This post is provided by a friend whose family, and son in particular, strengthened their health through the foods they eat. Our boys have become great dinosaur buddies.
Evan was born in Japan in July, 2003. I smoked—always in another room next to an open window or an air purifier, but I smoked. Our diet—half traditional Japanese, half-Western (but no junk food)—was pretty healthy as non-holistic diets go. My wife used all the standard commercial “nice smelling” cleaners. We vaccinated at 4 months, 6 months and so forth, although I believe the Japanese don’t put thimerosol in their shots. At 2 1/2, he had no symptoms that were call for alarm.
That was when we moved to the States. The house had freshly laid carpets and we bought new conventional mattresses. And, for the first six months, ate Harris Teeter food.
About that time, I found Holistic Moms, we began to clean up our act and Evan developed a dry cough—not severe, but persistent. We tried Chestal cough medicine and other natural remedies, but nothing helped. We acquired two cats, but this had no ostensible effect one way or the other.
We tested for allergies with a blood test, which came back positive to a fairly significant degree for—wouldn’t you know it—cats and less significantly for eggs, dust mites and a couple of other irritants. The baffling thing was, when we took him to his grandparents place in the Japanese countryside—no carpets, no cats, fresh air—the cough continued unabated.
In May of this year, we took him to a kinesiologist/chiropractor, who had a track record in that he had helped me quite a bit. He said Evan was in basically good shape, gave him an adjustment, protein powder and Antronex, and proscribed quite a few foods. And still Evan hacked on.
In September we took him to Ken Morehead, who gave us some moxabustion points and the GAPS diet book. Evan’s “allergies” weren’t as severe as Colson’s, so we were allowed more indulgences than Laura and Co. We instituted a lot of changes—not obsessively, but diligently—but the major ones were bone broth and butter oil. (Evan was already taking cod liver oil.) Some of the foods the kinesiologist had nixed were OK with GAPS and vice versa, but I liked the GAPS philosophy/approach—that is, everything as close to natural as possible, no processed foods.
In early November, I went to Japan on business. Evan was still coughing. While I was there, I plowed through Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. Thanks to GAPS and NT, I began to suspect that it wasn’t eggs, etc. per se that Evan was allergic to, but how they were produced. (Fortunately, Laura had introduced us to free-range eggs, poultry and beef at the Farmer’s Market. Up to then, we had shopped at Whole Foods. Go figure.)
I returned in mid-November to find Evan cough-free. Still had the cats. Still had the carpets. And more and more, Evan was eating the stuff he was “allergic” to. He caught a touch of a cold and did cough a bit, but it was a different cough. (BTW, we’ve been in what Laura calls the “One Day Cough” zone for well over a year. Also, strep and pink eye cleared up in a day, while an ear infection was gone in an hour—with help from helichrysum oil.)
So there you have it. The only change in a time frame relevant to Evan’s health was the addition of bone broth and butter oil to the CLO we had already been taking, so I’m assuming those two were the rate determining steps in the improvement. A month after my return from Japan, Evan is still cough-free. And our motivation is, understandably, pumped up.
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