Homemade Applesauce!

Nearly all Jordan's food is homemade, and having healthy foods on hand to grab quick is a huge help in staying on his healing diet.

My mom brought some MICHIGAN apples with her when she visited! 

Jordan making "snowmen" with the apples

  

Boiling it down into SAUCE and into the jars, added several drops of liquid STEVIA to each pan (no sugar).

My canning MAN! Having a glasstop stove, we can't can on it, so the canner goes outside on a propane camp stove we got at an auction YEARS ago.

    

The finished product - 26 QUARTS of applesauce!



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

"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

A Gluten, Dairy, Yeast, Egg, Honey, Color-Free Happy Birthday! Jordan is 2!

Jordan birthday is still a few days away and my older son still has 3 weeks until he’s 4, but we celebrated Monday since the grandparents were visiting. What does a birthday party look like without dairy, wheat, food coloring, eggs, yeast, honey, and minimal sugar? Well, it was GREAT! It took a bit of planning ahead of time, and keeping my eye out for something he might actually enjoy. He has yet to eat a gluten-free baked item. He takes one bite and spits it out – even things I consider quite good. So, I happily finish off his blueberry muffins and sweet potato biscuits (they taste like a pumpkin spice cookie/muffin cross!). However, I didn’t go to all that work making these special things for my enjoyment. And, with his birthday fast approaching, what was I going to make for his birthday dessert? And, with grandpa and grandma here, it must be something people with normal eating habits would enjoy too…that’s a tall order. Grandma is known across their region of the midwest for her wonderful homemade pies and other such delectables. And grandpa is a self-proclaimed beef and white potatos man, oh, and don’t forget ice-cream conossier! So, the way we eat here, well, not so much to their liking. But, we have a birthday party coming…so I started with what Jordan LOVES – berries – and went from there.

Just in case the food was a flop, I thought I’d get some decorations this year. We usually do birthdays REALLY simple: normal dinner, special birthday dessert, presents. I pull out the birthday candles that are still in the cupboard from last year (well, actually the last 4 years), and that is the sum total of our birthday celebration. But, this year just in case we didn’t have food to help us celebrate, I bought some balloons, foil stars to decorate the table with, streamers, plates and napkins with balloons on them, and a candle in the shape of a “2″ and “4″. Jordan LOVES balloons! And they’re 1/3 of the cost of all the Disney or cartoon character decorations! Ok, so I only spent $7 or $8 dollars for all this, but for us, this constitutes going all out!

Back to the food, particularly, the dessert. I saw a recipe for biscuits that can be adapted for shortcake, so thought that since Jordan LOVES berries, maybe, just maybe, Strawberry Shortcake would work for him AND for everyone else. Although, I had never tried this shortcake before, and you just never know how something will turn out. But it was GREAT! Very delicious! Jordan got half way through his, before he realized he was eating shortcake with his berries. He didn’t spit any out, but must have tired of it 1/2 way through because the rest of his bites, he sucked all of the strawberry sauce off and left the shortcake - ha! He was quite delighted with his dessert and with getting to blow the candle out!  Even Grandpa had seconds – wow! The shortcake recipe was taken from “Special Diet Solutions” by Carol Fenster.

A Long Road: Summary 3 months - 21 months

Wow, where do I start? The last year and a half has been the most difficult of my life. It all started when Jordan was just 3 weeks old. He started screaming for hours on end (all night), projectile vomiting, got a rash, had a little eczema, raspy breathing, anal fissures, and green poop.  I called the doctor and received no help. It took one week before we figured out I needed to stop eating dairy. (He was nursing). The day I took dairy out of my diet, he stopped screaming. Several days later I substituted soy milk, the screaming came back. So, I took out soy. This process continued for 8 months, by then I had to remove ALL dairy, soy (including soybean oil), all beans, peanuts, oats, and beef from my diet . Then, he stopped spitting up! By then his other symptoms had cleared as well. During this time we saw 3 different doctors, none of them were able to help at all. When he was 4 or 5 weeks old, I had begun asking the question, “What caused this?” Where did these allergies come from?  And, I started researching. I read everything I could about allergies and their causes.

  

When he was 10 or 11 months old, we started trying to feed him some foods directly. He reacted to everything except sweet potato, pears (later to discover it was causing his horrible constipation), and animal crackers.  Behavioral issues (or more subtle reactions) started coming out too: tantrumming – a lot; disturbed sleep, and  fussing and crying constantly unless he was held – I developed great biceps. :)  The doctors still couldn’t help. I was still researching and found some alternative medicine treatments that held some possibilities.

 Jordan turned 13 months old and we embarked on trying acupressure treatments called NAET and BioSET. He had 5 months of allergy treatment through an acupuncturist which has allowed him to eat fruits, vegetables, rice, beans, and some other things. And, it broke the cycle of him developing an allergy to everything he ate.  However, there is still a lot he cannot eat. He also has Autistic-like or PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder) symptoms of speech delay, behavioral, and physical issues. But, I was still researching.

  

He is now 21 months old. We have finally found a doctor who understands allergies, the underlying physiology and causes, how it relates to behavioral and developmental stuff, AND how to treat it!!! Wahoo!!! We can officially say that Jordan has a leaky gut (holes throughout his intestines); candida overgrowth (a fungal infection); toxins in his blood, and his immune system is messed up and operating incorrectly.  We are awaiting more tests to come back in January to see what shows up on those, but already know the treatment plan will take 3 years.  This doctor sent us to a cranial sacral specialist who also found that the bones in his head are overlapping, one side of his skull is more forward and larger than the other side.

Prayer. One huge answer/praise is that I’ve been chasing this problem and trying to figure it out for 20 months.  Every spare minute I’ve been researching and finally figured it out a couple of months ago, and found a doctor who can help him!!! So, praise, we have answers and I have help – that’s HUGE!!!

Prayer #1 – the treatment to be effective

Prayer #2 – the treatment program has strict dietary requirements (many of them we were already doing). I’m going to need energy, patience, endurance, etc. and that’s once I figure out how to cook differently and where to get ingredients we’ll need.  We are now gluten, casein, yeast, and egg free – among other things.

Prayer #3 – the down side to all this – these doc’s aren’t covered by our insurance. So that’s prayer #3 – paying for his treatment.

Thanks for caring, reading all this, and praying! I’d love to hear from you, Sarah