Our Story: Asthma & Food Sensitivities, Part 2
In Part 1 of our story I shared about Jon David's struggle with asthma, our frequent doctor visits, and our glimmer of hope with natural medicine. Today, I'll get you up to date!
We began the Elimination Diet as soon as we received the IgG Food Sensitivity test results back in February 2015. It was very important to me that Jon David didn't feel isolated or like he was "weird," so as a family, we only ate the foods that Jon David was allowed to eat. Even though that meant no dairy, no eggs, no wheat, pasta, or bread, no peanuts or cashews, no oats or corn, no pineapple or carrots, it was easier to do it together because everything was fair! After a few months we had Jon David retested to see how quickly his responding to the changes. The test revealed that Jon David's body was not responding quickly, and actually, some of the substitutes we had incorporated had also become foods he was sensitive to. Now, it was clear that this would be a long journey, but we knew changing his diet would eventually reduce the inflammation.
Every year, in May, was our annual visit with Jon David's pediatric pulmonologist. Despite the fact that she had upset me so much at our appointment in January, I was excited to see her because I wanted to share how much better Jon David was doing. I shared that we had started seeing a naturopathic doctor, found out that Jon David had a laundry-list of food sensitivities, and that since we'd started eliminating the foods his body was reacting to, there was noticeable improvement in his asthma symptoms. His doctor was skeptical and said she'd never heard of a change in food having a significant impact on asthma symptoms. There was no doubt in my mind the changes we made with food and essential oils were working.
At this point, our experiment with all of our natural remedies had been skewed because Jon David was still taking his medication. I asked his doctor if we could start weening him off of his medications to see how his body responds. She said, "If you want him off the medicines, I won't refill his prescriptions. I don't think this will work and I fully expect to see you back in six weeks." She said cutting all of his meds cold-turkey was safe, even though I was concerned, and she sent us on our way. In my opinion, she was setting us up for failure. Needless to say, Jon David's asthma has improved so much that we haven't needed to see her since May 2015!
A few days after my last appointment with our pediatric pulmonologist, a friend and I went to the Forrest Green Farm Memorial Day Festival, where I met Krista Rahm. She knows all about herbs and walked a similar journey with her son 10 years before us. As I sat through her seminar on how to make salves, I tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible! Afterwards, I shared my story with her and asked if she'd mentor me with herbal teas that would help Jon David. She agreed and has been a wonderful friend and teacher of mine ever since.
My life was going in a completely different, but exciting, direction. I started taking classes from Krista at Forrest Green Farm to learn more about herbal remedies and food as medicine. I started growing some of the herbs I had learned about at our house. We started raising cows and chickens so we could control the quality of meats we were eating. My vegetable garden was huge, but I was terrible at managing it; however, we did get fresh vegetables that summer.
Krista was the one that introduced me to the GAPS Diet. She knew a few families that has started this diet and seen tremendous changes, but warned me that it wasn't for the faint of heart.
I bought the Gut and Psychology Syndrome book, written by Dr. Natasha McBride, and couldn't put it down. Everything she wrote made so much sense and explained why Jon David was having so many problems, but more importantly, how to solve those problems with the right nutrition!
At this point, I had information and a plan, but I had no clue how to cook! While the Gut and Psychology Syndrome book had some recipes in it, they were hard to follow and I needed something written for a newbie! I bought the Heal Your Gut cookbook because, not only was it full of great recipes, the entire beginning of the book taught you how to actually cook things from scratch. There was a slight learning curve, but my determination to help Jon David feel better kept me going, and I'm happy to say that today I can modify just about any recipe to make it tasty and meet our allergy needs!
In an effort to be as detailed as possible, so this blog is as helpful as possible, this post has gotten really long. I'm going to postpone the rest of our story until next time.
