Of Boys and Bellies

~

It has been a while, sweet friends, but tonight the writer's itch required a scratch. Couple that with an opportunity to stretch myself in a crafty/homeskill fashion, and some pictures of the end result, and we have a blog post :-)

To skip over several months of life, the most important recent milestone has been discovering Theron has a sensitivity to several foods. The link between diet and the management of autistic symptoms is a popular one, and I had discovered several possibilities.

1) It's common for autistic kids to have an overgrowth of candida in their intestines.
2) It's also common for autistic kids' intestines to have a sensitivity to dairy, eggs, wheat, and/or gluten.
3) An irritated, yeast-ridden intestinal lining can allow larger than usual particles through into the bloodstream, placing a strain on the liver as it attempts to filter out toxins, and stimulating the body's immune response.
4) It's not clear which is the chicken or the egg amongst these issues, but management of them has shown to reduce the severity of symptoms in autistic kids.

We took advantage of the opportunity to spend down some tax dollars, and visited Aaron's naturopath late last year to test for food sensitivities in Theron. We had already followed the conventional paediatric blood testing which had been returned with a big fat "normal" scrawled across the small blue report card. But having had such success with Aaron, we were willing to give it a go.

After collecting samples from various orifices, as well as a pinky finger needle prick, we determined that Theron:

~ is sensitive to eggs, dairy, gluten, and wheat
~ has an moderate overgrowth of candida in his intestine
~ has two forms of strep in his intestine that should not be there
~ has an inflammed intestine

Poor wee man. So while we're treating what we can with probiotics and Nystatin, the naturopath suggested we take a few things out of his diet to give his digestion a break.

One trip to Trader Joes, Wholefoods, Fred Meyer and two-weeks-worth-of-grocery-budget-in-one-day-later, and we returned home ready to experiment.

(Lots of non-wheat flours; rice/quinoa pasta; gluten & egg free snacks)

The spelt cinnamon bread was roundly rejected ("I just don't like it, Mama") as was the vanilla almond milk ("it's too sweet mama,) but tonight we hit pay dirt with a homemade banana bread. The recipie will follow in the next post. As I said to a friend, pretty much every baked good fresh out of the oven tastes yummy, but considering the weirdness and wonderfulness involved in this recipie, I was very glad it worked.

Theron pronounced it "yummy;" Aaron "phenomenal." Let's hope it tastes as good for breakfast tomorrow!