Reverse Food Allergies? Our Journey Part II

Reverse food allergies?  Is it even possible?  I share part 2 of our family’s journey to do just this!

In part I of this story, I detailed our food allergy struggles over the last 4 years.  I talked briefly about all of the medical professionals we worked with to try and heal my son.

Today, I get to share with you what finally started working for us and start answering if we were able to reverse food allergies.

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a medical professional!  Just a mom who has been working diligently to heal her kids, determined not to give up.  If there is one thing I have learned over these last  5 years, it is that there is no ONE RIGHT ANSWER for every single person.  We are all unique beings with unique systems.  What it takes for one person to feel their best may not work for the next.  What I do know is that inflammation is often the root cause of a whole myriad of symptoms in this world.  Finding the thing(s) that are causing the inflammation is key, but can be like finding a needle in the haystack. Just remember that our bodies WANT TO HEAL, WANT TO  BE BETTER.  Clear the obstacles, and your body can do it’s job.

My Own Health

In February, completely frustrated with my own health and my own struggle to lose excess pounds, a Living Social deal caught my eye.  (Yes, this part of the story starts with my own health that I touched on in part I, don’t worry…we will get back to my son, and then move on to my daughter and her ADD!)

Here I was, doing everything ‘right’.

My friends would often joke that if I ‘wasn’t the picture of health, then there WAS NO HOPE FOR THEM!’  LOL!

What I was already doing:

1. Super clean, real food diet.  Minimal sugar.  No gluten.  No dairy. Lots of vegetables.  Only healthy fats.  No processed foods.  Beans always soaked (for three days!) etc.  I experimented with strict Paleo too, and counted calories multiple months to make sure I was not over-eating.
2. Lots of varied exercise: bootcamps, spinning, Zumba, Pilates, hill walking, running.
3. Mental health: taking as much ‘me’ time as I could…which took intention.  But I wanted to find some more balance in my life.  Acupuncture, weekly chiropractic care, regular massages.  All of this to help center myself, relax more.  Regular visits with a therapist.
4. Natural products used in and around the home to minimize my toxic exposure.
5. Weekly chiropractic adjustments.

All this.  And yet I still felt tired, sluggish, out of shape, and had been struggling with poor digestion for several years.

When I asked for up-to-date blood work….the first clue came back.  Thyroid was normal.  But I was SEVERELY anemic.  I had a ferritin level of 1!  (It is supposed to be between 40-60).  Well THAT explained my low levels of energy and tiredness.  But what didn’t make sense was WHY?  Most menstruating women ARE slightly anemic..but my diet was SO iron rich, to be THIS low seemed weird to me.

I started supplementing heavily.  Three different iron supplements, 1x each day.  I immediately had more energy (OMG, I can RUN again!!  I thought I was just out of shape!!).  But oddly…even though iron is supposed to slow down or stop most people’s digestion..it did the opposite for me.

OK, this WAS WEIRD.   I knew something had to be up.  So I purchased that Living Social Deal to Vitality Northwest (2017 update, When NW Vitality closed in the end of 2015, one the practitioners started her own business, and we have used her and the same methods to keep ourselves aligned, Cascade Nutritional Therapy  and Amber are just as awesome!).   Their website seemed to be aligned philosophically with my style, and I was ready to be HEALTHY and feel VITAL again!!

Long story short, in one 30 minute appointment…my issues were laid out clearly:

1. I had a parasite. Oregano oil supplement 2x/day for 30 days.
2. I had low stomach acid (which of course you need an HIGH stomach acid environment to break iron down, and to digest food well too!)  HCL supplement at every meal.
3. I was sensitive to gluten, dairy, coffee, chocolate…and the BIG ONE: IRON!!!  Huge EUREKA moment!  No wonder all that iron supplementation was tearing my digestion apart!!  No wonder I could not pinpoint a rhyme or reason to foods causing me issue (everything I ate practically had iron!)  So some homeopathy desensitization drops, and a BAX treatment to desensitize myself to iron.

Now…I consider myself a hippy.

I am very comfortable with alternative medicine.  But even I was a little skeptical about the effectiveness of the muscle resistance testing and the BAX treatments. But I did not have anything to lose.  And all my medical doctor had to offer was: “You’re getting older, and things can slow down.”

END RESULT?

Within 5 WEEKS my iron jumped to a whopping 20 (iron is notoriously slow to climb up, so this was a HUGE jump).  My doctor was shocked (and impressed).  I have completely normal digestion again.  I tolerate ALL foods again.  (YES! Dairy, how I have missed thee!)  I have energy and I am NOT so dog tired anymore.  To say  I feel like a new woman is an understatement..  More accurately: I feel like myself again!

I have yet to lose any weight…but that seems secondary now to me.  I have figured out some pretty major stuff and feel great!

So now we head back to my son.

When the third acupuncturist felt like it was time, she referred to me to a classical homeopath not living in state, Molly McNally @ Homeopathic Solutions.    We started with her, and started to see some unwinding of his body’s issues.

But not 100%.  And his skin was still flaring.  Classical homeopathy is another one I have a hard time wrapping my brain around…but it is such an easy, safe treatment for kids (sugar sweet tiny pills that dissolve under the tongue).    Nailing the right remedy however, takes skill, training, and practice…as only the right remedy will do the job.  And the right remedy can take time to work…you have to be patient.  Molly is awesome.

After my resounding success….I thought I should give Dr. Kevin a shot at my son too. Why not?  It was too darn effective for me not to try!

My son’s first appointment was an EYE OPENER.  I thought for sure we would find:

• SIBO (small intestinal bacteria overgrowth)?
• Candida (yeast overgrowth)?
• any one of the multitude of things I had researched and considered (heavy metal toxicity, Lyme disease, etc)

But no.  After reading through my son’s lengthy medical history….Dr. Kevin was surprised.  Here was a kid that “was doing everything right.”  What was stopping his healing?  He had a hunch. Something called “biofilm.”  When he said that word, exclamation points went off in my head!  I had JUST learned that term when The Healthy Home Economist wrote a post about candida and biofilms.  When I read that article, I had filed it away in my brain as, “something to explore further.”

In short, a biofilm is a protective coating that any pathogen (parasite, bacteria, fungus, virus) makes for itself as a protective mechanism from its enemies (our antibodies and immune system attacks).  Initially, the biofilm is not that strong…but the longer it is in place, the stronger that biofilm gets…..so whatever treatment you throw its way may work temporarily, but enough of the pathogen remains to cause all the symptoms to come back.  This a great article explaining biofilms and how to break them!

When my son held the biofilm vial, he crashed HARD.  OMG!  This was it?  Could this really be our problem?  Even more fascinating, when he tested several remedies and landed on the correct one where he held strong WITH the biofilm vial (an essential oil blend), with that vial still touching him: he was reacting to almost NO FOODS.  But take AWAY the treatment and he crashed on almost Every.  Single.  One.  Even gelatin!

So we were sent off with these drops, to report back after they had had some time to take effect so we could ‘see’ what was hiding underneath those biofilms!

Join me in my next post where I finish sharing the results we have had so far and our progress! What was hiding underneath that biofilm?! And I will also share the huge strides we are making with my daughter’s ADD!  Join me for more on answering, can you reverse food allergies?

 

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