Is it GOUT????

We got Nicky's last Urine-Blood-Stool-Test back. We do this once-twice a year to see where he has deficits in different areas: Liver, Fatty acids, Vitamins, Gluthation and especially yeast issues. I will tell you more in a posting later this week. But i just came over something interesting. since we make this tests for the last four years, Nicky always had problems with uric acid and also citric acid. So our new DAN here in Germany gave us some meds to lower the uric acid. After half a year we made the test again in January '09. I was sure we are in a better place now and was full of hope.But not so! The test came back with uric acid levels still elevated, better then in august, but still very elevated. So??? You think you have it under control and then it just hits you! Can it be gout? Is it a dietary issue after all? Nicky always had big problems with gross motor skills, he had three times a hip infection in his life (ever had one or know one? No? Same here, till our son came along!). His tests always came back with elevated uric acid. Does that makes sense? YES if you read about GOUT. There is a recommendation in diet:

Here is a partial list of foods high in purines, which have the highest concentration of purines and should be avoided by those who are prone to gout or are already suffering from it.
Beef * Pork * Bacon * Lamb * Seafood * Foods that are made with a significant amount of yeast such as beer and bread * Alcoholic beverages While these foods high purine levels can also aggravate symptoms of gout, they can sometimes be enjoyed in moderation by those who usually follow a low purine diet.
Asparagus * Cauliflower * Mushrooms * Peas * Spinach * Whole-grain breads and cereals * White poultry meats, such as chicken, duck and turkey * Kidney and lima beans.
And finally, here are some foods that are safe to include in a low purine diet, though they should not comprise the entirety of your eating plan.
Green vegetables and tomatoes * Fruits and fruit juices * Breads that do not use yeast (check the kosher section or a health food store) * Nuts * Milk and milk products, such as butter and cheese * Chocolate * Coffee and tea.
If you suffer from gout or have a family predisposition to the disease, it is a good idea to steer clear of low carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins and Protein Power diets. Their recommendation to eat large amounts of foods high purines such as meats and dark vegetables is almost certain to cause problems in those predisposed to gout.

AHA, low carb diet is not good if you suffer from high uric acid. But that's what SCD is all about, isn't it? So i have to ask myself what do i want to treat? His uric acid problem and with it probably joint pain on every step he makes? Or constipation, which comes back when we go back to Carbs.
Stay posted, i haven't figured it out, i am still in shock and denial.

Stimmy, Stimmy ...and how to get that kid asleep

So we are in a "Down-face" right now. The last 1 1/2 weeks where hard on the whole family. Nicky is very loud, stimmy and over all just very uncooperative. You see it on little things during the whole day that something is bothering him.
That starts in the morning when he has to get dressed: He doesn't put his hand through the sleeve itself, he kind of fights it. It's a struggle.
But the worse is his sleeping pattern right now. He wakes up screaming during the night, he want the light on or somebody sleeping next to him. He also has a hard time fall asleep.You think he should be exhausted by the end of the day, especially with all the stimming and loud noises he makes. But hell NO! He is up, loud. And even he falls asleep, he wakes up after two hours, sitting in his bed. and seems like he is is done with sleeping.
So the first thing you look into as parents of an autistic kid is, "What have you changed that pushed him over the edge?" . Supplements are always a good guess, but also food could be the reason. Another is (and that's actually something good) that he is dumping toxins like yeast or heavy metals. In this process called Herxheimer reaction the child is feeling worse for a few days before an improvement occurs.
Because he is on a couple new supplements for over three weeks already i don't think is a Herxheimer reaction, it might be that the supplements itself (Olive leaf extract, artichokes and other nat. herbs) make him stimmy and sleepless.
So i left it out for three days and we already saw an improvement in sleep in the first night. Last night was actually good, he didn't wake up once after midnight and woke up for his normal school day time at 6 o'clock.
I also changed a few things in his bedtime routine. We give him Trytophan, which has Magnesium in it, along with other ingredients. Magnesium given at night makes you all sleepy and your body relax.
I also give him some herbal tea, called the Lazy Tea by Janosch with verlian, Anis, fennel, peppermint, Lavender. Very soothing, and he loves it so much, he drinks a full pot full over the late afternoon and evening.
Another thing is giving a bath with verlian herbs. I just bought the herbs in the pharmacy (welcome to Germany, where you get all nat. stuff!) and make a big pot of tea out of it.Beautiful calming bath essence.
There is a big section about sleep in one of my all-time-favourite autism books "Autism, Effective Biomedical Treatments" by Jon Pangborn . He talks about all this things and more, one is for example, that your body can not produce Melatonin, a hormone, that makes you sleep, as long as the lights are on. WOW! Nicky loves the light on at night, but he also has trouble to sleep through. As soon as we removed that bedside-lamp his night was so much better.

I am sure that there is so much more out there and if you want to share it with me, i would love to learn about it.

Let hope for a calm weekend, it's supposed to be sunny here temp's in the upper 50's.
Have a great weekend!

Holy ginger

So i made some ginger root-tea yesterday. I read in the Body ecology diet book that ginger root tea has some contracting effects on your intestines. Contracting is what we are looking for b/c of the constipation problems we are facing. So i boiled several slices of fresh ginger (love that taste of that root) and cooked it for 15 minutes. The recipe asked for Stevia to sweeten. But somehow Germany still doesn't allow that sweeter. Which is just bull, this is a natural sweetener and everywhere else in the world available. But i have a source (Hi Dr. F.!) to get it. So soon the sugar-trap will be gone and we will get more and more in the BED. The BED (Body Ecology diet) is a little tricky, but it all sounds so reasonable to me and for Nicky.

So anyway, i made that tea, sweetened it with honey and tasted it for myself. Well,YUMMY, spicy and it is a real thirst quencher. Nicky had half a sippy cup full, even he didn't like it first, he came back for more after having a sip.

This morning after N. woke up, he went successful to the potty. Never happened before in the a.m.

There are little things on the BED you can follow from the beginning. But there is a 80/20 rule (http://www.bodyecology.com/07/01/04/80-20_rule_essential_to_diet.php) i find hard to follow. But by time i will find a way. When we started SCD i thought, this is impossible to do. It's not, it's your child, and you would give your life for them. So cooking is just a walk in the park :o)

Have a great Sunday.

For all mac and cheese lovers - "Enjoy"

This is adapted from one of my favourite blogs, the SCD-girl http://scdgirl.blogspot.com/

Artificial colors and flavors? Ew.
You know, I've often wondered why artificial colors and flavors are illegal, but then I realized, by wondering, that I'd answered my own question. What ARE they, anyway? You don't know. I don't know. And that's why we can't eat them, because we have to know what a food is in order to know if it's legal or not. And let's face it -- artificial coloring and flavors are not food. We only eat food on the SCD. Perhaps this should be our slogan: The SCD: We eat food! In case you were wondering what prompted this post, well, let me tell you. I spoke with an acquaintance of mine recently who used to work at a large food manufacturing company. One of the items they produced was a macaroni and cheese-type recipe. The recipe called for two parts cheese, one part yellow food color. No, that's not a typo. So, for example, a batch would include 500 pounds of cheese...and 250 POUNDS of powdered yellow food color. The thing of it was, said my acquaintance, is that the food color cost just as much as the cheese! It was EXPENSIVE! You really wonder what's in our food supply, don't you? And people think we SCDers are the crazy ones...

After all i am glad we can not buy Mac and Cheese any longer - no more toxins for my kids!!
Enjoy your meal :o)

In a good place

I have to say i am getting used to the ups and downs in our life when it comes to Nicky. I know by now that even he has some "stimmy" days, he is either dumping toxins or just getting used to a new supplement. After some tough days he comes back in such a better way. Yesterday Philip, our 5 yrs. old was almost chocking on some food and he tried to cough it out. Nicky, sitting across him on the table, just started to copy coughing. It was too funny. I said to Philip "You got a frog sitting in your troath? Ribbith!" Guess what: Nicky started to move up and down while sitting in his chair. Just like that. We all started laughing so loud and Nicky clapped his hands and started also giggling. It was all spontaneous and he knew we are laughing with him. He had this big grin all over his face.

Moments like that keep me going. I know he is a hard nut to crack when it comes to diet and biomedical interventions. But we make steps forward, never back. We keep fighting yeast and we do antiviral therapy. I am also reading about the Body Ecology Diet (http://www.bodyecologydiet.com/). It sounds just so natural, like people should eat and how they did before industry started to "make" food. Toxins are in our body and cleansing your body is a good way to fight infections.

I put Nicky on a supplement that is all natural. It has ingredients like Pomegranate, Lavender, Thyme in it. It tastes a little strong, but i think it helps him.

Our DAN doc told us he is thinking out a Hyperbaric oxygen chamber in his office. This is a very new way to treat the kids and the result are stunning. I will be the first going in with Nicky, i can't wait!

That's from us, you see we doing good. Still fighting with the school system, but i hope i change one thing at a time.

As long as Nicky keeps smiling we are in a good place.

Yummy Yummy SCD legal Clementine cake

This is a yummy recipe from one of my favourite websites, the smitten kitchen (smittenkitchen.com). When i read the ingredences i thought, wow, this is SCD legal. And it sounds very moist and easy. So here it goes, just use honey instead of sugar! The original recipe is from Nigella, my favourite cook in the US.

Clementine Cake

Adapted from Nigella Lawson
… Oh right, I forgot to mention that this cake was darn good. I am not going to tell you that it is my favorite cake ever. It wasn’t. But all of the things I was worried would go wrong — it would be too bitter, it would be too tough, nobody would eat it — I couldn’t have been further off about. It is ridiculously moist, not bitter and surprisingly popular at a dinner party. You know, until you tell people they’re eating a cake of boiled rinds.
4 to 5 clementines (about 375grams/slightly less than 1 pound total weight)

6 eggs

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (225 grams) sugar

2 1/3 cups (250 grams) ground almonds

1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
Optional: Powdered sugar for dusting, or for making a glaze

Put the clementines in a pot with cold water to cover, bring to the boil, and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each clementine in half and remove the seeds. Then finely chop the skins, pith, and fruit in the processor (or by hand, of course).
Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
Butter and line an 8-inch (21 centimeter) springform pan with parchment paper. (I used a 9-inch, it worked fine.)
Beat the eggs. Add the sugar, almonds, and baking powder. Mix well, adding the chopped clementines.
Pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 50 minutes*, when a skewer will come out clean; you might have to cover the cake with foil after about 20 to 30 minutes to stop the top from over-browning.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool, in the pan on a rack. When the cake is cold, you can take it out of the pan and dust it with powdered sugar. I made a glaze of powdered sugar and a tablespoon of clementine juice because I was convinced the cake would be too bitter. It was not necessary. Nigella says the cake is best on the second day, but ours never made it that long.
Variations: Nigella says she’s also made this with an equal weight of oranges and lemons, in which case the sugar is increased to 1 1/4 cups.
* I am very unclear on the correct baking time, as you can see. Nigella’s recipe says it will 60 minutes. When I checked on it at 40 minutes (because I think you should start checking on any baked good at the 2/3 mark) it was done. Very done. Dark-brown edge-level done. And my oven runs cool. But I had made the cake in a one-inch larger pan, which made it slightly thinner. Which is all to say: Start checking at 30 minutes. Better to check too often than char your cake.

Nicky loooved the cake, and he is always sceptical when mom is baking :o). Enjoy!

A b@$ch called constipation

So here we are again, fighting constipation. Once a month she finds us and there is no escape. You see her crawling into your sons body, she makes herself comfortable and then she hits him. Usually on day three. This is after you have tried everything to make him go. Walks, swimming, Oxypowder, even in double doses. Nothing helps, because by now its in our sons head. He knows, she is there, waiting to hit him hard and painful. so he is trying to avoid pooping at all, because its painful. Of course he doesn't understand that it doesn't help, that he has to do it. Otherwise it's getting really though on him.
This for us most ugly condition named constipation came to us when our son still was a baby, just 10 months old. I remember going to our pediatrician after Nicky didn't go for a week. They kept telling me, this is OK, "Just give him prune juice" (he hated it by the way!) and he will go tomorrow. So here i where with a baby cramping, crying so hard, he was purple. I screamed with the fre@$ing doctor, that i will NOT leave this office before he hasn't helped us. So guess what, he got some gloves and took care of it. My poor baby, i spear you details. But this was the beginning of a long and endless road of constipation. I think, me and Nicky spend at least 6 weeks of our lifetime on the potty, just fighting and pushing. I tried everything, GI docs, enemas and of course medication like Mirolax. And guess what, Mirolax helped, but was that the way i wanted to treat my son. What was causing the constipation? Why was nobody asking the same questions. Till i met Pam Ferro, she was great, told me about SCD. And she said no more Mirolax. I was nervous, but after a week on the diet i felt we don't need Mirolax any longer. And she was right, Nicky went twice a day and we didn't had any more problems with constipation. Till we decided to give "only" GF/CF another try. Since then our problems started again, and i just knew we gotta stick to SCD. Even we didn't get rid of the yeast with it, the constipation part is the biggest thing, its the most important thing to take car. We know now how and we learned our lesson.
Let's go fight that yeast, it's a b&$ch herself, but we will win this fight also.
Sorry for strong words here today, this is not usally me, but sometimes (and moms of kids with autism know that) you get really angry with the world.