Category Archives: nutrition

Dangers of amalgam fillings and having old cavities refilled

dental health,

While overall our kids have done pretty well at the dentist, they haven’t been cavity free. For close to a quarter of a century, I’ve requested that their dentists use white dental composite instead of amalgams. I’ve repeatedly been told that the amalgams are much stronger and will last longer, but I haven’t wanted toxins (the EPA classifies amalgams as hazardous waste) put directly in their mouths and have continued to insist on composite.

I was surprised at a recent visit to a new dentist, when I made my usual request, to be told that amalgams are no longer used. ‘Why not?’ I asked, surprised. He shrugged and said that they’re no longer on the list of materials recommended by the Ministry of Health or covered by the health clinics. ‘But amalgams are stronger!’ I said. ‘No, composite fillings are perfectly strong,’ he reassured me.

It was a little unsettling to have this change be shared so matter-of-factly, as if he was stating the obvious – as if there hadn’t been a decades long policy to use amalgams. I almost feel like there should be a public announcement: we have finally realized we were wrong about our insistence on routinely using amalgams and we have changed our policy accordingly.

I went on to discuss amalgams with him, and told him my husband was looking for someone experienced in replacing the fillings from when he was young. The concern with the presence of amalgams is that they are the source of the slow release of toxins (including mercury) into the body. Here’s more information about this.

Getting the amalgams out is just one part of correcting the problem. The other is to get the highly toxic accumulated mercury out of the body. I remember the first time I ever heard anything about this topic; over 25 years ago on the way to work a fellow commuter told me she was having all of her amalgams removed. It was part of an extensive healing process.

Our new dentist told me there’s a biological dentist in Tel Aviv who specializes in this work. We did a little searching and my husband made an appointment right away. This isn’t the kind of work that should be done with a regular dentist, who isn’t familiar with safety protocols in having amalgams removed. When removing amalgams, mercury vapors can be released into the air, then reabsorbed by breathing into the lungs, and removing the amalgams without protective procedures in place can actually harm a person’s health more than leaving them in.

In the last month, over the course of two appointments my husband had all of his amalgams removed. He is very grateful to have found a dentist experienced in this work and so glad to have this taken care of, after a very long time of thinking about it.

If you’re wondering about how much this kind of work costs: the removal and replacement of each filling costs 750 shekels.

Avivah

Thinking about getting milk goats – am I crazy?!?

homemaking, nutrition

Over the last couple of years my son told me he really wanted to get goats, and I adamantly and repeatedly told him, “No, we don’t have enough room,” and offered rabbits as an option. He agreed but that wasn’t what he wanted and after a year gave them away.

In the meantime, he has helped friends take care of their goats and learned to milk them.

For the last few months I’ve been noting how much space owners set aside for two or three goats, and it’s less than I thought was necessary. I spent a long time thinking about if I was willing to change the look of my yard to make room for two milk goats and a pen for them. I started to slowly find the idea more doable and acceptable.

Until recently, I had hoped we could rent or buy some land adjoining us. One person was willing to lease us the entire plot of five dunam but only for a year and for five times the going price for agricultural land. The other didn’t want to lease or sell any land. The thought behind having more land was so we could raise some animals and practice permaculture principles to rebuild the completely depleted chemically farmed soil, and develop some kind of food forest. That would mean investing in fencing and many other significant start up expenses, that we wouldn’t be willing to do without a long term lease.

I realized if I scaled down my vision, I could do some of those things in my yard right now. But it means giving up – to some degree – the kind of ‘pretty’ yard I’ve spent time developing.

Why would I want goats? Seventeen years ago I learned about the incredible nutritional benefits of raw milk, and since then have thought how amazing it would be to have our own source of milk. In the US, I traveled every month or two to Pennsylvania, where I bought raw milk directly from a Mennonite farmer, twenty plus gallons at a time.

When I moved to Yavneel, I was able to buy raw goats milk from a local family and was thrilled to let someone else raise the goats and for me to have the benefits. My daughter and I bought all that they had. However, the supply became irregular and then petered out completely.

Healing our very broken industrialized food system begins with supporting local farmers, and there’s nothing more local than producing food yourself! Though milk hasn’t been an important part of our diets since we left the US, when I thought about what would be the best use of our very limited space to raise some of our own food, milk kept coming up as the top option. (Eggs would have been number one, but my son is already raising chickens.)

This is NOT a frugal undertaking. From a strictly economics perspective, it doesn’t save money but this goes beyond money for us, since we see it as an investment in our health. If we had our own raw milk, it would replace other less nutritious things that we currently eat.

So what are the costs involved in getting milk goats?

First is buying the goats – and the costs have gone up quite a bit in the months since we began thinking about this. A good milk goat costs between 1800 – 2000 shekels each. (I asked the goat broker why they’re more expensive than a few months ago, and he said, “Gas has gone up, food has gone up, meat has gone up – why wouldn’t the cost of goats go up?!”) You can buy young female kids for 700 – 1000 shekels but then have to feed them and breed them and wean the babies before you get milk, which costs plenty of time and money.

Then there’s the issue of buying hay. We’re in a shmita year, and can’t buy hay that is currently being grown. There is literally a hay field opposite my house, and a few days ago I watched him bale the hay and stack the bales, thinking how easy and convenient it would be if I could run over to the tractor driver and ask him to drop a bale over the wall into my yard – but I can’t buy any of it. Everyone who had animals who was concerned about shmita issues knew to pre-buy hay for the upcoming year. There’s no hay that I know of available for purchase left from last year – several months ago we found one person who had a few small bales who told us to call him back in a week, since he was out of town. When we called back, he had already sold the non-shmita hay to someone else.

When my son bought his purebred barred Plymouth Rock chickens from a Circassian woman a couple of months ago, I asked her for her hay supplier. I’m allowed to buy hay from a non-Jew, since he’s not violating any Torah laws by growing hay during shmita. She gave me a number, but when I called him, he said he’s no longer selling privately, and all of his hay is now sold directly to a broker. He had no suggestions of anyone else I could speak to.

We have to ask a rav if we’re allowed to feed animals hay that was grown as heter mechira, because that’s what most Jewish farmers have relied on.

Then there’s the cost of animal feed that is going through the roof. You can’t save costs by pre-buying feed, because after a couple of months the weevil eggs inside the grains hatch, multiply, infest the batch and the feed gets ruined.

And of course, we need to be able to house them, and in addition to the pen need a hay feeder and a milking stand – all of which costs more money.

Despite all the costs and logistical challenges, I’m still seriously considering goats. Does that sound crazy?

Avivah

Formula shortages and formula options

frugal strategies, health, nutrition, parenting

A few weeks ago there began to be a shortage of formula in the US, a situation that has reached what some officials have called a ‘crisis situation’.

Baby formula is in dramatically short supply, with many stores locking up the formula, limiting it to one per customer, or the stock in the stores simply not there. Parents of babies who need formula are having to drive far distances, pay exorbitant online prices to opportunist sellers – or do without.

As a mother of 11 who has been deeply committed to breastfeeding, I nonetheless have experienced the challenge of not being able to nurse two of my babies. I nursed my tenth child, who had a weak sucking reflex, for four months, while simultaneously pumping for several hours a day to keep my supply up. I finally gave up when despite all my efforts, I couldn’t produce the milk he needed. (I later realized that the two pumps I had borrowed were faulty and that was the source of the problem, but in my exhausted state and with very limited community resources, I couldn’t access other options.)

I turned to formula, trying different kinds while also looking for goats’ milk and mothers’ milk donors, for the most part without success. Finally, after five months we found a formula he could tolerate, that was only available by medical prescription and cost over 1000 shekels a month.

When my eleventh child came into our lives via the legal system, I began seeking out mothers’ milk donors before he even arrived home. I was then living in the center of the country, and access to community resources was dramatically different. Like his brother before him, he couldn’t tolerate regular formula. For the first two years, we were blessed to be able to give him mother’s milk for all but two months (a week here, a week there, when the donor milk couldn’t be found), and for those in-between times we supplemented with a medical prescription formula. I later donated the many unused cans we had purchased to a mother in financial need whose child used that specialty formula. I was so grateful to have the resources that I needed to keep him healthy.

When I think of these desperate mothers seeking food for their babies, it’s heartbreaking. I once ran out of formula due to logistics in prescription/purchasing rules (those have since changed) and we ended up in the emergency room on Shabbos as a result.

These mothers need options. While breastfeeding is wonderful and I fully support it, it’s not an option for everyone. It’s disturbing for me to see commentators – especially men – suggesting that if mothers would be breastfeeding they wouldn’t be in this situation.

Many women physically can’t produce milk no matter how much they try, due to illness or physical challenge on the side of the mother or baby; there are foster/adoptive parents/grandparents raising children that they didn’t give birth to.

I do believe that steps will be taken to to increase formula production and hopefully this will be a short-lived crisis. In the interim, parents need help. If you are a nursing mother and know someone struggling with the formula shortage, perhaps you can offer to help out by pumping. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the tens of mothers who kept our youngest nourished and healthy thanks to their donations. Or if you see formula in your stores, buy it to donate to someone else who can’t find it. Or share the below information for how to make their own.

How did people feed their infants in the days before commercially produced formula was available? Hiring a wet nurse was a common practice, but in cultures that didn’t have that practice, parents made their own. Here’s are two recipes for formula that are nutritionally complete that were published in Nourishing Traditions; one is dairy and one is meat based. Goat milk is an excellent replacement for mother’s milk, though it needs to be supplemented with vitamin B12 and folate. Many of our elders who were bottle-fed were raised on evaporated milk mixed with Karo syrup; here is a simple emergency formula replacement recipe using evaporated milk, as well as an excellent explanation for why evaporated milk is a better option than regular milk. **Disclaimer: of course every parent needs to verify with their medical professionals that the option they are considering is appropriate for their child.**

Hopefully this situation will quickly be resolved. In the meantime, parents can look to alternative solutions and feel empowered knowing they have the tools to keep their babies fed and happy.

Avivah

Trehalose – supplement that melts brain plaque and improves cognitive function

health, nutrition, Trisomy 21,

I’m a proponent of biomedical healing, which very simply means, identifying the imbalance inside the body and then treating it with appropriate foods and nutritional supplementation. This can lead to significant health improvements or even complete restoration of one’s health.

Today I want to share about trehalose.

Trehalose is a supplement that dissolves beta amyloid plaque, the plaque found in the brains of those with Alzheimers.  It’s well-established that most adults with T21 who have not had preventative supplementation will develop Alzheimers.

When your child is young, thinking about cognitive decline in adulthood seems far away. As the parents of several children in their twenties, I can tell you that the years go by much faster than you would believe when your children are young.

Not only that – I’ve seen first hand reports from parents of children with T21 beginning this cognitive decline  in their first and second decades of life.  In the video below, Dr. Skowron shows the audience a slide of a brain scan from a four month old with Down syndrome that already has these plaques on it. That is downright terrifying.

So if you’re a parent of a young child with Trisomy 21 (or autism), this isn’t information that is applicable in the distant future. It’s relevant right now.

Here’s an excellent talk by Dr. Jared Skowron – Dissolving Amyloid Plaques in Autism and Down syndrome. He makes what are usually dry and complex topics easily understandable and interesting.

In a Facebook group that I’m on, I also see parents of young adults with T21 seeking help for their cognitive decline. Reading their descriptions of how much their child’s function has changed for the worse is heartbreaking. But what is incredibly heartening is to watch these same parents posting improvements and reversals of the decline as they add the appropriate biomedical supplements to their child’s diet. Trehalose is an important (though not the only) addition.

Trehalose is a white powder that is half as sweet as sugar that is easily added to food or drinks. I add trehalose to Rafael’s bottle along with his other supplements; I add it to a serving of unsweetened applesauce for Yirmi every morning before he goes to school, together with his supplements. I give it to them to prevent the plaque forming and causing damage in the first place.

A really nice side benefit of adding trehalose for us has been that they no longer resist taking their supplements, some of which have an unpleasant flavor. You know the saying, “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down”? 🙂

Where can you buy trehalose?  I got my first order of trehalose from Amazon; it was $16.49 for a pound. Someone brought that to Israel for me when she came. Then I had the opportunity to buy lift space and I made a purchase of 25 kg from bulksupplements.com.  That was $149 for 55 pounds of trehalose, so obviously it’s significantly less expensive to buy it in larger amounts. Since I don’t know of anywhere in Israel to buy trehalose I was glad to have an opportunity to stock up. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t benefit financially if you click on these links.)

Though I’m sharing about trehalose in the context of supporting the health of a child with Trisomy 21, this has obvious application to those who are suffering from dementia.

Trehalose is inexpensive, tastes good and has major benefits….pretty amazing stuff!

Avivah

Dsicussing palate expansion for Yirmi with orthodontist

dental health, health, Trisomy 21

When Yirmi was born and we were told his Trisomy 21 diagnosis, my mind was flooded with thoughts. It was in the first couple of hours that I thought about a study I had read about regarding Weston Price who did a palate expansion with a teen who had Down syndrome. This teen was very cognitively limited, and the expansion created dramatic changes for him.

How could something that seems so minor make such a big difference? Since the center third of the face of those with T21 doesn’t grow properly, it compresses all the major head glands. This specifically can prevent the proper functioning of the pituitary gland and all its hormones, which has many, many consequences.

Yirmi was also born with a very high and narrow palate. I addressed my concerns about this holistically from the time he was four months old, taking him for weekly cranial sacral adjustments and requesting work specifically on his face and inside his mouth. I stopped those appointments about the time he was three, around the time we moved to RBS, since I didn’t find someone I was comfortable continuing treatment with.

For almost six years, from that first night I was sitting in the waiting room processing our surprise birth diagnosis, I’ve been thinking about palate expansion. But I’ve delayed a visit with an orthodontist because frankly, not only is it a significant expense, it’s very tiring to have to advocate and explain all the time. I learned of one orthotropist in Tel Aviv and considered making an appointment with him, but decided to try my luck with local orthodontists first.

For several weeks, my to-do list included calling to schedule a consultation. Every single day, for weeks. And every day, I’d push it off. I finally made the call a few weeks ago and the night before our consultation, I emailed a list of links to studies and research that had been done regarding palate expansion and children with T21, with a request for the orthodontist to look at it so we could discuss it when we came in.

I had this funny feeling when I walked in to the office that everyone knew who I was, and not because they read my blog! I was definitely wondering if my email had been discussed among the staff. When I left, one secretary commented to me, “Good job with that email!”

I was impressed with the orthodontist, who told me he had read everything I sent him, and was ready and willing to discuss it all with me. He wanted to ascertain that I understood that not every child is going to experience every single benefit, which I know. I told him my specific hopes for Yirmi having the expansion, and he said that all of those were reasonable.

The good news is he’s agreed that Yirmi is a good candidate for palate expansion, despite his young age. (Palate expansion is usually recommended for a later age, but for the above reasons I feel he’d benefit by having it done as soon as possible). We’ll need to wait a little  longer until his molars are a bit bigger, so the device will be able to be anchored to them.

I was reflecting afterwards about how I created tension for myself, just by telling myself how difficult it was going to be to find an orthodontist to agree to work with us. Don’t we all do that, so often? It really couldn’t have been a more pleasant and positive meeting. I hope that when we’re ready to do the molds that everything continues to go well. But for now, the first big step forward in this direction has been taken, and I’m so relieved and grateful!

Avivah

Edited to add: I linked to this in the comments but am linking here so you can easily access this summary of the benefits and some other information put together by Dr. Erica Peirson.

Q & A – Don’t Turn Mealtimes into a Battleground

nutrition, parenting

I received a number of questions and comments to my last post about not making meal time a battleground, so I’ll respond to those here.

“In regards to what you just wrote about healthy mealtime – But what do you say  if they want to put croutons in every soup you make – you let or you don’t (  that’s just one example)?Or snacks in the morning, for a long time I was sending them off with my own health cookies and popcorn…but they want what all their friends have – pretzels  and who knows what…I dont  want to fight but I do care…so how would your no fighting approach fit in..”

If you let them put croutons in the soup depends on if this is something you’re comfortable or not. If you’re comfortable with it, go ahead and let them have it. If you’re not, then that is your boundary that you’ll share with your child of what to expect at meal time in your home. Your expectations don’t have to be a big discussion – put it on the table and when asked about it, let your child know that croutons are for special days and tonight there won’t be croutons. Same approach with whatever else may come up.

Don’t be afraid to have boundaries! So often parents cringe when I explain my position on this; they tell me it sounds harsh. I don’t see it as mean or unkind to serve your child appetizing food and let them to eat the amount they’re comfortable with, thereby allowing dinner to be a time of connection rather than conflict. Why do parents feel it’s ‘nicer’ to be ambivalent about their position is, which results in ongoing conflicts about what to eat, how much to eat, how fast to eat, why to eat it….??

Today my child had a friend over who asked if I had honey. When I told him we did, he asked me for a spoonful. I asked him if he wanted it with tea or something like that. He said no, he just likes to eat it off the spoon. I told him that would make it a treat, and in our house we save treats for Shabbos. He asked again for it, and I smiled and repeated that on Shabbos we have treats. He asked why and I told him – again, with a smile – that’s how we do it. It’s not productive to be drawn into a discussion in which I feel the need to explain or rationalize to his satisfaction why I do what I do (kids love these situations, because as long as they can keep arguing, they have hope we’ll give in).

About snacks in a peer setting – again, you get to decide what your boundaries will be! There’s no right and wrong, just what is right for you. There’s always a range of choices when it comes to a child fitting in – does he get the basic backpack or the designer backpack/ shoes/ snacks, or something in between? Someone is going to be holding the bar down and someone is going to be raising the bar of expectations. Where do you want to be?

Personally, I like to be on the lower side but not on the bottom. So I’d send my kids with snacks that were similar to their peers but within my comfort zone regarding cost, nutrition or whatever else was concerning me. It’s reasonable to support your child so he is within normal range for his peer group.

If this was something that really mattered to my kids, I’d have a discussion with them and listen to their concerns, and share my concerns with them. With all of that in mind, I’d try together with them to come up with some options we could all feed good about.

“Would you mind sharing if you serve dessert on a regular basis? Most nights? Not often? I watch my daughter and her constant battles with food with her children and it almost always revolves around eating to be rewarded with dessert. I served regular meals, 3 times a day to my 7 and they ate what I served and most nights received a cookie of some kind after dinner. I didn’t pay close attention to what they ate and just assumed it all would work out, as all of the food I served was healthy and homemade. I cringe at the mealtime battleground and we eat together often!”

I don’t give my kids dessert after dinner other than on Shabbos (and then I have a nice selection), but there’s no reason not to give dessert if it’s something you want to do! My grandparents and aunt used to serve dessert after dinner and it never affected how much I ate of the main meal. It was understood that it was a nice extra.

I don’t think dessert is the pivotal issue. The more relevant factor is if it’s an inherent part of the meal or a reward the kids have finagled for eating the food that they were served as part of the main meal. My children aren’t doing me a favor by eating their dinner, and incentives create that attitude. Incentives basically show kids that there’s something we care much more about than they do, giving them something to resist and negotiate on.

Since I assume they’ll eat if they’re hungry, there’s not something for the kids to resist!  They have responsibility for if they eat, and they bear the consequences of not eating – this is an issue between the child and himself, not me and him.

Giving incentives to children concerns me because it decreases their own internal motivation to do what it is they’re being incentivized to do; it’s not effective in the long term and even in the short term is just managing the symptoms of the issue rather than getting to the root of it.

“I agree with this overall, however I think peer pressure, peer culture, and school make a huge impression. Many kids are surrounded by sugar from 8 AM until late afternoon. The schools are using candy and junk food for prizes and behavior modification and the peers compete who can bring in the junkiest junk food. My youngest finished elementary school last year, but this was a huge problem the entire 25+ years I had kids in elementary schools. Once in high school the girls switched to competing diets, which can bring a whole other variety of issues.I think the most important thing is sitting together and having real meals together as a family. I would guess many (most?) families don’t even do that most days. (Myself included-it’s a real struggle!)”

Yes, I agree with you that the school culture and the pressures it creates are real. When my kids go to camp and when they’ve been in school, I’ve encountered this same issue.

I look at this as a question of looking at what is in your circle of influence and what is in your circle of concern. It concerns you what happens in school, but you can’t control it. You can influence and impact what happens in your own home, so that’s where you put your effort.  The more you invest energy into where you can make an impact, the greater your ability to affect things that were previously outside of your influence will be.

So practically, that means serving meals that align with what you believe to be appropriate in your home. Make each meal pack a nutritional punch and are as appealing as possible, knowing that your kids are tanked up on sugar and may not be so interested in the food you serve.  There are meals that my kids will eat and not complain about, and then there are the meals that they really, really appreciate.

So I would make more of the meals they really appreciate in the situation you described, knowing that they wouldn’t be hungry enough to eat food that they were kind of blah about.  These foods would still be those that I decided were appropriate nutritionally.

And yes, it’s hard to make family mealtime a regular sit down event. Especially as kids get older and everyone is going in a different direction at different times, it can feel like herding cats! I decided to make this a priority as it came up for me in my personal mission statement work as a strong value. If someone isn’t home, they obviously can’t be there, but whoever is home participates and it’s a nice grounding way to connect everyone at the end of the day.

 “this would work for parents who have kids who are not picky. my boys won’t eat anything other than string cheese and canned peaches or pineapple. and that is a struggle. I’ve had to insert incentives to get them to eat. if I had them only choose from my meal that i made for the rest of the family they would not eat. you may say that they would eventually eat if they were hungry enough, but they are stubborn enough to perhaps forego dinner and wait for their cereal in the morning!”

Actually, this is the approach that works best to help kids move beyond their picky tendencies! This is WHY my kids aren’t picky eaters.

To clarify a couple of things: firstly, I only offer my children choices of foods that I would be happy for them to eat. So if they chose to wait for breakfast, that would be fine for me because the breakfast choice would be one I would know would meet their nutritional needs. I’m saying that I really don’t have an attachment to them having to eat dinner if they don’t want to.

Until a child feels the space inside himself of his own wanting something, they’re not going to be internally motivated (this is true in all areas). If we keep them from feeling that space because we’re so busy filling it for them, we deny them the opportunity to expand themselves. A parent has to be really careful about using incentives because it can create a dynamic that will backfire on the parent.

Interestingly, parents always tell me their kids will only eat dairy and carbs (fruits are also carbs); I don’t think anyone has ever complained to me that their kids prefer protein and don’t want to eat noodles! Many people have a higher sensitivity to these foods since they quickly convert to sugar in the body, thereby inducing very strong cravings.

Some kids have an actual allergy to certain foods and it’s the allergy that creates the craving for those foods.  If your child are extremely set in their eating habits, I would consider if there is a deeper physiological issue that needs to be addressed (eg candida overgrowth and other gut related issues can create very strong cravings).

“You’ve obviously never dealt with a chronically picky eater. I call DD “The Starch Beast.” She will live on carbs if I let her.”

Yes, I believe you. Note my comment above regarding cravings for starches.

“I’ve learned to serve the protein and veggies first, and only after those are gone will I serve her a starch. Otherwise, she’ll fill up on rice or potatoes, and not want to have anything else. She’s 14 now, and will still live on potato chips and popcorn if she could have her own way. Even with pizza, she only wants to eat the crust!”

What I hear you saying is that you’ve clarified the boundaries that work in your home and in your situation! Wonderful! As I said above, the parent has to set boundaries that she is comfortable with based on her specific concerns, and serve foods that honor those boundaries.

“what about a child who will forgo dinner and then wake up in the night crying from hunger and demand milk and a snack?”

I don’t suggest starving any child!

I would let the child know that now is dinner time, and until the morning, there will only be xyz foods/drinks (whatever is okay with you). You as the parent draw the boundaries around this. I would encourage him to have something now, explaining that if he wake up in the middle of the night he may be hungry and at that point since dinner is over, I’m only going to be able to offer him xyz (again, whatever you decide in advance but it should be minimal and not compelling).

If he wakes up, empathize and let him know you know how hard it is to be hungry, and he’s welcome to have whatever it is you previously agreed to with him. (And that wouldn’t be milk and a snack, which would keep the cycle going! :))

Recognize that you’re not forcing your child to go without food. It’s your child who is making the choice not to eat.  (By the way, notice once again that the child is asking for dairy and a carb – the more cravings for simple carbs are given in to, the more the child will crave them.)

By the way, the use of the word ‘demand’ implies that it’s the child who has the power to determine what he is served, and that the parent have no choice but to passively respond. I very, very strongly believe in a parent proactively taking action according to the guidelines that she has determined will best meet the needs of her child.

——————-

Food brings up so many strong feelings for parents! Whenever this topic comes up in my parenting workshops, there are always a flood of specific questions. I hope that I’ve addressed some of the underlying issues here!

Avivah

Stop making meal time a battle ground!

nutrition, parenting

Some people think I’m really into nutrition, but that’s not true.  Yes, I feed my family a diet that is considered healthy. But I’m not into it.  Good nutrition is important in a number of ways, but it’s not something that is a central topic of discussion with my family much at all.

Recently someone who is very concerned about healthy eating asked me some questions about how I feed my kids, specifically wanting to know about snacks.  Honestly, I don’t do much in the way of snacks.

Here are my basic guidelines for meals: Three meals a day, they can eat as much or as little as they want of whatever I serve.  If they get hungry in between, they can have a vegetable or fruit, by itself or with something like chummus or peanut butter (eg carrot sticks with chummus, apple slices with peanut butter). Often one of the kids will pop up a pot of popcorn.

For Shabbos breakfast I usually buy cornflakes (plain, not frosted) or make granola; on a regular day breakfast is usually eggs, oatmeal or polenta.

She asked about other specifics:  I use hardly any processed foods (the main exceptions are mayonnaise and hummus – yes, I know I can make them from scratch and often I have but right now I usually don’t).  I don’t make lots of ‘junk’ foods (except on Shabbos and usually then I’ll use white or brown sugar), and I don’t try to make healthy copycat version of popular snack foods. Meals consist mostly of proteins, grains, legumes and vegetables.

“But how do they comply with that?”  (Or more commonly phrased, “How do you get them to eat that?”) Food and compliance are two words that I don’t want associated with one another in my home. Compliance implies that I’m trying to force healthy foods on them against their will. I don’t see it as my job to force or manipulate my children to eat anything. When they’re hungry, they’ll eat.

If you want to encourage your children to eat more nutritiously, don’t talk so much about it! Don’t make such a big deal! Sure, you can talk a bit about the choices you make and why, but honestly, serving food that tastes good and enjoying your meal times together is much more important than your explanations about how healthy it is.

Know also that when you talk too much about something and how wonderful it is, it can actually create resistance in your children toward the very thing you’re trying to encourage! Ironic but true.

I’m not invested emotionally in what my children eat. I serve what I serve and I trust that they’ll listen to their bodies and eat the quantity that is appropriate to them. I choose what to serve, they choose if they want to eat it or not. That’s a fair division of meal time responsibility, I think!

This relaxed approach has served us well over the years. Our children aren’t picky eaters, are for the most part appreciative of what they get, and most importantly, the dinner table isn’t a battleground.

Avivah

Healing yourself with vitamins – That Vitamin Movie documentary

nutrition

This summer I attended a talk given by an orthomolecular physician for parents of children with Trisomy 21 and afterwards spoke with him one on one.  It came up in discussion that a family member of his had cancer and was healed using high dosage intravenous vitamin C.

Knowing how effective this is in healing cancer since I’ve done quite a bit of reading on this topic in the past, the good results were predictable.  My big question was, how was he able to have this protocol used with his relative!

He told me that it helps being a physician.  🙂  Unfortunately I’m not a physician but at least I now know someone in Israel who has used this tool!

In a new documentary titled That Vitamin Movie, the message is about the efficacy of vitamins in maintaining health and healing illness.  (It’s free to view for about another week and a half.)

The person who made this documentary began his journey of exploration of this topic when a friend of his was helped with depression by changing his diet and getting supplements.  As he researched, he found more and more stories of those recovering with help of large doses of vitamins much larger than the daily recommended amounts.

The approach of conventional medicine is to treat the symptoms, not to get to the root of what is causing the problem. I regularly ask the doctors or dentists that I take my children to why they are having the issue we are there for, and I’ve consistently been told: “That’s the way it is.  Sometimes this happens.”

The response is to prescribe medication, surgery, dental work. But the question remains, why is the problem happening?  If you don’t address the root issue that the symptoms are stemming from, you’ll continue to see health issues coming up.  And if you go the route of medication, often the side effects of one medication lead to the need for the prescription of another, and so on.

It was to explore some of these questions that this man said he set out to interview some of the world’s vitamin experts.

Dr. Andrew Saul commented in the beginning of his film that he raised his children to college without antibiotics and says very few people can say that – but I can!  I only have three children of college age, but 2 of the 3 haven’t had any antibiotics.  The third had them twice.   Ds16 was treated with antibiotics when he had a hip infection (I wished at the time I had access to high potency intravenous vitamin C because we weren’t able to give high enough doses orally of vitamin C to counter the infection), and other than ds3, the others haven’t had any.  Bli ayin hara.

By the way, this was an issue for a potential shidduch once.  The other side found out that we prefer to use natural antibiotics rather than prescription drugs to deal with illness and this was problematic for them.  I had to explain to the shadchan that we’re not dogmatic about this, and that although we have used medications at time, we’ve found this approach most effective to help our family stay healthy.

I think if people understood how much research there was on the use of vitamin C alone and read even a fraction of this, they wouldn’t see the use of it as extreme but rather as logical and self-apparent why it would be the preferred approach.

(While vitamin C is repeatedly mentioned in this film, it’s not the only supplement recommended.  However, almost six years ago I wrote a detailed post with specifics of how to dose vitamin C and if you’re interested you can read it here.)

This film is a consciousness raising of the benefits of using vitamins for the average person. Vitamins can be amazingly effective in treating a huge spectrum of issues: some of those referenced by the experts in this film include depression, cancer, heart disease and ADHD.  Though I’m familiar with all the information shared, I’m feeling prompted to mentally dust off that knowledge and be more conscientious about applying it.

Wishing you all abundant health – enjoy the film!

Avivah

Tips for supporting a child with Down syndrome

nutrition, parenting, Trisomy 21

Now that Yirmiyahu is two and in my last post I shared the assessment from the professionals at the Feuerstein Institute that he’s doing unusually well, I thought I’d update on what we’re doing to be supportive of him.  Hopefully this will be of some help to someone else wondering what steps can be taken to help a child with Trisomy 21.

With a long standing passion for nutrition and alternative health, it’s my conviction that what you eat really, really matters.  It affects many more things in the body than we can imagine, and scientists are constantly discovering more and more connections.  I also believe that children with T21 need more specific support than the neurotypical child, and will continue to need more support throughout their lives.

Diet – what we do is very basic.  Yirmiyahu eats a whole food diet that includes proteins, fruits, vegetable and fats (mostly coconut oil and olive oil, some butter) and limited grains.  This is the same as everyone else in the family though we’re more careful with the fats he gets.

We use very minimal amounts of processed foods and don’t give him foods with gluten (wheat protein) or casein (milk protein), both of which are very difficult to digest and can affect the body in negative ways.  We limit these with our other kids but are more careful with Yirmiyahu.

For the first two years he didn’t get any sugar;  now he gets a Shabbos treat along with the other kids if he answers a parsha question (the question we start with for all of our kids when they are little is, “What day is today?” “Shabbos!”  Yes, he knows the sign for Shabbos.  :))  Again, this is similar to our other kids.

Nutritional supplementation – I have a strong preference for supplements that are as close to how they were created in nature but we live in an imperfect world and that’s not always possible.  Our experience has been that the symptoms associated with T21 require more targeted treatment than what food based supplements offer.

Fermented cod liver oil – okay, this stuff is awesome!  It has vitamin D, DHA,  essential fatty acids (and a host of other stuff I’m not mentioning), it strengthens bones, teeth and the immune system.  It’s a superfood that everyone could benefit from.

Probiotics – probiotics are great for everyone, but for someone with a less optimized digestive system, these are critical.  We switched from lactose base probiotics to soil based probiotics several months ago.  I now use Prescript Assist; a little bit goes a long way.  I give him about a 1/4 – 1/2 of a capsule daily.  Homemade lactofermented veggies are another  wonderful source of probiotics but Yirmiyahu isn’t yet a fan of them.

Saccharomyces boulardii – I love this stuff!  Remember Pac Man, the arcade game of the 80s? That’s what this reminds me of.  This probiotic yeast gobbles up the bad yeast and isn’t killed by antibiotics.  This isn’t something I’ve read of anyone else using in the T21 or natural foods world but it’s very valuable for us.

Blood tests when he was in the intensive care unit as an eight month old showed Yirmiyahu had candida.  Since I had researched candida extensively several years before I knew exactly what this was, but asked the doctor for his thoughts on what it was and what the consequences were.  He told  me not to worry about it, it didn’t matter.  Well, it mattered to me since this overgrowth of fungal yeast will manifest itself in many ways as it increasingly breaks down the body.

Yirmiyahu had a good diet but he constantly had loose stools that seemed to burn his skin – his bottom would be bright red and often bleeding after he had a dirty diaper no matter how quickly we changed him.  I tried different things to improve this but the best I could do was slather on a thick layer of zinc oxide cream, which didn’t do anything to improve the underlying problem.

When I added saccharomyces boulardii to his bottles, within a very short time his stools normalized and his rash disappeared.  Since I changed his probiotic to Prescript Assist at the same time, it took me a while to be sure which of the two was responsible for the improvement.  I began leaving out the probiotic and it became clear this was what was making the difference for him.  Since I began giving this to him at the beginning of the summer, he’s had only one bad rash.  What used to be a regular sight has thankfully become unusual and I hope this continues.  I love this stuff.

This is especially helpful for us since Yirmiyahu gets antibiotics twice a day and I can put it into his bottle together with the antibiotics, unlike probiotics which are neutralized by the antibiotics and have to be given at a different time for them to be beneficial.  I ‘m unhappy about these antibiotics but have some peace of mind that I can minimize some of the negative side effects by using this.

PQQ – this is a relatively new kid on the block in the scientific community and is Yirmiyahu’s newest addition.  Every person with T21 has neurons that are constantly dying – you understand this is a big concern, right?  That means you can’t assume that your child as he is now, will have the same mental capacity in twenty years.  It’s well-known that Alzheimers is a huge issue for people with Down syndrome as they age.  That’s bad, bad, bad but thankfully there are steps we can take at this young age to counteract this.

PQQ is one of them.  PQQ not only slows mitochondrial decline, it helps grow new mitochondria.  This is a big part of why I supplement – not to see immediate results, but to help Yirmiyahu maintain his cognition now and avoid the inevitable cellular damage later down the road.  He’s on a starter dose of .5 mg per kilo daily.

A very nice bonus is that within a couple of weeks of beginning PQQ, Yirmiyahu became noticeably more verbal.

Multivitamin – we used to give him a multivitamin formulated specifically for people with T21, but switched when he was about 14 months to a different multi that was recommended based on his specific bloodwork (actually it’s an autism multi – GI Pro for anyone who may be wondering).

I’m doing a thorough blood work up later this week and will likely make some changes to his current protocol based on the results that come back.  I suspect something is going on with his thyroid because the soles of his feet are dry; he had this symptom in the past (it took a long time until I learned it was a symptom of hypothyroidism) and it cleared up with supplementation.  I’m not sure what I’ve changed that his feet are dry again; I suspect it may be because I stopped the additional methylfolate, selenium and B12 I was giving but I don’t know if it’s a combination of all three or one particular supplement that is responsible for this.  (All of these are in his multi and I thought he was getting enough through this. )

His thyroid testing when he was about a year old showed elevated TSH and by the time he was eighteen months, we got into a much better range thanks to supplementation.  We also corrected his hypothyroid symptoms; he had become very weak and lethargic.  The doctor said it was normal for T21 and his blood work was normal; I sent his blood work to two people in the US for feedback and made adjustments to his supplements based on their feedback.  He wasn’t properly absorbing nutrients because of his extra chromosome and it was thanks to the addition of supplements that this was corrected and very soon he was back to his energetic and active self.

Ideally his thyroid should be tested every six months (this is a typical recommendation for someone with T21) but this time it’s been somewhat delayed since I wanted growth hormone testing done along with monitoring his blood cell count (we keep an eye on signs of leukemia because of his history), and needed to get that referral from the endocrinologist; I had to wait three months to get the appointment with the endocrinologist that I wanted.  This week when we do the blood tests, hopefully he’ll only need to get pricked one time.  I wish these tests weren’t  necessary but since they are, I try to minimize the discomfort to him by combining as much as possible at one time.

For us, supplements have been very important in helping Yirmiyahu stay healthy.

Hanging exercises – when Yirmiyahu was an infant, we began encouraging him to bear weight by putting his fists around our thumbs as we lifted him a tiny bit.  Now every time we pick him up (unless we’re in public, since people will tell us we’re doing something dangerous), we let him grasp our thumbs and pull himself up.  This little habit has brought big benefits to Yirmiyahu.

It’s strengthened the muscles in his hands, which is critical for fine motor function.  it’s also strengthened his abdominal muscles.  He climbs up ladders, slides – he’s totally independent in the playground; despite being so small he manages to climb things intended for children taller and older than him.  Recently he shocked and amazed the pediatric endocrinologist when he grasped the edge of the wall mounted sink in her office and began swinging from it.  I didn’t think anything of it, but she told me to turn around and watch what he was doing, exclaiming, “Look at him!!  Look at him!  Look what he’s doing!”  She couldn’t believe a child with T21 could have so much muscle strength at such a young age.  Ideally I would have him using the monkey bars daily to further develop this but I don’t have them available and so for now, our thumbs it remains! 🙂

Early literacy program – we use a computer program called Brillkids for early reading that Yirmiyahu really enjoys.  When he sees me sitting at the computer, he signs ‘words!’ and tries to climb up onto my lap!  This program includes categories of commonly used words – transportation, foods, colors, toys, actions, people, animals, etc – and it gives him regular familiarity with concepts and this translates to better understanding the world around him in addition to hopefully setting a foundation for reading.  I try to do the computer program twice a day with him and more when possible but five times a day is my max (this is at his initiation).  We’re up to lesson 70.

Signing – I’ve taught Yirmi a number of signs and this has been very helpful for him to be able to express himself since his cognition is way beyond his verbal expression, as is true of all young children.  The words I’ve taught him are those that are useful for him day to day – for example, when I noticed how frightened he became when he heard fighter jets roaring overhead, I taught him ‘airplane’, ‘loud’ and ‘scared’.  Now he has a way to tell us what he notices and what he’s feeling – when he hears them from a distance, he will tell us he hears an airplane, or that it’s loud, but only tells us it’s scary when they’re very close.  He also can tells us when something else scares him.  I need to spend some time thinking about what vocabulary would be helpful for him now, so I can look up those signs and teach them to him.  Signing is a wonderful tool.

Communication – I talk to Yirmiyahu a lot and explain what we’re doing as we go along, and have been doing this since he was young.  Most of this is intuitive.  I have one of the books by Dr. James McDonald called Play to Talk, and this helped me tweak what I was doing to be more effective.  He writes a lot about how a parent or sibling is the best play partner for a child and it’s through play that a child learns the most.  He gives clear guidelines for how to make interactions with your child a meaningful opportunity for communication and connection.

Craniosacral work – I take Yirmiyahu about once every 5  – 6 weeks to a wonderful osteopath who does craniosacral work on him.  She works on different specifics each time depending on what area of the body she sees needs the most balancing.  She almost always works on his respiratory system since this is a part of his body that has always been weaker.  This week she did a lot of improve circulation and to help flush out his system (important since people with T21 are less able to get rid of toxins on their own).   When he was an infant, one eye would periodically get goopy, but after she began working with him to release the underlying block in his facial structure, this disappeared.

I’ve asked her to work on his palate since it remains high and narrow even though it’s improved quite a bit since he was born.  This is important since the pituitary gland is above the palate and I want that to function as well as possible.  It was easier for her to work on this when he was younger since now when he bites down, he has teeth!  She does most of the facial work externally and very quickly; most of her time is spent on the rest of his body.

Siblings – my kids are crazy about Yirmiyahu and I can’t overstate how important they are in his life.  He has constant playmates and plenty of opportunities to see and model typical behavior, which is no doubt why his social skills are so good.  He doesn’t have to be taught to take a turn or throw a ball to someone – it’s part of his daily life!

**Disability Is Natural** – The mindset that underlines everything I do and how I do it is based on accepting Yirmiyahu exactly as he is right now and believing in his abilities.  I was gifted with the book Disability Is Natural when Yirmiyahu was very young.  Quite some time ago I commented to my husband that over the years, my paradigm of what I assumed to be true and what I now believe had shifted in several key areas that changed my life – pregnancy/birth, education and health/nutrition.  With all of these I grew up accepting what everyone did as the norm until something prompted me to explore an alternative viewpoint, and each paradigm shift dramatically changed my life.   I commented to him rhetorically, “I wonder what the next life-changing paradigm shift will be?”

This book was it.  This prompted my next huge shift in thinking about a topic I had never given much thought to.  It is so powerful and I think it should be required reading for everyone on the planet. 🙂  Seriously.  This will give you so much food for thought and affect your parenting of all of your children and others you interact with in a positive way.  Fortunately, the author has a website with a free newsletter so you don’t have to spend a penny to read more – http://disabilityisnatural.com/.

When I read this book, I kept thinking, this woman thinks like me!  (I did keep wondering how with her personality she dealt with the constraints of the school system and the necessary advocacy – and then in the end she wrote about discovering homeschooling and stated that she wished she had done that from the beginning!)   This paradigm has helped me to find the inner balance of being proactive in addressing Yirmiyahu’s needs and fully accepting who he is.

Avivah

Update on Yirmiyahu’s growth – good news!

nutrition, parenting, Trisomy 21

From the time Yirmiyahu was eight months until he was fifteen months, his weight and head circumference hardly budged.  He wasn’t big to start with and I, the mother who has never paid any attention to growth charts, was getting increasingly concerned that his numbers just weren’t moving up.   The nutritionist and pediatric allergist said he wasn’t growing because I didn’t feed him enough, though after his caloric intake was counted up, the nutritionist admitted that he was getting plenty of calories.  When I asked his pediatrician about it, she told me not to worry: “Kids with Downs’ are all small.”

That irritated me even though it was supposed to be reassuring and I know it was well-intended, because if a baby who didn’t have T21 came into the doctor with the symptoms I was describing, believe me, they wouldn’t be telling the parent not to worry about it. They would have been running all kinds of tests to figure out what was wrong.  But for Yirmiyahu, it was acceptable for him to be small and weak because he has T21.

So the last two months have been very empowering.  At that time, after extensive research and a lot of anxiety, I decided to begin a protocol for cerebral folate deficiency (CFD) – this is treated by taking your child off of dairy and supplementing with high doses of folate.  I took him off dairy formula when he was eight months old, and started supplementing for CFD when he was 15 months old.  Currently he’s taking 5 mg of folate daily (a mix of folinic acid and 5MTHF, see the info at the site linked for an explanation of why we’re using both if you’re wondering); when he’s eighteen months this will be increasing.  Results?

Increase in head circumference – 2 weeks after starting the protocol, Yirmiyahu’s head circumference had increased to the -3% for infants his age, a huge jump from from a percentage that was very far down off the charts, suitable for a baby many months younger than him.  This was very important for me because if the head isn’t growing the growth of the brain is limited, too.  Two months into the protocol, his head circumference now measures 2% on the typical growth chart!  That might not sound impressive but it’s a huge leap and it means he’s finally in the range of age appropriate.

Weight increase – after 7 months of no weight gain, Yirmiyahu has gained 1.1 kg in the last two months.  Within two or three weeks after we began supplementing, people consistently started commenting on how much older and bigger he seemed and this has continued until now.  That was anecdotal, but after so many months of people telling me how petite and tiny he was, it was a noticeable change.

Energy – when he was younger, we all thought of Yirmiyahu as an active baby.  As he got older, he became more passive (but supposedly ‘babies with Downs’ are slower” so this worried no one but me and my older kids).  By the time we started supplementing, he was frequently laying his head on our shoulders to rest even at times it seemed he shouldn’t be tired; he wasn’t crawling much even though he had the physical ability.  It was worrisome when we contrasted what he had been like months before to how he was at 15 months.  Now?    He’s like the Energizer bunny – he just keeps going and going!  He’s crawling all over the house, cruising holding on to things, loves to bounce when held on a lap and is so energetic!   He still loves to snuggle into the person holding him, but it feels different – you can tell it’s because it feels cozy for him, not because he’s so tired that he needs to rest.  He’s sleeping much less and is much more awake when he’s awake.  This isn’t something you can track scientifically but it’s a relief and a joy for me to see his true personality being able to be expressed again, not being held back by nutritional deficiencies that supposedly didn’t exist.

Jaw structure – when Yirmiyahu’s bottom front teeth came in, they came in vertically rather than horizontally.  Over the last month, they’ve been getting straighter.  He was born with an extremely high palate, and his osteopath last week told me it’s coming down (ie expanding).  I asked her why she thinks this is, and she said perhaps it was due to specifically this supplementing.  (She hasn’t worked on his palate in the last couple of months so she didn’t think it was connected to craniosacral work she’s done with him.)  It makes sense to me that if his head circumference is increasing it might be affecting his jaw.

I’d like to get some follow-up bloodwork done so I can track his lab values.  I don’t anticipate continuing with therapeutic doses of folate long term; this is to address his serious deficiencies and as his numbers improve, I’ll be cutting down on this.  So I need to see the lab values so I can cut down appropriately.  I also am hoping I can get more thyroid bloodwork done (this is much more easily said than done!) to see how flooding his system with folate has affected these numbers – the hypothyroid symptoms I was concerned about have dramatically improved and I’m anticipating big improvements in his lab values.

I’m so grateful for the internet and the ability to do research and connect with others who are also looking for answers.  Without this it’s painful to think that Yirmiyahu would be suffering with unaddressed medical issues, and the doctors would continue telling me- and I would believe them! – it was because he has Down syndrome instead of addressing the real issues.

Avivah