I was having a back and forth conversation on Facebook with a few sweet friends, and one of them asked what my grocery list is every week. It so happened that she caught me just as I was arriving home from the grocery store, so I decided to oblige the request. For good or for bad, here it is:
Carrots
Celery
Garlic
Onions
--These are for chicken (bone broth) soup.
Kale
Romaine Lettuce--(extra for lettuce wraps)
Lemons
Granny Smith apples
--These are for juicing. Often I add the pulp from the kale into the broth. Sometimes we add celery to the juicer, and cucumber.
Bananas
Tomatoes
Cabbage
Asparagus (on sale!)--great for raising glutathione levels
Zucchini (this one was not organic--is likely to be GMO--many squashes are.)
Cauliflower (for 'rice')
Broccoli
Parsnips and Turnips--these are both very starchy, but I decided to get them, anyway, this time. --James only gets a little parsnip, a little more turnip, though it has a high sulfur content.
Potatoes--when Jim requests something I am happy to get it. The young kids and I can't tolerate potato right now.
Ham--What can I say? You caught me. Jim did ask for ham, and, again, the little ones and I can't handle it. I don't like to get pork...Jordan Rubin has convinced me that it's not beneficial, and Dr. Morgan taught me that it has no life-giving frequency...it's a dead food. I am living under grace and not the law now, however, and our diet is waaaaay better than it was four years ago.
Eggs
Gluten Free Pasta-- I'm sure it's terrible for you, and probably has GMO corn in it. HEB brand.
Bertolli Organic Spaghetti Sauce--for this I can say that it's in a jar, which is better than a can, but there's still so much wrong here. Anyway, it's an easy meal for the ones in our home who can eat it.
I get chicken through a co-op with Fran's Fryers, of which I am very thankful. James has reactions to even the store-bought organic chicken (I'm sure it's what they preserve it in) but does fine with Fran's. We also have a stash of organic homegrown purple-hull peas in our freezer from our garden from last year.
I think that's it...and it's definitely not a week, but it's what I came home with in the amount of time I had to shop by myself today. It is all bought organic unless it's not available. I have a habit of soaking meats/vegetables/fruits in MMS. I've even been known to add it to a gluten free muffin mix on occasion. In the next few days, I will go to get my Celtic Sea Salt and Organic Coconut Oil from the Granary, and most likely--against my better judgment--my big kids will talk me into buying them Udi's blueberry muffins for breakfast.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
The Sum of All Diets
I have been wanting to write another entry with all of the diets, all of their benefits, all of their drawbacks, etc... It makes me tired just to think of it!
Then I decided I would sum it up: what I have given thus far--gluten free/casein free/soy free, and also Feingold diets, are exclusionary or avoidance diets. These guidelines will make a huge difference in your/your loved one's behavior and health, and they may actually heal, but they are not considered "healing" diets.
Most likely, if you have a need for either (or both) of the diets mentioned above, then there is also a need for some pretty intense gut-healing. My very favorite is the GAPS diet from the book The Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Natasha-Campbell McBride. Very similar to it is the Specific Carbohydrate Diet studied out by Elaine Gottschall to heal her daughter of severe bowel disease: her story is found in the book entitled, Breaking the Vicious Cycle. I love The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin, and appreciate many concepts in Donna Gates' Body Ecology Diet. I can't get enough of the articles from Weston A. Price Foundation. I part ways with them on the raw dairy--don't get me wrong: I am a fan of raw dairy, but I consider cow's milk as dangerous drugs to our family. I have gotten goat's milk and even a little camel's milk at different points, because of the difference in their types of casein as opposed to cows'. Jordan Rubin's company, Beyond Organic, claims to have a herd of cows that have been bred back to the original-only beta 2 casein-milk. I can't wait to try it.
There's another popular diet among the autism crowd--it's called the Low Oxalate Diet. It cuts out the highest oxalate foods to help lower the amount of crystals formed and stored in the child's body, and has been found to be very effective in some. All of the research I have read surrounding this diet indicates that the malfunction of the digestive system allows for approximately a 80% storage rate of oxalates rather than a 6-8% rate in a healthy individual. An article from Weston A. Price I came across a few weeks ago revealed that there are species of Aspergillus (fungus) that produce their own oxalates--sounds very probable that these kiddos are overgrown with something similar.
Anyway, what most of these diets or eating concepts are basing their healing on is starving out the bad: the parasites, yeast, pathogenic bacteria that have moved in and aren't budging without a fight--and adding in the good: the fermented foods that contain probiotics (life-giving microbes) that have their natural terrain in the intestinal tract. Probably most know about the benefits of probiotics; they are getting fairly mainstream these days. Some of you, though, may have done a double-take at the idea of an overgrowth of yeast, a severe infestation of parasites, or a colonization of bacteria so dangerous that it's toxins will cause tics, obsessive behaviors, partial paralysis, etc. I'll never forget the first time I told someone that we were working to rid James of his yeast overgrowth--you would have thought I had grown another head. I'll give you a blog entry to get used to the idea: we'll get back to that topic soon enough.
When we first began this path of recovery for James, I was ready to do whatever diet necessary--110%. We began the gfcf diet and saw great things happen...see previous blogs for details. Then, James still seemed to be having some of the opiate reactions, so our doctor said that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet was what he needed instead, because he was reacting to the sugar. On a side note,
I believe that many times moms and dads don't see a big difference in their child upon removal of gluten and casein because there is still significant sugar in the diet, which is fermented by an overgrowth of yeast. More on the yeastie boys later. I added in some aspects of the Feingold diet because we were having so much trouble with the phenolic foods. When I would feed James too many high thiol foods (sulfur) his eyes would turn red underneath and his belly would swell out even more than before. I could go on, but I won't. If you are wondering what "diet" we use, my answer is all to some extent, none exclusively. This frustrated me to no end, but I think it made the Lord smile. I am pretty sure He wanted to lead me through all of them to help me learn about each one, and also to teach me to follow Him instead of a diet.
I guess the closest thing to our specific diet I found months later while reading an Andy Cutler book, and I thought, "That's it! That's our diet!" Andy Cutler is a chemist with a degree from Princeton who was mercury poisoned from amalgams, and has his own protocol for removing metals, especially from the brain. He says in his book, Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment, that you have to find foods that you will not have a reaction to, and that your list of foods may be very short. This is what it came down to with James. So many times I work backwards, and this was a big indicator to me that his metal toxicity was still very high. The more foods we are able to add in, the more it shows his progress. I promised a typical grocery list on Facebook, but I wanted to preface it with this blog, so that you would have an idea of why I buy what I buy.
Then I decided I would sum it up: what I have given thus far--gluten free/casein free/soy free, and also Feingold diets, are exclusionary or avoidance diets. These guidelines will make a huge difference in your/your loved one's behavior and health, and they may actually heal, but they are not considered "healing" diets.
Most likely, if you have a need for either (or both) of the diets mentioned above, then there is also a need for some pretty intense gut-healing. My very favorite is the GAPS diet from the book The Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Natasha-Campbell McBride. Very similar to it is the Specific Carbohydrate Diet studied out by Elaine Gottschall to heal her daughter of severe bowel disease: her story is found in the book entitled, Breaking the Vicious Cycle. I love The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin, and appreciate many concepts in Donna Gates' Body Ecology Diet. I can't get enough of the articles from Weston A. Price Foundation. I part ways with them on the raw dairy--don't get me wrong: I am a fan of raw dairy, but I consider cow's milk as dangerous drugs to our family. I have gotten goat's milk and even a little camel's milk at different points, because of the difference in their types of casein as opposed to cows'. Jordan Rubin's company, Beyond Organic, claims to have a herd of cows that have been bred back to the original-only beta 2 casein-milk. I can't wait to try it.
There's another popular diet among the autism crowd--it's called the Low Oxalate Diet. It cuts out the highest oxalate foods to help lower the amount of crystals formed and stored in the child's body, and has been found to be very effective in some. All of the research I have read surrounding this diet indicates that the malfunction of the digestive system allows for approximately a 80% storage rate of oxalates rather than a 6-8% rate in a healthy individual. An article from Weston A. Price I came across a few weeks ago revealed that there are species of Aspergillus (fungus) that produce their own oxalates--sounds very probable that these kiddos are overgrown with something similar.
Anyway, what most of these diets or eating concepts are basing their healing on is starving out the bad: the parasites, yeast, pathogenic bacteria that have moved in and aren't budging without a fight--and adding in the good: the fermented foods that contain probiotics (life-giving microbes) that have their natural terrain in the intestinal tract. Probably most know about the benefits of probiotics; they are getting fairly mainstream these days. Some of you, though, may have done a double-take at the idea of an overgrowth of yeast, a severe infestation of parasites, or a colonization of bacteria so dangerous that it's toxins will cause tics, obsessive behaviors, partial paralysis, etc. I'll never forget the first time I told someone that we were working to rid James of his yeast overgrowth--you would have thought I had grown another head. I'll give you a blog entry to get used to the idea: we'll get back to that topic soon enough.
When we first began this path of recovery for James, I was ready to do whatever diet necessary--110%. We began the gfcf diet and saw great things happen...see previous blogs for details. Then, James still seemed to be having some of the opiate reactions, so our doctor said that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet was what he needed instead, because he was reacting to the sugar. On a side note,
I believe that many times moms and dads don't see a big difference in their child upon removal of gluten and casein because there is still significant sugar in the diet, which is fermented by an overgrowth of yeast. More on the yeastie boys later. I added in some aspects of the Feingold diet because we were having so much trouble with the phenolic foods. When I would feed James too many high thiol foods (sulfur) his eyes would turn red underneath and his belly would swell out even more than before. I could go on, but I won't. If you are wondering what "diet" we use, my answer is all to some extent, none exclusively. This frustrated me to no end, but I think it made the Lord smile. I am pretty sure He wanted to lead me through all of them to help me learn about each one, and also to teach me to follow Him instead of a diet.
I guess the closest thing to our specific diet I found months later while reading an Andy Cutler book, and I thought, "That's it! That's our diet!" Andy Cutler is a chemist with a degree from Princeton who was mercury poisoned from amalgams, and has his own protocol for removing metals, especially from the brain. He says in his book, Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment, that you have to find foods that you will not have a reaction to, and that your list of foods may be very short. This is what it came down to with James. So many times I work backwards, and this was a big indicator to me that his metal toxicity was still very high. The more foods we are able to add in, the more it shows his progress. I promised a typical grocery list on Facebook, but I wanted to preface it with this blog, so that you would have an idea of why I buy what I buy.
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