Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Autism Recovery: Supplements, Brain Exercises, & Nutrition (What do we eat, anyway?)

jordans-bread
"That's My Bread!"



What does our typical day look like? What do we eat? I’ve gotten these questions many times, so I thought I’d share.

Supplements and Prescriptions Jordan is taking:

L-Glutamine - an amino acid that helps heal the gut wall - 2 times/day.
Digestive Enzymes- enzymes that help him break down his food and absorb the nutrients – every time he eats
Fish Oil – essential fatty acids, Omega 3 & 6 particularly, that make up the cell wall of every cell in the body. Fights inflammation, strengthens immune system, coats nerves so that impulses can communicate correctly, necessary for brain growth – 1 tsp./day
Probiotic – the good bacteria in the body’s gut – 2/day. (Given at a different time than the anti-fungals or S. Boulardii)
Nystatin/Diflucan/or Saccharomyces Boulardii (rotating)- the good yeast in the body’s gut and fights bad fungus – 1/day. Nystatin and Diflucan are prescription anti-fungals. These prescription anti-fungals completely messed Jordan up. He was only on them for 1 month, but he totally regressed, lost all his speech and emotional stability gains that he achieved between December and April. It took us about 10 months to gain back what he lost while on the anti-fungals for one month, it was a hard road and he struggled so much to gain back what he gained so quickly the first time. I pulled him off the program the DAN dr had him on. I retained the nutritional supplements, but no prescription anti-fungals and no LDA shots. I sought out other options and went an all natural route, it’s working great!
FungDx/CanSol (rotating) - all natural/herbal anti-fungals.
Electrolyte
Hemp Milk – although a food, I list is as a supplement because I get it in him any time I can because of the Omega fat ratio. It has the good Omega 6′s, not the polluted and damaged ones we are normally overdosing on in the American diet.
Multi-vitamin
OSR – an antioxident that is also a chelator, pulling heavy metals out of the body.

Exercises

If I were to describe these, most of you would think I’ve completely fallen off the turnip truck, as my Dad says. However, there is no arguing with the results we are getting from them. The theory behind them is to stimulate the body in specific ways to develop the deficient pathways in the brain. These have been assigned to Jordan by his cranial sacral doctor/chiropractic neurologist to stimulate areas that Jordan specifically needs to improve. So at the risk of many of you thinking I’ve lost my mind, here we go.

I hang Jordan upside down by his ankles, swinging him back and forth and in circles.
We “fly”. Jorday lays on my arm belly down and we zoom around the house looking for his blanket (or other favorite toy or pictures) anything to get him to extend his head up and back.
We have crawling races around the living room. (I now have a hole in the knee of my favorite jeans :)
I lay him on an exercise ball on his back and roll him back an forth and try to get him to reach backward to grab a toy on the floor.
I lay him on his stomach on the exercise ball and try to get him to lift his head and look at things or grab for a toy.
We play astronaut. I pick him up with his back toward my chest and grasp each of his thighs firmly so he’s in a seated position. Then swing him back and forth and – eventually, hopefully, upside down back over my shoulder. Right now he is WAY too scared to go very high, or fast, but he’s improving.
Recently we have added assisting him with doing sit-ups (where I pull him up as he hangs onto my fingers) but he’s pretty much like a wet fish just flopping and not joining in at all and his head lags way behind. We try one and he starts screaming. I pin his feet down and try to keep trying to do them, but we don’t usually get very far.
We have several others sprinkled in that we do occationally but these are the core ones we try to do daily.
We work them in throughout the day, but especially at night before bed time. Our living room is now littered with exercise balls of various sizes and a mini trampoline.

Foods

 What we Don’t eat:
He is allergic to:
Dairy  – casein and whey proteins and anything that has them in it. Including goat milk. ie: cheese, yogurt, butter, ice cream, caramel, graham crackers, most commercial breads, most commercial baked goods, etc.
Gluten – (maybe) – so we eliminate it since the protein is so similar to dairy and can cause other problems in the brain, this includes wheat, barley, and others
Oats – in their own right, not because of gluten cross-contamination
Eggs, Yeast, Buckwheat, Honey, Food Colors, Pineapple, Pear,  Chocolate, Peanuts, Ginger, Gelatin
And a bunch of other things we haven’t identified yet. We’re careful of beef, he used to be very allergic to it.
We severely limit refined sugar. We do NOT eat Splenda (sucralose), or Nutrasweet (aspertame) – both very bad, sugar is actually better.
 UPDATE: As of October 2009, his allergies are beginning to resolve. I haven’t been too brave to try things, but he is no longer sensitive to beef, eggs, or oats (or at least not when he just has them once in a while).

What we DO eat
We mainly eat a whole foods diet. That means food in their whole form, as close to the way God made it as possible. Not processed, or only minimally processed.
Fruits – the ultimate fast food. It takes all of 3 seconds to peel a banana! Blueberries are his favorite!
Milks – almond milk, hemp milk, coconut milk
Organic Oils – olive, coconut, grapeseed
Sweeteners – stevia, xylitol, agave nectar, real maple syrup, (Jordan can’t do honey, but the rest of us do)
Grains – quinoa, amaranth, millet, brown rice, corn
Seeds – sunflower, pumpkin, sesame
Flaxseed -  a great replacement for eggs when cooking and SUPER healthy. I know, it’s a seed, but we eat it so often I listed it seperately.
Nuts - pecans, cashew, almonds, brazil (Jordan refuses to eat these, but the rest of us love them)
Almond or Cashew Butter - we use this all the time. Again, I know it’s a nut, but we use it so much I listed it seperate.
Ghee – milkfat without the protein, organic of course
Veggies - The rest of us eat a whole range, but Jordan eats a couple. potatos or sweet potatos cut, baked, and salted as fries. Corn (I know, actually a grain or starch), tomatos and any veggies mixed into a marinara sauce or salsa. I’m starting to slip things like kale into his morning smoothie. Once in a while he’ll slip something else in, like bok choy or carrot, but that is highly variable.
Herbs – garlic, chives, rosemary, cilantro, basil, oragano, thyme, parsley, cumin – I think that captures the most commonly used. And we use these a lot!
Meats, grass-fed - venison (ground, steaks, chopped, etc), turkey, chicken (only occationally since we can’t afford organic grass-fed) although we do use organic free range chicken broth liberally (no boullion cubes though). We do eat eggs, free range.
Menu Samples
Breakfast Options: smoothies, fruit, special corn flakes (ingredients as follows: cornmeal, grape &/or pear concentrate, sea salt) with alternative milk, or pancakes (made with allowable grains, milk, flaxseed, vanilla powder, etc. Took awhile but I now have a great recipe).
Snack (mid-morning and mid-afternoon): fruit, nut/date bar called LARAbar, fruit leather, rice/nut chips
Lunch: left overs from dinner, fruit, applesauce, pancakes, fries (the homemade baked kind)

Dinner: taco salad, venison burgers, spaghetti made with quinoa or rice pasta, grilled meat and veggies (a grilled rosemary and garlic venison steak is one of our favorites – Jordan’s too), stir-fry over brown rice (specially made sauce of course), vegtable soup, quinoa mexican “goulash” (a creation of my husbands that is a family favorite), turkey & grain meatloaf (agian, a creation of my husbands). To name a few of our current most common meals. It tends to change seasonally and as we find new favorite ingredients.


*Note: according to the boys, “Planes and Paint” are the blue corn chips and avacado & salsa we have with taco salad.  And spaghetti is “Worms and Dirt”.  Our green smoothies are “Monster Juice” and well, if it comes out more yellow, then it’s “Monster Snot”.  Have I mentioned I love having boys?!


Drinks: V8 Fusion (great for hiding medicine, but not ideal because of the sugar content), water, smoothies, “milk” shakes, and most recently peppermint tea

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