A couple of months ago, we took Third Son to a holistic medical doctor to help us with cleaning up his body. He had been diagnosed with ADD via the Tova Test and other indications when he was young. His grades have been mediocre at best. Forget telling him more than one thing at time. He would never remember.
Over the years, Third Son’s academic record was a source of many arguments between my husband and myself. I wanted to medicate him. He did not. I know this sounds odd for of those who read Green Talk regularly that I would advocate drugs for ADD. I am at my wits end.
The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree
Why would I be thinking about medicating my son? As I have told my loyal readers, I was diagnosed with ADD when I was young and took Dexedrine for 6 years. I know first hand what it is like to not be able to focus. I went from a D student who could not read to an A student in less than 6 month. I am sure I have other learning issues since I can’t spell and can’t sound out words, but then again all of my kids are dyslexic.
To make a long story short, this ADD kid (Moi) graduated from law school. The same one who was kicked out of the reading circle in first grade since I could not paying attention or was disruptive. Who knows? (Ask Mrs. Roar, my first grade teacher.)
It saddens me to watch my Third Son struggle and basically given up. So, we compromised and found a holistic medical doctor to see if he had food sensitivities, heavy metals accumulation, or other problems that could be causing his “fog.”
Boy, was I shocked.
We found out that he had high levels of antimony (from flame retardants, plastic bottles, etc.) and mercury.
You guys know me.
I have been the one who is constantly preaching about the dangers of chemicals in our furniture, building products and food. Pleading for a safe chemical law. So, he among other children, is suffering from our own hands. Our plastic bottle society, flame retardants, and other harmful chemicals.
Despite my urges for no more plastic water bottles in the house, my husband continued to buy them for the kids’ lunches reasoning that they needed to drink water. When Third Son’s tests came back with a high antimony level, that was it.
There are no more plastic water bottles in my house anymore.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If they want water at school, then seek out a water fountain. Third Son has a stainless steel water bottle in his locker that he can fill up when needed.
Gut full of yeast
In addition, his gut was full of yeast. Probably years of antibodics for ear infections and sinus infections. The doctor restricted his sugar and milk ingestation for two months. He prescribed a yeast medication in addition to the food restrictions. He explained that yeast feeds on the sugar in milk products and sugar itself.
I have always suspected that milk did not agree with his body since I could “smell” when he had been eating milk products.
Sugar Free and Milk free Diet
A diary free and sugar free diet is a lot harder than you think. So many products have sugar in them. Look at the ingredients in that just purchased organic tomato sauce. Yep sugar. Bread. Yep Sugar. We are addicted to sugar. Almost everything has sugar in it. He wasn’t allowed to use brown rice syrup, honey, barley malt, or agave, just Stevia or Xylitol. Thank goodness that I am use to removing sugar from food recipes since First Son has JV diabetes.
Then there is dairy. It is in many food too. Don’t go running to the veggie cheese. Check the labels for casein, milk, whey, or milk protein. See here for a complete list of ingredients to avoid for a dairy free diet.
My Milk and Sugar Free Finds
For weeks, I made homemade bread with my bread machine. I used King Arthur’s organic white whole wheat flour and added Xylitol rather than sugar since he would rather die then eat whole wheat bread. Since this particular brand is “white,” and more bland than whole wheat, he complained less. Personally, I like the darker whole wheat better but if you have a white bread lover, this King Arthur brand might do the trick.
And what kid does not love tomato sauce? I made homemade tomato sauce from canned organic plum tomatoes since my frozen stock of homemade tomatoes ran out. Finally, hubby found a sugar free tomato sauce at Whole Foods.
He so wanted pizza. A teenage staple. Bread machines make amazing dough. Add some soy cheese (make sure it is dairy free,) tomato sauce, and you had yourself a pizza!
Sugar free corn muffins and sugar free brownies (subbed rice milk for milk and Xylitol for sugar substitute). Some recipes were hits and others duds.
What about salad dressing? Thank goodness, he likes salad. I made him a Good Season Italian Dressing clone. He ended up not using it. (Sign.)
I even made him Crockpot sugar free ketchup. Very easy to make. (And found a new sugar, gluten free blog to follow to boot.)
He was a trooper. Did it make a difference? He lost some weight, but he was already skinny to begin with. We also found out he was taking only half of his yeast medicine. So, not all of his yeast was killed. Is he able to focus more? Same. But we are still watching what he is eating, and the doctor gave him a rest before we try the yeast diet again.
Heavy Metals Should Only Be For Rock Groups
The next step will be chelation to remove the high levels of antimony and mercury in his body. The doctor feels that this heavy concentration may be causing brain fog. When I inquired as to where Third Son would have obtained such high levels, he said flame retardants and also pointed to my mouth which was full of mercury fillings. (Had them removed several years ago.) Readers, if you recall the EWG tested blood cord samples and found that many toxins were passed through the placenta from the mothers to unborn children. In this article, I reported,
“When EWG matched these chemicals up against their toxicity databases, they found that 134 of these chemicals cause cancer, 151 are associated with birth defects, 154 are associated with hormone disruption, 186 are associated with infertility, 130 immune disruptors, and 158 associated with neurotoxins. Although this amount of associated disruptors adds up beyond the 200 chemicals noted above, many of the chemicals have multiple effects.”
So, could I have caused his issues? Unfortunately, yes. Inadvertently.
Breathing Issues
Third Son constantly breaths through his mouth. I have always wondered if his sleep is interrupted. The only time he could breath through his nose is when he was in the Luray Caverns in Virgina. The Doctor explained that all the minerals in the cavern air helped him to breathe. He suggested inhaling Himalayan Pink Salt. (Post to follow.)
I will keep you posted about his progress.
So, Readers:
- have you tried chelation?
- what natural cures have you found help ADD?
- any advice?
Thanks Readers, for your help.
Photo by Chris Corwin.
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Condo Blues says
I don’t know about the ADD but I a familiar with the constantly stuffy nose. I had an allergy test done and found that I was allergic to almost all types of pollen and pet dander. I did allergy shots and they have helped lesson my symptoms during spring allergy season. I also had surgery to correct a deviated septum. Out patient surgery may seem drastic, and having wadding up my nose for 24 hours after the surgery was not fun at all, I never knew how badly I was breathing until I had the surgery to correct it.
J.Kalin Tyler says
I’ve also been diagnosed with ADD and I take Adderall XR for it. While the Adderall XR helps tremendously, the amount that I need greatly fluctuates with the allergens outside and what I eat. I took both a traditional allergy test and a ALCAT blood sensitivity test. While I agree that the ALCAT test doesn’t test for allergies, it did a phenomenal job of determining what caused the inflammation in my body that caused my ‘fog’. (I had already determined that it was the swelling that caused the fog. ALCAT just helped determine what was causing the swelling.) ALCAT set me up with a nutritionist that created a rotation diet for me, plus gave me recipes for all the food I was supposed to eat.
The traditional allergy test did show that I was allergic to corn and soy, plus just about every airborne allergen you can imagine. The only thing I wasn’t allergic to was animals. Allegra does help, but not entirely. It just got me up to normal ADD levels, when before I was in bed for a year, confused and sleeping 12 hours a day. The ALCAT test showed that I had a sensitivity to Blue #1, which was in nearly every medication I was taking – even the benedryl caps that I was taking hand over fist once I realized that the problem was allergies. Avoiding that made a big impact. Aspartame, chlorine, fluoride, citric acid, etc, etc. I had to give up soap and find alternatives. Corn is in EVERYTHING. Homemade almond milk, whole foods only, nothing from a can, everything organic. It was hard, but the good thing is that sensitivities change. Once I gave my body a break, I got stronger and I was able to start eating a bit more normal again. Sometimes, I’ll eat something and just know that I’ll be sick later. At least then I can plan.
The ALCAT test was expensive and not covered by insurance, but it was the best thing I did. The results aren’t 100%, because the body going, “we don’t know what this is” can show a positive just like, “we don’t like this”, but it gives you an awesome place to start, and the rotation diet is an extremely important part of the process because you can pinpoint exactly what is making you sick. For instance, corn didn’t show up as an allergy on the standard allergy test. Corn didn’t show up as a sensitivity on the sensitivity test. It was very obvious during the rotation diet that it was the corn that was making me very sick. The next allergy test I took showed that I was indeed allergic to corn.
I think that your husband’s want to keep his son unmedicated is honorable, but I’ve found that medicine during the process helped me to better determine what was making me sick. If he can’t remember from one moment to the next, he’s not going to be able to let you know if he’s feeling better or thinking more clearly. He won’t be able to compare. The most important thing for me was to know that if I started to feel racy or panicky, then my allergy load was low. I then reduced my dosage (took a quarter of a 30mg instant release instead of half). If the medicine didn’t seem to help, then I knew that my allergy load was high and I’d increase and take a half (15mg total), or sometimes decrease the time between dosages. (this was only with the instant release. You can’t do this with the extended).
I hope that you find out what’s causing the issue with your son. It’s very hard to determine what’s going on in their heads when they have such a difficult time connecting with others outside their own eyes.
Kalin
Green Talk says
J Kalin, thank you so much for your amazing comment. We did have him tested for sensitivities but nothing came out as very high. He was sensitive to gluten, quoina (weird?), soy, and some dairy products but not cow’s milk. But not high numbers.
Just like sugar, corn is in everything. You might want to buy Passover products since they don’t have corn in them but they may have something else you are allergic to. How are you doing now? Do you think you can come off medication one day? Anna
Dave@Candida Can Cause Cancer says
I haven’t had the ADD problem with my son, but I am still working to help him get rid of acne.
I can totally believe that chemicals and or food allergies are the cause of ADD. It is definitely caused by something. In fact, it may be just a normal child’s reaction to the mind-stultifying effect of how ‘modern education’ is forced on creative, intelligent, curious children.
They thought I was slow in kindergarten because I wasn’t paying attention to the teacher. It wasn’t because I was slow, but because I could already read many grades above the class!
All that to say that you may be able to use zeolite as a chelating agent. I’ve heard reports that it is very good at removing heavy metals from the body.