By Becky Schimpff / www.radishboy.blogspot.com
First, thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog. I really enjoy your comments, and I find comfort knowing others who creatively face similar struggles with food allergies, celiac disease and gluten intolerance.
I get many questions about how my family came to be gluten free and I thought I would share our story.
I have two sons, Ben and Bruno. Ben is in Kindergarten and will be six in June. Bruno will turn three in May.
My husband and I were living and working in Tokyo when Ben was born. From the very start he was a challenging baby. He was either nursing or crying. He didn’t sleep well. He would scream for hours. At the time I thought all babies were like this. In retrospect, I realize that he was having an allergic reaction to the foods I was eating, but I didn’t know that at the time.
About six weeks after Ben was born, he developed eczema on his cheeks that spread to his upper body and behind his elbows. We took him to his pediatrician who confirmed that it was eczema and gave us a kind of steriodal cream to control outbreaks. The doctor did say that eczema is frequently caused by food or environmental allergies, however, there was no reliable way to test an infant and that he would likely outgrow the eczema around the age of three.
At this point I knew very little about allergies, but I did know that I wasn’t happy with using any kind of steriods. I knew that steroids only masked the symptoms and didn’t address the underlying cause. Around that time, I found an article on the La Leche League website about incompletely digested cow milk proteins passing intact through breastmilk, and causing reactions, such as eczema, in infants.
I gave up dairy right away, and within two weeks there was a dramatic improvement in Ben’s skin and his temperment.
Hopeful to identify other food intolerances, I started keeping a food journal of everything that I ate. I didn’t do an elimination diet, instead I did a rotation diet where no single food was repeated for four days. With the food journal and rotation diet I was able to pinpoint that Ben was also reacting to wheat and egg. The process took about three months, but once we completely eliminated dairy, wheat and egg from my diet, Ben’s skin completely cleared.
When Ben was about a year old we moved to Los Angeles from Tokyo.
Bruno was born just before Ben turned three.
When Bruno was around a month old he also started to develop eczema. I had been eating some dairy, wheat and egg while I was pregnant, so I stopped eating these right away. It helped, but it wasn’t enough.
I again started to keep a food journal and a rotation diet. This time, in addition to wheat, dairy and egg, we identified rye, kamut, corn, soy, chocolate, citrus, strawberries, tuna, lentils and rice. It took a long time to find these, probably six months. Once we got all of these out of his diet, his eczema cleared.
In addition to the eczema, Bruno had infrequent bowel movements, and the poo would be largely undigested. Although he was almost nine pounds at birth, he quickly dropped to the 7th percentile in weight by his sixth month checkup, and below the 5th percentile by his nine month checkup. He wasn’t growing.
Our pediatrician was very supportive. We tried allergy testing but it was inconclusive. Eventually, I found a naturapathic doctor who suggested, among other things, to supplement Bruno’s diet with probiotics, digestive enzymes, essential fatty acids and glutamine. This helped tremendously.
During this time we were not eating gluten containing grains such as wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and kamut. We were, however, eating oats. Oats did seem to cause eczema so we didn’t think it was a problem. However, although oats do not naturally contain gluten but, they can be cross-contaminated during processing. We decided to eliminate oats to see what would happen.
I swear Bruno grew three inches in the next month.
From then on we have been totally gluten free. Over time, the elimination of problem foods and supplementation with probiotics and digestive enzymes has helped to heal Bruno’s digestive tract. After about a year we were able to re-introduce most of the problem foods with the exception of gluten, dairy and egg. Bruno no longer reacts to corn, soy, chocolate, citrus, strawberries, tuna, lentils or rice. This is huge for us.
After seeing the benefit of probiotics and enzymes, we started to look for foods that provided the same effect naturally. We really started to focus not just on what we were eating (or avoiding) and really examined how we were eating.
Food allergies and intolerances are caused by the body’s immune system reacting to the proteins of incompletely digesting foods. The body sees these proteins as foreign ‘invaders’ (such as a virus) and fights against it. This causes different reactions in different people, however, eczema is a relatively common reaction.
To stop the reaction it is necessary to strengthen digestion so that food proteins are completely digested and at the same time strengthen the immune system so that the body can deal with any incomplete proteins that ‘sneak’ through the digestive process. This is the purpose of avoiding the allergenic foods and supplementing with probiotics and enzymes, which naturally help the body digest and break down foods.
We had already removed pretty much all processed, packaged and refined foods, mostly because they contained an ingredient that Bruno couldn’t eat.
We started to incorporate foods into our diet that contained high levels of probiotics, enzymes and essential fatty acids, as well as foods that were vitamin and mineral dense.
Fermented foods such as pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, natto, tempeh, naturally leavened sourdough bread, raw cheese, yogurt, kefir and kombucha are teaming with beneficial probiotic bacteria and enzymes. The proteins in these fermented foods are already partially broken down by the probiotic bacteria and are therefore much easier to digest. In addition the probiotics colonize our gastrointestinal tract and help our bodies digest and break down foods, and in the process produce important vitamins such as B12 and essential fatty acids.
Many cultures eat fermented foods with every meal. The Japanese eat natto (fermented soy beans), miso and many kinds of pickled vegetables. Koreans eat kimchi. Traditional European cultures thrived on yogurt, kefir, raw cheese, sourdough bread and sauerkraut. In many parts of Africa the staple diet is comprised of porridge made from fermented millet.
As Bruno reacted strongly to rice, corn and all gluten containing grains, we started to look at ways to partially break down the proteins by soaking the grains before cooking. Traditionally, grains were almost always soaked, sprouted or fermented before eaten. Bread was carefully cultured and fermented over a long period of time before being baked. Many cultures soak whole grains before eating. For example, every Japanese housewife knows to rinse and then soak her rice before cooking.
Soaking and sprouting the grains starts the germination process by neutralizing phytic acid. Phytic acid is an enzyme inhibitor that binds the minerals and proteins within the grain until the conditions are right for the grain to sprout. Consumption of unsoaked grains can lead to poor absorption of the nutrients in the grain, and the undigested proteins can irritate the intestines, and this is what was happening with Bruno. By neutralizing the phytic acid, the protein, vitamins and enzymes are released, allowing nutrients to be more readily absorbed during digestion.
It sounds complicated, but really it’s not. It has meant some time in the kitchen, and some changes to our diet. We’ve added fermented foods to our diet, mainly in the form of raw cultured vegetables. We now soak grains overnight before cooking. We’ve added essential fatty acids, such as flax seed oil, to salad dressings, hummus and other foods. We’ve incorporated more enzyme rich raw foods, such as big salads, to our meals. We focus on foods that have nutrient density.
What started as a way to help my son with his allergies has turned into quest for health. We have learned so much on this path about what it really means to eat healthy and to be healthy. We have made so many changes for the better. There is no going back !
