Switching over to the GAPS diet

April 24th 2012 Atty was release from care at Children's hospital and no longer needs to be on the Modified Atkins for Seizures diet!!! Next month on the 26th he will be seizure free for two years! Amazing!!! The doctor and dietitian at Children's are really impressed with him, and someone is going to be writing paper on his case which is really awesome! Also we might be able to help in the future with a case study his neurological doctor wants to see happen, some sort of gene testing. Because apparently he has notice that kids who have the drop seizures that Atty had respond best to the diet for seizure control and he wants to know if there is a gene connection with these kids. If they found a link that would open the door to genetic testing for kids who are having no luck with medicines for seizure control. I would hope they would do genetic testing from the beginning and start with the diet, but that probably won't be the case. It would eliminate some of the wasted time trying different meds that don't work... hopefully. It was such a mixture of emotions driving home from that appointment. I cried thinking back on how far we have come. It's truly wild how fast these two years flew by! So we are now switching over the the GAPS diet full time and will do this for probably two more years and then take it from there. When I told the dietitian this she was excited and said that a different family had mentioned that diet to here and wanted to know if she could put them in contact with me. I said absolutely yes! She also wants to keep in contact so she can get more recipes from me... :) I've had the Gut and Psychology Syndrome book for some time but I recently got the GAPS Guide and the Internal Bliss cookbook and I've been experimenting with more recipes. It's like starting all over again. I have been debating starting from the introductory diet for him so he can have optimal healing but so far it hasn't worked out. It's very restrictive and intense and I wanted my husband around to help out but the weekends are always full and it's hard to make it work during the week. So I'm starting with the full GAPS diet and then I will do the introductory if needed and where ever it fits best.  We have been gradually adding in GAPS foods for the last 6 months or so. I felt more comfortable with a gradual introduction to new foods and unlimited amounts of fruits/veggies. I started with unlimited amounts of veggies and he was fine with that, then slowly started in with larger servings of fruit and just recently unlimited amounts. We also recently switched over to local honey as the sweetener. Makes everything yummier! :) We have come to find out {it seems} that our oldest boy might be sensitive to food in the rag weed family. He had been complaining of headaches for a while, close to two years. We tried chiropractic care which helped for other things but didn't seem to make the headaches go away and we also took him to get his eyes checked {they are perfectly fine}. To make a long story shorter  we made a connection to the stevia that we have been using for Atty for the last TWO years {his headaches had been going on for about the same amount of time}. It was the only sweetener Atty could have and I'd gotten in the habit of using it for the other kids as well. Especially in the lemon water that my kids have daily. So anyways I took the stevia out of his diet {as well as some other food that I found connected to the ragweed family} and his headaches pretty much went away! Wow did I feel awful for taking so long to figure that out. But no one mentioned the ragweed connection to me when they told us to use that for Atty's sweetener, in fact they didn't mention any of the side effects at all. I think because I was already so overwhelmed I started using the stevia with out researching it well {very unusual for me} and now I feel frustrated that I did that. Not everyone has reactions to it, but the people that do really suffer! So all that to say that we are now cutting stevia out of our diet and going to local raw honey. :) I was the most scared when introducing honey to him. I felt like I was holding my breath for weeks before I relaxed! I no longer keep track of the amount of honey and he's had no reaction what so ever! I really want to introduce homemade yogurt the GAPS way but I've yet to figure out how to keep it at the right temp for 24 hours. I will be posting more GAPS friendly recipes now on this blog as that is what we are focused on now.  Starting with a GAPS friendly pizza recipe that I made the other night, wow is it good! The whole family scarfed it and Atty was so excited, he hasn't had pizza in over two years after all! So far I am really loving the GAPS diet for him and I feel strongly that this diet would have been the right one for him from the very beginning, but I guess we will never know for sure... what I do know is that it's the perfect one for him now! :)

Rambling... is there anything else I do?

Wow I am really not doing as well as I wanted to with keeping this blog updated. I wanted to record the whole experience of healing Atty better then this!


Atty is still doing so well. Although I think this second year into the diet might be harder in some ways. It's been a long time since he's had a seizure {well over a year is a long time for an kid} and so it's a lot farther from his mind. We talk about it from time to time and I made a video that we watch on occasion, but time still fades the memory. Which is good, and bad. In the first year he really listened and seemed to understand the absolute importance of following the diet exactly. Now he asks more for things he can't have or seconds on foods that he is limited on. I think also the fact that I am slowly switching over to a diet similar to the GAPS diet makes this an adjustment period for us. Because I am giving him unlimited non-starchy vegetables now and more of certain fruit {always paired with a fat}. I think the fact that I am making these changes makes him wonder what else can change. He hasn't thrown any fits yet when I tell him no on a food request, but he has sulked and or refused to eat the food he was offered in exchange.


I mentioned that I am switching him over to a diet similar to the GAPS diet. A while ago someone suggested that I read Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. I think I've mentioned this before. It took me a while to get the book as it's fairly pricey, but wow am I glad I did. Absolutely valuable. I've actually already loaned it out to quite a few more people who couldn't afford to buy it themselves, and every one who has read it has been blown away. I think it's a great read for anyone personally. Anyways I really feel that this is the diet that is the exact match for Atty. The MAS diet has done wonders, but it's focus is not on healing the gut and the health of the gut is directly related to Atty's health issues in my opinion {and the opinion of many others, including the doctor who wrote the book}. The GAPS diet has been used to heal others with seizure disorders but it's not as well know as the Ketogenic diet or the MAS diet. Which mean it's hardly talked about at all. I think this is a real shame. I'm not totally switching Atty over right away, it's going to be a slow transition. The GAPS diet is not a whole lot different then the MAS diet. I think the main difference for us is in the MAS diet you count carbs where as in the GAPS diet you focus on certain types of foods and food that heal the gut and build good bacteria in the intestines. They both exclude a lot of the same foods. There are some foods on the GAPS diet I wouldn't introduce yet {possibly in another year or two} that being the types of dairy products that are allowed like home made yogurt, certain beans and grain {a select few} and also honey. That's why I say a diet similar to the GAPS diet. Atty for at least the next year will still not have any dairy, no grain of any kind, no dried beans/peas, and no other sweeteners except stevia. The diet is a little to complicated I think to go into in great detail here, but it basically works in stages, you slowly introduce different foods as the gut begins to heal. Some times after the gut has healed up some people can tolerate food they were not able to tolerate before with out having any of the symptoms they were suffering from coming back. I'm not sure what all Atty will eventually be able to eat but I don't think he will ever be able to eat with out some restrictions.


This whole experience, while it has been eye opening and so exciting seeing him get better, it has also been very wearing on me. I have been fighting this drag me down feeling more and more lately. I just feel like being super lazy. Me saying something like that is like me sharing a deep dark secret. I'm embarrassed. Seriously. I am anything but lazy, in fact my husband wishes I would mellow out sometimes. I take multitasking to a whole new level. I can hardly sit still for a minute {unless I have a really good book, but even then I read in spurts interrupted by wild cleaning}. I generally can't even sit still for a movie. I won't sit still for a movie if the room is a mess or there is laundry to fold. So me feeling lazy, and I mean really really don't want to clean or cook another thing lazy, is odd. It's very out of character. It has me worried. I have to talk myself into picking up lately, into cooking and cleaning. I find myself fantasizing about curling up in bed for days. Or getting in my van and just driving, anywhere far away, alone. Of course I won't do any thing like that but the fact that I am even thinking like this is bothering me. Some times I wish I could just be a lazy mom and let my house go and just relax for a bit. But I can't and I won't and so that is that. I keep on going. That's what I do. But right now I just have to say... I don't want to.


Just admitting this on here makes me not want to post it, but I started this blog to be real about what was really going on with Atty and the whole situation and I'm a big part of it so I guess I have to be real about that too right? Sigh. Me and my ridiculous perfectionism that I can never live up to, will I ever let it go? Okay I'm done asking questions that you totally don't have to answer.

Now back to my super busy crazy life that I can not escape from {and don't actually want too}.