We
thought that we had these allergies beat! We had all been feeling great, so I
started to bring rice, beans and Vollkorn bread (cracked rye grains, whole rye
bread and sourdough) back into our diets. After a few weeks, Colson began to
sneeze. Then he woke up with swollen eyes! Ugh!
The
short story for our dietary decisions is:
- illness begins in the gut
- if a person is experiencing chronic illness, such as allergies, ADD, asthma and more the gut is out of balance, meaning that yeast, bacteria, parasites and more are present. Their presence causes illness and prevents robust health
- the
gut can be healed by feeding it foods that heal.
Why
are we better and Colson isn’t? Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride explains why in Gut
and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS):
This [gut] damage gets passed on from
generation to generation as a newborn child gets its gut flora from the mother
[drinking her fluid during the birth process]. And as the damage gets passed
through generations, it gets deeper and deeper. This process reflects in the severity
of health problems related to abnormal gut flora seen in generations. For
example, this is quite a common scenario, which I see in my clinic: a grandmother
has mild digestive problems…She passes moderately abnormal gut flora to her
daughter. On top of that she decides not to breast feed…As a result, her
daughter suffers from allergies, migraines, PMS and digestive problems. Then she
takes contraceptive pills…which deepens the damage to her gut flora, not to
mention a few courses of antibiotics along the way for various infections and a
diet of fast foods. After 10 years of being ‘on the pill’ she has children, to
whom she passes her seriously abnormal gut flora. Her children develop
digestive and immune problems, which then lead to eczema, asthma, autism and
other learning problems.
Dr.
McBride’s son was moderately to severely autistic. Under her treatment he is
now undiagnosable as a teenager.
Following
GAPS, Ryan no longer battles ADD and I no longer have seasonal allergies. Colson
is battling allergies again, although they are much less than prior to the GAPS
diet. I believe the allergy resurgence was caused by his partially going off of
the diet. Based on Dr. McBride’s assertions, Colson’s gut damage could be a bit
deeper than Ryan’s and mine. I fit Dr. McBride’s description to a tee.
Colson
is back on GAPS and the eye swelling quickly went away. The sneezies are still
here in the morning and evening, which is a great improvement over the all day
sneezing and blowing that he did the first 5.5 years of his life.
People ask me how Colson adjusts to the GAPS diet, and because he wants his sneezies permanently gone he does GREAT! When I told him he was back on GAPS he smiled and said OK. Colson will go a few more months on GAPS and we will slowly work his way out of it again. The healing we have all experienced over nine months is huge. A few more months to hopefully banish the sneezies for good and is worth it.
Comments