biopsies to find out for sure... but as long as we're already doing the recommended treatment for EE (allergen elimination diet, steroids as needed), i don't see the point in subjecting him (or us!) to an invasive and painful medical procedure. not to mention trying to find out if there was corn in the IV's and anaesthesia he'd be getting and how to get some without it!

like most of the doctors we've worked with, she also simply wasn't aware of what terms really denote corn in a product. she wanted us to give him (store-bought) 100% juice. i told her it all contains corn. she was very surprised to learn that citric acid, ascorbic acid and vitamin c itself are all from corn. she said to me, "you're teaching me about this issue, you should write a book."

she was *very* helpful about other things i didn't know, however. she gave me a form you can use to write off the expense of a specialized diet like ours on your tax forms. she also wrote me a wonderful letter to submit to our insurance company, asking them to reimburse us for the cost of this consultation and explaining why she felt it was a necessary medical consultation for 'lou. she also assured me she'd be more than happy to offer me future phone consults when i had specific questions or needs about his diet.

she looked over his test results and agreed that we should cut out the beans and lentils first and foremost. she didn't think it would be healthy to raise a child on meats, fruits and veggies alone for very long, so she recommended we keep trying rice and hope it was a false positive. she didn't love the saturated fats in coconut oil and milk, but i'm not as worried about them while he's still underweight. she also pointed out that his dog allergy result was the highest of all and twice what hers is , and she can't be around them at all.

this renewed my fears about having to get rid of our beloved great dane and i dreaded 'lou finishing the medications and continuing to break out and lose weight. i planned to go visit a dogless friend out of town if this were the case, while maintaining the identical diet. if he cleared up there, i'd know for sure this was from the dog - although the pattern we've been dealing with since june is a typical food allergy pattern.

he did continue to have small breakthrough bumps while on the meds, so i was sure we would return to full-blown misery status when the regimen of meds was completed.

however, he's doing beautifully off all the meds and we haven't changed a thing about his exposure to the dog (which is unrestricted). we did visit a friend last week with a siberian husky and by the time we left his house, 'lou's legs and forearms were bright red and he was scratching incessantly. it looked like a sunburn, not actual bumps or sores like he typically has.

i showered him when we got home and went to bed. the next morning it was 100% cleared up. so i feel reassured and confident that he *is* very allergic to dogs in general, but not our breed so much (great dane). maybe there's truth to the theory that allergic pet owners can build up an immunity to their own pet due to the constant exposure or maybe there's truth to the theory that short hair breeds are less allergenic and retain less dander in their coat.

either way, once again i've got something to be extremely grateful about! i continue to keep socks on him constantly to protect his very vulnerable ankles from things like grass and dog hair. i continue to slather him in raw, organic shea butter if he looks irritated, red or itchy anywhere. i continue with the cod liver oil and medical grade, allergen-free probiotics to support his gut health and essential fatty acids. i continue to line his nose with aquaphor as a barrier to allergens via the mucous membranes - but beyond that, he is currently living like a normal little boy on a very restricted diet and i am determined to spend my time not taking this for granted!

i'm also entertaining the thought of taking the encouragement and advice i seem to get almost daily now and starting to write about my thoughts and experiences on trying to parent a severe multiple allergy child naturally in an unnatural world. whether or not it will turn into a book remains to be seen, but i love the brainstorming and new questions i'm coming up with during the process and it's helping me to formulate my own ideas about why this might be happening along the way.

Mom of four talking about food allergies and her new book

2010-07-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

happy update

2010-07-20T19:22:00.001-07:00

i am so pleased to update that tonight is the 3rd night that 'lou has been 90% improved and cleared up. (the above pics are him the 2nd night on antihistamines, having trouble falling asleep, naked because his clothes irritated him too much, swollen red eyes, rashy knees, ankles, wrists and buttocks and him 2 nights ago, about 4 days on the antihistamines, face cleared up beautifully, eyes no longer swollen, sleeping deeply and restfully - and in pajamas!) after about 2 days on the totally corn-free, liquid periactin, the itching stopped almost completely, he's sleeping through the night again and he's happy. he's playing and singing and dancing and back to his old self. i feel like i'm getting my little guy back!

(ha, i just looked over this again and realized they're also before and after pictures of his very 1st ever haircut!)

he does still have a couple pimple-like bumps on his ankles and he did continue to get rashy-like marks under his armpits and on his buttocks - which are not typical reaction patterns for him - but they were not swollen, red or itchy, they just appeared as subdued spots, almost under the skin. i am hoping this is a sign the antihistamine is truly doing its job and stopping the itching and swelling from new allergic reactions.

i'm still waiting for the corn-free steroid (and beginning to wonder if we will still need it!) to be located by the compounding pharmacy. their usual supplier overseas seems to be slow in responding to the unusual request, so they may look into finding a new one if they don't hear back soon. the situation is no longer so urgent now that 'lou is clearing up so well, but this is definitely an option i'd like to know all about for any future serious reactions like this.

we will be seeing the dietician at children's hospital on the 28th of july (today is the 20th) and i was already planning ahead and thinking how frustrating it was going to be to bombard her with our issues only to be told she'd have to research dietary options and concerns for someone as restricted as 'lou - and then make another appointment for us to come back and discuss it. it's not easy for us to get to appointments like these with 5 kids, no babysitter and hubby's crazy work schedule.

as if she read my mind, the dietician called me to ask what his specific allergies were so she could be better prepared for our meeting, as the receptionist had left her a note regarding our appointment that 'lou had many restrictions. we ended up talking for about 45 minutes and i have to say that something i was almost dreading and really going through the motions for my dr.s has turned into something i'm very excited about!

the last dietician we saw was very uninformed about the benefits of breastfeeding a toddler and had no idea how to factor or quantify it into his daily caloric total, so she simply discounted it completely! this was very distressing for me, because there is research-based evidence showing that women who breastfeed for 18 months or longer have fatter milk than women who breastfeed for a shorter duration. there is research-based evidence showing that women who breastfeed more than one child at a time also have fatter milk. if i have been breastfeeding for 10 years without interruption now, how fat must my milk be? if i was breastfeeding 3 children until he was 6 months old and have been breastfeeding 2 since then and he's almost 3 now, how fat must be the milk he gets? if he nurses 8-12 times a day when he's reactive, how much fat and calories must he be getting from my milk? i think the amount and benefits of human milk in his diet is very significant and was very upset to hear it had to be assigned a value of zero because she didn't know how to give it even the most basic value, mathematically or nutritionally.

she also had no idea what foods really contained corn and which didn't, or what all the terms for corn were. it was a very frustrating experience, to say the least. she was very up to date on gluten-free diets and celiac disease, but corn... not so much.

ever since, i've been doing it myself. we've tested 'lou for anemia and vitamin deficiencies, as well as hormonal and metabolic irregularities and it's all been normal, but i've never known exactly how much of specific minerals and vitamins he should be getting, nor which foods to get them from! i've just been winging it and trying to guesstimate which veggies might be best for which main vitamins and minerals. this new dietician mentioned that his rashes and skin issues could be a symptom of a deficiency in something like thiamine - something i'd be totally clueless about! wouldn't it be wonderful if this was all just something as easily fixed as blending some more strawberries or green leafies into his smoothies every day?

whatever we end up finding out, i can't believe how eager i am to have found someone who sounds truly interested and concerned and ready to tackle the problem and brainstorm with me. i didn't even realize how much i feel like i'm on my own in dealing with this until she sat on the phone with me, coming up with ideas and suggestions and really listening to me describe his diet and symptoms over his whole 2 3/4 years so far and asking for this blog address so she can study our menu.

i really get the sense that these dr.s, pharmacists and dieticians intuit that this is an issue they need to learn all they can about. the more we all discuss it, the more it sounds like they agree that corn is not what it used to be and is affecting people in ways it never did before. i think we are all forging very valuable new resources together and i'm so glad to have found such awesome professionals to help me take care of my little guy!

i will update on the dietician appointment and am hoping our journey can help give anyone else dealing with the same thing some ideas.

thank yous

2010-07-14T13:11:00.001-07:00

i heard back from morton pharmaceuticals - they make atarax, an antihistamine that has only the following corn-derived ingredients:

alcohol, .5%

citric acid

propylene glycol

it also contains 'liquid sugar', which i suspected must be corn. they have assured me that it is *not* a source of corn, but comes from cane and beet sugars only. that makes atarax the second antihistamine with the least corn, after the adult tablet form of 'periactin', which only has 1: microcrystaline cellulose.

i also found out that physician's compounding pharmacy in bloomfield hills, (michigan) is an absolutely fabulous resource and ally when you have special needs for medications. karen has put up without about 100 phone calls from me and listened patiently to my litany of additive restrictions & concerns. she has searched diligently and today came up with a source outside of our country for totally corn-free periactin and is still tracking down the orapred. they are able to ship the medications right to me and include forms to request our insurance to reimburse us for the cost.

as usual, mary kay at beverly hills pediatrics is always there when i need her and is getting a packet together of all the tests - immune system function & genetic - that we've had done on 'lou as well as a current graph of his growth to bring to the new specialist.

dr. bahrainwalla at royal oak allergy and asthma center also has my gratitude and esteem - especially for opening his mind and listening to 'lou & i, even when it didn't make sense or match his own tests and training. dr.s like that are very hard to find!

i feel very lucky to keep finding such caring and supportive professionals to work with 'lou's concerns - mary kay (and justin!) are the main reasons i stayed with beverly hills pediatrics when dr. cheryl left and dr. bryzik is managing to fill those big shoes, tho i'm sure we're not anybody's choice of a 1st patient! and physician's compounding pharmacy has a grateful and loyal new customer who will be referring any other allergy parents with similar concerns their way!

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happy update

thank yous