Category Archives: health

Great resource for supplements

aliyah, frugal strategies, health

I just looked in my drafts file, and though I cleaned out over forty drafts a few months ago that I felt wouldn’t be of interest to anyone now that I moved to Israel, I still have 164 posts pending.  Sheesh.  So many things to write about, so little time!

Anyway, I’m going to try to post some of those pending posts since some of them are waiting an embarrassingly long time for me to finish them up.

The first of these is about a great resource for supplements for those in the US as well as overseas that I first learned about from a blog reader.  I didn’t want to share about it until I had tried it out successfully, but being that it’s been over a month since my first order arrived, and my second order is sitting and waiting at the post office for me to pick it up, it’s time to share the details!

I mentioned that we began buying cod liver oil recently, and I’ve been buying from this source, iherb.com.   The prices are good, and what makes it a great option particularly for those overseas is the very low shipping – I paid a flat rate of $4 for each order.

Another nice plus is that you can see the weight of each item that you order, and since you need to keep your order under a certain weight to avoid taxes on the receiving end, this makes it very easy to be aware of the shipping weight total of your order.  (The weight limit is either 3 or 4 pounds – I’ve seen people saying both, but limited my order to three pounds each to be on the safe side because dealing with the huge taxes that can be slapped onto orders received is no fun.  If you have definitive information on this, please share!)

I got $5 off of my first order thanks to a coupon code I had – this was only good for first time buyers.  You can use the code OBO992 for your first order to get this discount.  On my second order, I bought my cod liver oil when there was a ten percent discount for two days on everything on the website, so that helped my cost stay a bit lower for that.  But it still was very affordable, under $30 for three 12 oz. bottles of cod liver oil including shipping.

I am buying the Twinlab cod liver oil, not because I think it’s best, but because I think it’s decent and it’s affordable for us.  I’d LOVE to be able to buy fermented cod liver oil, but even with reduced bulk pricing, I can’t spend a few hundred dollars on a few bottles of cod liver oil, even though it is much more valuable nutritionally.  (I seriously looked into this because I’d love to give it to my littles to give them the significant nutritional boost it offers.)

You can strive for ideal, but when ideal isn’t an option (and it frustrates me sometimes that in the real food world so many people seem unable to validate that ideal isn’t possible sometimes, that there are real budgetary limitations), you can do nothing or you can do the next best thing.  So we’re doing the next best thing.

I’d like to be able to find what we need locally, versus having visitors from the US regularly bringing me all those things I miss from there.  So far we’ve done really well in making a shift to Israeli brands and products for just about everything, but sometimes you can’t find what you want here, and it’s nice to have an affordable way to get it!

Avivah

When raw milk isn’t available, what’s best?

health, nutrition

>>In your opinion, if one doesn’t have access to raw milk, is it better to use a substitute milk (such as almond milk) rather than pasteurized milk? (pretending for a second that price wasn’t a consideration).<<

I was discussing this with a pregnant guest a couple of weeks ago.  Her husband is a proponent of alternative nutrition with a very different approach than mine, and at his suggestion she stopped eating dairy and minimized animal proteins while pregnant.  I shared with her my conviction that in pregnancy, protein is critical (see the guidelines I suggest here), and when asked for what I considered to be good sources of protein, responded with: raw milk, meat, chicken, eggs.  Then we started talking about what to do when raw milk isn’t available.

This is where her husband’s view and mine converged.  Until I learned about traditional food practices about six years ago, I didn’t give my children dairy at all.  When asked by others about why they were so healthy – practically no ear infections, infrequent colds, etc – I always credited not eating dairy as being the main cause.  I felt that dairy products were mucus causing, bacteria laden products that were best avoided.  You can imagine that it was a mental shift when we started drinking raw milk!

Raw milk is a real food, and pasteurized milk is a processed food.  How they’re used in the body is different, and I still strongly lean toward avoiding milk if it’s not raw.  When it comes to pregnancy, I told our guest that I while it’s not an ideal food, I thought the benefits of pasteurized milk outweighed the disadvantages, in accordance with Tom Brewer’s protein guidelines for pregnant women.

Substitute nut milks have their own issues of limited nutrient absorption, so this is far from a black and white issue, and I haven’t seen research that scientifically demonstrates whether  your body is left with more nutrients if you drink pasteurized milk or substitute milks.  I like the taste of milk and so do my kids, so based on that alone we’d be happy to drink it regularly.  But nutritionally, my personal choice since moving here is to leave milk for an occasional treat, and to increase broth and liver intake to boost nutrient intake and compensate for the lack of raw milk.

I’ve made a substitute sesame milk using tahini paste as a base (whiz it up with a lot of water and a little bit of sweetener), which I’m not crazy over but the taste is fine and it’s high in calcium.  (It’s easier for me to use prepared techina as a dip for vegetables to get the nutrients in that way, rather than drinking it, so that’s what I do.)   Making your own nut milks can cut down the cost significantly, if that’s the route you decide to go.

So my not-so-scientific-this-is-just-my-personal-opinion  is, for pregnant women, it might be worth it to drink pasteurized milk rather than nut milks as a protein source.  Otherwise, go for the alternative milks to avoid congestion issues while enjoying a milk substitute, and look into other ways to boost nutrients from other foods.

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.)

The scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life

health, parenting

My ds2.5 has been under the weather the last couple of days – a mild fever, very lethargic, wanting to be held all the time.  Your typical cold.

Yesterday afternoon, ds12 was holding ds2 and reading to him, and then asked him if he wanted to lay down on my bed.  Ds2 told him yes, so he put him down and continued reading to him.  A minute later looked over and was horrified to see him shaking while staring straight ahead.  He quickly called my dh, and they brought him out to me, telling me he wasn’t breathing and was choking.

His face was a pale gray and his lips were turning blue; I grabbed him and tried to the do the Heimlich manuever a couple of times.  Nothing.  I told dh to run to the retired nurse across the street for help, and told one of the kids to run to a neighbor to call an ambulance.  Meanwhile, I tried to sweep my finger in his mouth to see what could be stuck there, but his teeth were clenched so tightly that I couldn’t pry them apart even a tiny bit.

His face was turning purple, and I grabbed him and ran out of our apartment building, planning to run to the emergency center with him that’s a few minutes away.  Just then, I saw the nurse hurrying with dh out of her house to come to us.  As long as I live I’ll never forget the desperate feeling of running with ds’s totally limp and unresponsive body in my arms, thinking he wasn’t going to make it.

I said urgently to her, “He’s not breathing!” and she took ds from me and did the Heimlich manuever.   Nothing.   While she told her husband to call emergency medical help, I took ds back on my lap and thought how terrifying this would be for him if he was aware of it at any level, so I repeatedly stroked his face and told him he’d be okay.

Slowly, he started to breathe with a heavy gurgle, like the air had to squeeze by a big obstruction in his throat. His teeth began to unclench, his face started fading to light blue, and gradually he was just very pale.  I could see his eyes starting to refocus – he had been staring through us before without seeing anything.

I didn’t know what caused him to start breathing again  –  I thought maybe what was stuck in his throat passed down, somehow.  The nurse told us to stay there until they found a doctor to send us to, but after waiting a little while, I told them my kids were probably terrified and I needed to let them know how ds2 was doing.  (The emergency clinic was closed because it was Wednesday evening, the health clinics were closed between 6 – 8 pm, the neighbor ds12 went to for help in calling an ambulance wasn’t home, and we couldn’t get any doctors on the phone.  An hour later I learned about an EMT who lives locally, but he was out of town until 1 am; he told us to call even in the early hours of the morning if we needed him and he’d be there within a couple of minutes. Fortunately, G-d is around all hours of the day!)

As I crossed the street with ds2 on the way back home, I won’t even try to describe the overwhelming sense of thankfulness and gratitude that filled me.  When I walked inside, I found all of my kids gathered together saying tehillim (Psalms).  I managed to say, “He’s okay” before totally breaking down into sobs.  They all looked very sober when I walked in, and I don’t know how they responded afterwards – I saw dd11 crying later on, and because dd15 and ds12 knew how serious it was, they must have had a tremendous amount of fear about the entire scenario. They weren’t able to really talk about it when I brought it up a few hours later, other than to nod when I said it must have been very frightening for them.

I sat down with ds  and a few minutes later, I gave him a drink of milk.  He drank it slowly, then his first words were, “Thank you for buying milk, Mommy”, and everyone smiled kind of emotionally, and someone said, “That’s our Shimmy!”  (He’s always spontaneously thanking us for things.)

He fell asleep on me, and I continued to hold him like that for two or three hours, while in my mind I tried to work backwards to figure out what had happened.  He clearly wasn’t breathing, but I checked with ds12, and ds2 hadn’t put anything in his mouth, so he wasn’t choking on any foreign objects.  I asked ds12 and dd15 to describe anything they had noticed during this incident (it was at this time that dd15 told me when I left the house with him that he looked like he was already gone).  As I had been running with him for help, it had flashed through my mind that he might be having a seizure, but I had dismissed that since his fever hadn’t been high, and he hadn’t had any recent vaccinations.

At first my concern was meningitis, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought he might have had a febrile seizure.  Later in the evening when I finally put him down, I did some research to see if this was possible.

Here’s a description from kidshealth.org (all of the sites I looked at had the same basic description):

“Febrile seizures are full-body convulsions that can happen during a fever (febrile means “feverish”). They affect kids 6 months to 5 years old, and are most common in toddlers 12 to 18 months old. The seizures usually last for a few minutes and are accompanied by a fever above 100.4° F (38° C).

While they can be frightening, febrile seizures usually end without treatment and don’t cause any other health problems. Having one doesn’t mean that a child will have epilepsy or brain damage.
<During a febrile seizure, a child’s whole body may convulse, shake, and twitch, and he or she may moan or become unconscious. This type of seizure is usually over in a few minutes, but in rare cases can last up to 15 minutes.>
Febrile seizures stop on their own, while the fever continues until it is treated. Some kids might feel sleepy afterwards; others feel no lingering effects.”

The critical information I learned about these seizures is that they are caused by a rapid rise or drop in body temperature.  It’s not how high the temperature is that matters, but how quickly it changes.  My initial belief that it couldn’t have been a seizure because he had a low-grade fever was incorrect; even a quick rise or drop from 99 degrees and 101 degrees could trigger a febrile seizure.

This experience was so intense that I wasn’t going to post about it here.  But then I thought that parents need to be aware of this possibility, that it can happen even in a healthy child.  This was the most terrifying situation of my life, but if you know what it is, it can be less frightening.  I found the following clip on Youtube of a one year old having a febrile seizure, and though initially I didn’t think I’d be able to watch it, I did.  The seizure was much shorter and less intense than ds2’s, but I was still able to see some similar features.

I haven’t yet found any suggestions about what to do in our situation, for a child who has stopped breathing, other than call 911.  I don’t know if when ds2 lost consciousness it allowed him to start breathing again, if the change in air temperature when I ran outside affected something, or if he would have restarted breathing no matter what.  Based on anecdotal comments I’ve seen by parents whose children experienced febrile seizures, it seems that CPR is the next step when the paramedics arrive.

Last night the following saying came to mind: “Having a child means your heart is walking around outside of your body.”  So, so true.

I knew yesterday was going to be a good day, but I didn’t know how good!  “Hodu l’Hashem ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo” – “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, and His kindness endures forever.”

Avivah

How to make olive leaf tincture

frugal strategies, health, home remedies, nutrition

I firmly believe that in every locale, there are potentially medicinal plants that will be of value to you.  However, it means letting go of thinking there are certain herbs that you must have – for example, in the US I had easy access to plantain, dandelion, and burdock, and it’s a mental shift for me to not feel like I need them when those were well within my comfort zone.

Here in Israel, there are olive trees all over.  And I already knew that olive leaves were good for you, since I bought them a couple of years ago as part of a big herb order.  Seeing the abundance of olive trees here on our very first day prompted me to learn more about how I could include this in my natural medicine chest.

First of all,a little about olive leaves (the following is from the Bulk Herb Store website, where I ordered my herbs from):  Olive leaf is a natural antibiotic and antioxidant that can help or prevent many diseases. The active compounds have been reported to act as an anti-microbial agent, which slows invaders enough for the body’s natural immune system to react. It exhibits powerful anti-parasitic and anti-fungal properties that fight over one hundred viral and bacterial conditions. The result is a natural antibiotic and antioxidant with similar effects to garlic and onions… It also works to lower high blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, improve respiratory response, improve skin health, heart disease and fatigue. Olive leaf can rejuvenate your vitality and energy, enhance your immune system, supports your cardiovascular system and promote general health and well-being.

An easy way to use olive leaves is by making tea with them – just brew the leaves with some water, mix in a little sweetener, and drink up!  I also used a concentrated olive leaf tea to wash down ds12’s foot when he had cellulitis.  Be warned that the effective ingredient in the olive leaf is bitter, which is why I suggested sweetener!

So that’s one way to use it, but I like something even faster – having a big family means that I have to find ways to accomplish what I need to as effectively as possible.  There’s also a limit to how much tea you can drink, and when you’re really under the weather, it’s likely you’d like something that will be powerful and effective, without leaving you bloating and running to empty your bladder every fifteen minutes.

Enter olive leaf tincture.  (Read here to learn how amazing olive leaves are – I felt so lucky after learning all about them that I can easily harvest them for free here.)  Making a tincture means that you draw out the medicinal qualities of the herb, and simultaneously preserve it for long term use.  Ideally this can be done with alcohol, though in the past I’ve chosen to use vinegar and glycerin to make tinctures, since I thought my kids would prefer those flavors.  Alcohol stores the best, though.

The instructions for making olive leaf extract/tincture are ridiculously easy:

1) Wash the leaves well, chop finely or shred in a food processor, then  place in a glass jar.

2) Cover with 80% proof vodka.  (A funny story – I asked dh to pick up some vodka at the store for me to make this.  When he went to get it, an elderly Russian man approvingly commented to my husband, who tried to explain that he was getting it for medicinal purposes.  I had also asked dh to pick up some lemon juice for salads, and when a little later in the store the same elderly man saw dh holding the bottles of vodka and lemon juice, the man smiled knowingly and smirked, “Right, medicinal.” )

If you’re using fresh leaves, then the ration of leaves to vodka is 1:2 or 3; ie, if you’re using 8 ounces of leaves, then you’d need to cover them with 16 – 24 oz of vodka.  If you’re using dried leaves, the ratio is 1 leaves: 5 vodka.

3) Seal the glass, and let it sit in a dark place for at least two weeks, but up to six weeks.  (Mine was ‘brewing’ for almost four weeks.)  Shake it every once in a while and make sure the leaves are all covered by liquid; add more vodka if you need to.

4) After two weeks, you can now strain it out.  If you have those wonderful amber colored dropper bottles (like I did, but gave away before we moved, sniff!), then pour it in there for easy use.

5) Use your tincture!  Here’s a good site with information about how to determine your dosage.

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Traditional Tuesdays, and Real Food Wednesday.)

Round 2 – dealing with cellulitis

health, home remedies, nutrition

This week I’ve relearned a lesson that I thought I had learned really well by this point in my life – not relax and leave things in the hands of the experts.

A day or two after completing the antibiotics for the skin infection he aquired when he got chicken pox, ds12’s leg started swelling up again.  He showed it to me in the evening, and we got an appointment first thing in the morning.  The doctor was sufficiently alarmed to get us an appointment with an orthopedist right away – literally, we got pushed to the top of the list of people who had been waiting weeks for an appointment.

I was very grateful we were able to see someone so quickly, since the pediatrician told us if the orthopedist wasn’t available that morning, he’d need to send us to a local hospital with an orthopedist on staff.  His concern was that the skin infection – officially called cellulitis – could spread to the joints and lead to arthritis.  (If you’re a medical person and that doesn’t quite make sense, keep in mind that this conversation was in Hebrew and included some medical terms I’m not yet familiar with, so I might have missed some nuances or details.)

The orthopedist prescribed a different antibiotic (which I was glad about, since the option had been to give him intravenous antibiotics), and home we went, prescription in hand.  We also started giving ds vitamin c at this point, about 8 – 10,000 units that day.  The next evening, ds12 showed me his leg – it was now hurting him a lot, and the infection was clearly spreading to his foot from his ankle.  (I could tell because the skin was flushed red, and when I put my hand to his foot, it was very hot.)  At this point, I wasn’t going to tell myself he had been on antibiotics for a day and a half, and it would probably kick in soon.   Because if I was wrong, the consequences could be serious.

This was a little frightening, particularly as I don’t have a strong feeling of trust in the orthopedist that we saw – no doubt he’s competent, but he was very quick and very brusque.  I tried to picture what he would say if we returned, and it seemed he would either brush us off and tell us it was nothing (I’m far from a worry wart, and it was clear to me it was definitely something with the potential to turn major in a very short time), or tell us it was an emergency and to get to the hospital. Where they would….I don’t know what, give him more antibiotics??

I decided we would take him to the orthopedist in the morning (if still necessary), and in the meantime, would get more actively involved in the healing process with the hope being we could reduce the infection before morning.  So I gave him cream to put on the pox mark, which was swollen tight, along with all the skin around it.  A short while later, it started oozing pus – I’m really glad I didn’t see this, since dd15 was there and said it was the second most disgusting thing she’s ever seen in her life (the first was a goat abscess being treated – JB, you know what she was referring to, right?:)).

(Don’t read the following if you’re squeamish.) What was so hard for her to watch was as ds lightly touched the skin next to where the pus was oozing out, a huge amount of thick green pus suddenly burst out, streaked with red.  They told me about this a few minutes later, and I was actually happy to hear this news, since I felt some of the infection was being released from the body, hopefully rather than being passed into the bloodstream.

We rinsed the area with hydrogen peroxide, then sprinkled sodium ascorbate (vitamin c) on the wound opening.  At the same time, we had been upping his vitamin C intake dramatically – about 30,000 by the time he went to bed.  A little later, it started oozing pus again (but not dramatically like before), and we did a hot compress, followed again with hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C.  And prayer.

When he woke up, I felt his leg and foot, and the heat was gone.  I was so thankful.  There was no more pus coming out, and today, we continued with massive doses of vitamin C – 50,000 units – we’ve never experienced a child taking this much without shedding the excess – but it means his body is using it all.  He’s continued the hot compress routine.  (Of course he’s still taking the antibiotics.)

Tomorrow we’ll continue the vitamin C, but decrease the dosage, and start to put salve on the wound instead of vitamin C to heal the skin and start to close up the wound, which thanks to all this excitement has gotten bigger than the original pox mark.   No tests have yet been done to determine what kind of bacteria we’re dealing with, but it seems to be a powerful strain to not have responded fully to the first round of antibiotics, and then to not respond quickly to the second round, even though it was at the very beginning of the infection.  I’m mentally prepared that we will probably need to stay on top of this for a few months to be sure it’s really and truly gone; if I’m wrong and it’s easily finished in a week, I’ll be delighted.

When ds12 took the first round of antibiotics, he didn’t do anything else.  I mentioned that I wanted him to use the salve I made and take vitamin C, but I didn’t make sure he did it.  I guess I was a little complacent, feeling like I had done my part by getting him to the hospital, giving him the prescribed antibiotics, and it would all get better without any more active involvement from me than reminding him daily to take his medicine.

This entire experience was a good reminder for me as a mother to stay very actively involved, even when working with medical professionals.  You can’t relax and assume it will all be okay because you’re doing what someone else told you (as nice as it would be to relax a little) – you still have to keep a constant eye on things and watch, watch, watch.

What would a medical professional have told me to do in this circumstance?  Not what I did, that’s for sure.  But it doesn’t matter  – the main thing is that ds12 kicks this infection.  And I hope the healing process will continue in a straightforward way from here on out.

Avivah

How to get kids to take fish oil

dental health, health, nutrition

A couple of years ago, I did extensive research to find cod liver oil that had kosher supervision.  But I didn’t succeed.

I very much wanted the dental benefits of cod liver oil, but thought that since our diet was rich in bone broths, lots of butter, free range eggs, raw milk, kefir, and fermented vegetables, the emerging teeth of the littles would probably be fine.  I was overly optimistic, and I’m frustrated with myself for not giving them the cod liver oil, since you have until the age of three to improve their facial bone structure.  So it’s too late for ds4, who has very closely spaced teeth (and as a result, had cavities between most of them – brushing wouldn’t have helped), and ds2 has crowding on his lower jar (I saw this when his baby teeth emerged, but hoped there would be improvement – there wasn’t).

From my experience, a good diet is only enough to maintain health, not to significantly improve underlying issues.  (I keep meaning to write about my anecdotal observations on dental structure based on our nine children, and our diet at the time.  Remind me if I forget, okay?)  So we’ll now be using cod liver oil, which I just bought for the first time last week, and I just hope it’s not too late to help ds2 with his dental spacing.

Regardless of the benefits to dental health, there are lots of benefits to taking cod liver oil (or other fish oils, as well).  But getting it down is the hard part.  You know all those stories from a couple of generations ago, about kids running away and hiding when they were sick to avoid their mother dosing them with cod liver oil?  I’m sure it wasn’t much of an exaggeration.

None of our kids are picky eaters, but every one of them grimaced (ds2 tried repeatedly to wipe his mouth out) and told me how bad it was.  But it’s so good for their health, so how to get it down?  Here’s my strategy so far, for unflavored cod liver oil (I decided against the flavored oils for a couple of reasons):

I give them each a shot glass with a teaspoon of cod liver oil in it. For some, I immediately give them a chaser of thick, sweet nectar from the peach compote I recently made.  Ds4 surreptitiously tried to pour his shot glass into the sink while I was giving the others their glasses, and b) what worked for him was to mix the nectar with his cod liver oil.  c) I take mine immediately followed by a teaspoon of lemon juice – it cuts the flavor immediately.  d) Dd16 told me she mixed hers with rice and spices, and it was very tasty.  🙂

Ds18 went back to Jerusalem today, and asked if he could take one of the bottles of cod liver oil with him.  If he has a different strategy, I’ll add in his suggestion to this post at a later time.  🙂

How do you get your children to take supplements or medicine that they find unpleasant?  What kind of supplements do you think are worth the effort, and why?

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Avivah

And now a staph infection…

aliyah, health, home remedies, nutrition

(In case this appears in your inbox, don’t be worried – I just corrected the title of this old post and sometimes this causes it to post as something new.)

We’ve had a doozy of a time trying to get our health insurance established here in Israel.  To recap, as returning citizens, every family member over the age of 18 has to pay almost 10,000 shekels each (approximately $2700) in order to start our membership in the local health care clinics.  Half of this is refunded within a few weeks, the other half is refunded after a year.

Dh and I figured this expense into our plans, but we didn’t anticipate all of the difficulties in taking care of what we thought would be pretty straightforward.  The weeks stretched on, we repeatedly went to the National Insurance office, and dh and I finally decided to stop trying to fight a battle that can’t be won.  We were at the point that we needed to have the refunded money in hand already to cover our living expenses for the coming month, and had very little faith that if we did pay the money, that we’d get it back. We’ve just seen too much inaccuracy and incompetency, and we didn’t want to risk money we need for our living expenses on office clerks doing what they’re supposed to do, after seeing that they don’t know what they’re doing.  And we were warned that they like to get as much money as they can, and refund as little as possible.  We can’t afford to not get our money back as promised.

So dh went to the local health clinic to find out about getting private insurance for the next four months (after six months of being a resident, the national insurance will automatically kick in without having to pay the large fees).  When he got there, the clerk looked at the computer and told him that I and the kids are already covered!  This was such a nice surprise, and it came just in time.

Ds12 has had a really bad case of chickenpox.  He was burning up for a few days, the inside of his mouth is covered with pox and it makes it very difficult for him to eat or drink anything, and to top it off, he has an infected ingrown toenail that I’ve been working on treating for the last couple of weeks but still looks pretty bad.  I was relieved that we were able to bring down his 105 degree fever, though it went back up to 102 yesterday afternoon.  (I shared about natural chickenpox remedies here , and in the comments, shared some of what I was doing about the fever.)

You know the phrase, ‘no rest for the weary’?  Well, that’s what came to mind when the morning his fever broke, just a couple of hours later he showed me his noticeably swollen ankle.  This worried me, and I asked dh to make an appointment with a doctor – I didn’t yet have any of the info about the health clinic or I would have taken care of it myself.  He went to make the appointment, and an hour and a half later, ds18 told me that ds12’s foot was turning black and he was losing feeling in his toes.  Yes, this freaked me out.

I was so anxious that by the time dh got home a very short time later, I was really uptight.  He said there was a line at the clinic, and because of the Sukkos holiday, the clinic closed mid day instead of at 7 pm,  so he made an appointment for the next morning since he didn’t think it was urgent.  “Tomorrow??  No, no, now, he needs to be seen immediately, it can’t wait until tomorrow!” – yep, I was really stressed.  I rarely take my kids to the doctor, and the very fact I had asked for the appointment was a sign that it was important.

Ds18 told me that ds 12 overheard me talking to dh and it was making him stressed out and to calm down.  But at times when I’m afraid I’m dealing with something serious I don’t have the tools for, the unknown combines with my desire to take the very best care of my children possible and feels like a huge emotional weight.

Ds called the clinic to find out what kind of medical help was available.  Oh, nothing, until tomorrow morning.  How can we live in a city with 52,000 people and there’s no medical help for that amount of time?!?  Well, it seems there’s some kind of emergency station a few minutes away from us, but it’s not clear to me what kind of help is available there, and when the nurse on the phone heard ds’s symptoms, she said there are sometimes complications of chickenpox in older kids that affect their joints and it sounded like that might be what’s happening, and to get him to an emergency room right away.

Easier said than done.  Since our move, we don’t have a car, and we don’t even know where the closest hospital is.  This is such a huge difference from having a car and a major hospital five minutes away, which was our situation until two months ago.  Since moving to Israel,  I use public transportation (and enjoy it!), but taking ds to the hospital by bus wasn’t an option.

We called a couple of friends with cars to ask if they could drive us to the emergency room in a neighboring city, but they weren’t available.  We then called the person we hired a number of times to pick up the furniture we bought from private sellers on a number of occasions to ask him to take us, and as soon as he heard we needed to go to the emergency room, said, “I’ll be there right away”.  And he was.   He’s not a close personal friend, and we called him assuming we’d pay him a few hundred shekels for the drive.  He insisted on waiting two or three hours at the hospital, and when he brought dh and ds home, refused payment.  Can you imagine that?  He said the main thing is that my son is healthy.  We are so blessed with good people in our lives.  (Dd16 made a couple of big gorgeous loaves of challah that we’re planning to take to him today as a tiny token of appreciation.)

At the hospital, they took an xray, and when the podiatrist who was supposed to look at it finally arrived, the xray wasn’t loading for him on his computer.  He was impatient, took a quick look at ds’s leg, and told dh that there was no need to take the xray, it’s not a joint problem and not directly connected to the chicken pox, but is a skin infection that gets into cuts or wounds (in this case it was next to a pox).  (This is what ds12 told me earlier in the day, that the pox right next to it was hurting and he thought it was connected.)  That was a relief.

Dh asked him about the ingrown toenail (which looks bad and though I’ve been treating it, would like to know it’s healing properly), and the doctor says, “It’s an ingrown toenail.”   Umm, yes, we know that.  The question is, is it healing normally or do we need to do something else?  “Come back another time for that, right now we’re dealing with the foot.”  Is he joking??  He’s a foot specialist looking at swelling a few inches from that toe, and after they were waiting two hours for him, he can’t take one minute to tell us anything without making a separate visit?  Sheesh.

He prescribed antibiotics and an antibiotic ointment for the foot, as well as a painkiller.  This is the first time ds12 has ever taken antibiotics or used an antibiotic cream (none of our kids except ds18 have taken antibiotics until now – ds18 had them twice).  I don’t know if it’s any better than the salve that I made that we use, but we’re giving him antibiotics and continuing to keep doing what we’ve been doing (mega doses of vitamic c, chicken broth, olive leaf tea) along with adding in probiotics to offset the negative effects of antibiotics.

So thank G-d though it looks bad and it’s very painful, this morning he was limping but able to walk on the foot (last night he had to walk like a crab, sideways, and pull his leg after him), and hopefully it will be better soon.  It’s a relief just to know what you’re dealing with, you know?

And ds didn’t mind the trip to the hospital – dh bought him some ice cream (ds told me the cafeteria was basically a small room filled with snacks – you’d hope in a place dedicated to healing this wouldn’t be the case!), and during the drive there, he enjoyed seeing an Arab “from a thousand years ago” in traditional garb with a shepherd’s crook herd twenty goats down a sidewalk in the city of Nahariya, which is where the hospital he went to was.  Social studies.  🙂

You want to hear something funny but not funny?  Last night, ds12 told me he got worried when he heard that I was worried.  (I tend to be pretty laid back about heath issues and handle things that come up with out getting too worked up.)  I told him that I got worried when I heard ds18 describe his leg to me (as above), and ds12 said, “What? I didn’t say I lost feeling in my toe!  He touched my toe and I said it didn’t hurt!”  And it wasn’t turning black, either, though the healing skin is a darkish pink color, it was just ds18’s way of describing it – so though I’m glad we took ds to see a doctor and had already asked dh to make the appointment before ds18’s description, my extreme worry was based on the equivalent of ‘broken telephone’!

And PS – this morning dh went to the health clinic and the computer now says that I don’t have health insurance.  🙁  Apparently it was delayed in processing all the relevant information.  But the kids still do, and we had it in place when we really needed it!

(This post is linked to Real Food Wednesdays.)

Avivah

Natural chickenpox remedies

frugal strategies, health, home remedies

Well, it’s happened – five more of our children have come down with chickenpox in the last 36 hours, two weeks after ds5 came down with it. 🙂

Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to alleviate the discomfort of chickenpox.  I’ll start with homeopathy.

Homeopathy:

a) If you recognize the chickenpox early on, give aconite.  This will bring it to an end very quickly, without compromising the immunity benefits of getting chickenpox.  I learned about this over twelve years ago from a friend who used it at the first sign of chicken pox, and it was over in a day.   I couldn’t find a local store that sells homeopathic remedies, was fortunate to find a friend in the area with a homeopathic kit from whom I was able to borrow the two remedies I needed, but not in time to give the aconite to ds12 and dd10, who broke out first.  But I am giving it to ds2, ds4, and ds9,  and their cases are (so far) significantly lighter than the two older kids  or ds5.

b) Then there are some other remedies you can give, but the main one I’ll mention here is rhus tox.  Rhus tox is good for alleviating the itching, and I’m giving the two older kids rhus tox 30x (3 times a day for 48 hours).

c) Chamomilla is a good remedy for soothing.

Baths:

Lots of people recommend Aveeno to relive the itchiness of chickenpox – but do you know what Aveeno is?  Oatmeal!  So open up your pantry and use the oatmeal you already have there, and it will be lots cheaper and just as effective.  I  put the oatmeal in a knee high nylon and knotted it at the end, to allow all the helpful substances in the oatmeal to seep out, while keeping the oats themselves out of the drain.  Ds5 had a great time playing with this in his bath, and there was no mess at the end when I let the water out of the bath.  The older kids didn’t play all day long in the bath like he did, but they also found it soothing.

I added some herbs to the oats to speed the healing: chamomile and comfrey.  The chamomile is for soothing, and the comfrey is to help soothe the itching and heal the pox.  (I was so glad I decided to bring my medicinal herbs along with me when I moved!)  I used a tablespoon of each herb combined with a cup of rolled oats (I chopped the oats in a food processor but this isn’t necessary).  Lavender is another good herb to include in the bath.

A couple of other things that can be helpful in baths are baking powder, and powdered ginger.  With ds5, I sprinkled baking soda on the damp pox to alleviate itching.   I didn’t bring along the large containers of powdered herbs that I used for cooking as well as for medicinal purposes (like mustard, cayenne, and ginger), so I didn’t use that.

Another herb that is soothing is slippery elm powder; it can be applied directly  on wet pox.

Cool baths are more soothing that hot baths, which can exacerbate the discomfort of itching.

Herbs:

All of these herbs are good when brewed as tea:  lemon balm, echinacea, St. John’s wort, ginger, pau d’arco, and burdock.  I have most of these, but chose to make ds12 some tea with echinacea and cut stevia (the leaf) for some sweetness.  All of these would be good added to the bath, as well.

Essential oils:

Before I moved eight weeks ago, I bartered fifty pounds of spelt berries and six pounds of natural beeswax for several small bottles of essential oils – lots easier to bring with me!!  Naturally, of the four oils that I now have on hand, I didn’t have any oils that were of help in this situation.

Here’s a couple that can be diluted with a carrier oil or some chamomile tea and applied to the pox: tea tree oil and lavender oil.  A few drops can also be added to bath water.

Vitamins:

When dealing with any cold or infection, it’s good to build up the body’s resources to aid it in fighting germs.  Vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin D are always good for any kind of cold. (I posted guidelines for vitamin C dosing here.)

Vitamin E oil is great to apply on the pox to reduce scarring.  Coconut oil can also be helpful when applied to the pox.

Nutrition:

Good nutrition is always important, especially when a child is under the weather.  Now’s not the time to give them sugary treats to make them feel better; they’ll be happy for the moment but it will slow their healing.  Lots of liquids are important to keep your child hydrated; I made a huge pot of  chicken broth with garlic and astragalus that we’re going through quite quickly!

Some other external things that can be applied:

Calendula cream – helps to heal pox after they’ve scabbed.  Witch hazel can also be applied to help dry the pox out.

What not to use:

I’ve always thought of calamine lotion in the same breath as chickenpox, but after learning that it’s suppressive, didn’t go out to buy any for this go around with chicken pox.  While it dried up the lesions, it keeps the toxins from exiting the body through the skin like they need to – you always want to allow the disease to leave the body!

Similarly, I personally try to stay away from fever suppressing drugs – eg Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, aspirin, etc. I believe that fevers aid the body in healing, so when a child has a fever that spikes (like ds12 right now), I use sponge baths or a damp cool cloth on the forehead to relieve excess heat.

Have any of your children had chickenpox?  What tips have you found helpful in alleviating their discomfort?

(This post is linked to the Living Well Blog Hop and Real Food Wednesday.)

Avivah

Chickenpox!

health, home remedies, nutrition

On the first day of Rosh Hashana began, ds5 showed me a blister on his neck that was bothering him. He couldn’t see it, but felt it, and told me he had a wart there. Since recently I’ve been noticing unusual bug bites on ds4 that I don’t know the source of, I chalked this up to another kind of insect bite. I asked if it was itchy, but he said no.

The next morning ds5 told me the ‘wart’ was hurting him. Thinking it must be a bug bite, I asked him again if it was itchy, and he said no. When I was dressing him that evening, I was concerned to see a number of red bumps all over his back. He’s had a heat rash in that area recently, but this was looking like a bit more than heat rash. We wondered if it might be chicken pox, but it’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen it so I didn’t have a recent memory to draw on, and ds wasn’t itching.

Dh went across the street to a retired nurse to ask her opinion, but she wasn’t home. On his way back into the building, he bumped into a neighbor who has three grown children, and asked her opinion. ‘Chicken pox’, she proclaimed. Dh came upstairs and shared the good news with me. 🙂

My oldest three kids had chicken pox, though the third was only a few months old, and though she had a pretty bad case, I don’t know if she has immunity. The next six kids haven’t had it, though I’ve been hoping for years they would catch it. I explained to ds5 that he had chicken pox, which was awesome and amazing, so much so that some people make chicken pox parties to share the germs with children of parents who want their kids to aquire natural immunity.

That’s a problem with homeschooling – your kids stay too darned healthy without all the sick kids in their class to infect them constantly. After all these years of keeping my eyes and ears open for families with chicken pox, it took less than a month in school and no effort on my part for ds5 to catch chicken pox! Who knew how awesome school was and what I was missing all these years?

The worst part about this news was that it was on the second night of Rosh Hashana (Thurs.) when we realized what it was, and there was very little I could do to alleviate his discomfort for another two days. Fortunately, he didn’t really get itchy until Sunday, though by Friday morning I could almost see the spots breaking out on him as I watched him, they were appearing so fast. On Sunday I made him a bath with a blend of oats and herbs, and he spent most of the day in the tub; every time he’d come out, he’d cry that he was itchy, then jump back in the tub and I’d add more hot water. He looked like a prune by the end of the day, but he was a relatively happy prune. 😛 The next day I gave him different shaped containers, cups, and silverware for his bath, and he had a great time. Ds4 kept requesting to join ds5in his bath, but I told him he had to wait until he gets chickenpox.:)

Shown for educational purposes and not to gross you out - full breakout stage

When the chickenpox vaccine came out in 1995, it was well-known that it was developed as a convenience to working parents. Chickenpox basically consists of an itchy rash, mild fever, and general fretfulness, and necessitates keeping your child home from school for about a week. And a week is a long time for parents to stay home from work. So most people thought it was ridiculous and superfluous.

Fast forward about fifteen years, and it’s frightening to me how many people think that chickenpox is something life-threatening. A lot of effort was put into PR to make so many parents who grew up with chickenpox as a normal passage of childhood to believe this. This is a pattern with disease education; when there’s no disease, you’ll read how relatively infrequent it is and how minimal the chances of complications are. Enter a new vaccine, and the slant totally shifts to convincing people they run the risk of severe injury or death if they don’t give their child (or self, when appropriate) the particular vaccine. Well, there’s lot of money to be made if you can convince parents that they need your product, so who can blame the producers for finding an effective way to line their pockets? Fortunately, the mothers I’ve so far spoken to here all expressed the unanimous sentiment that it’s a good thing for a child to get chickenpox at a young age.

Anyway, I really didn’t want my kids to reach adulthood and not have chickenpox, because it’s when people get chickenpox as adults that there’s a problem (when it manifests as shingles). There are exceptions, but for the most part getting chickenpox once offers lifelong immunity. Unfortunately, as chickenpox has become less common during childhood, the incidence of shingles has become correspondingly higher.

So far no one else in the family has shown any signs of pox, but the incubation period averages about two weeks, and it’s during this period when a person is most contagious. When my oldest three had chicken pox, it took six weeks until it passed through all of them.

So I’m hopeful that this will pass around and all the kids will get it.

Avivah

High quality and inexpensive probiotics

frugal strategies, health, nutrition

Dh has been on the GAPS diet since a year and a half ago, yet after the first month, he didn’t use the recommended probiotic supplements since they were so pricey.  We figured we’d do probiotics the frugal way – with cultured foods like kefir and fermented vegetables. But even though he’s found his digestive health improved, it hasn’t been to the degree we would have hoped and expected.

Back in January, I started researching probiotics in order to find an affordable option that would allow us to buy the full amount to give dd16, to see if this would help resolve the stomach pains she’d been having – but high quality and affordability don’t seem to go together when it comes to probiotics.  Until I found Custom Probiotics, a company that sells  customized probiotic blends. 

I called to order an eleven strain oxylate blend that isn’t offered on the website,  and the person who answered the phone (Harry – turned out he was the owner of the business), asked why I wanted this particular blend.  I told him it for dd.  He asked about her stomach pains, when it started, and some other specific questions, and then told me it sounded very much like something he had experienced. Actually, it was what led him to starting this business ten years ago, after healing himself naturally by using probiotics.

I had never heard of the term he used -H pylori – so I asked him twice to repeat himself and the third time just asked him to spell it for me.  When he asked me if her stomach pain felt like someone stabbed her in the stomach with a knife, I told him I know it’s pretty bad because she doesn’t complain much so if she says her stomach hurts, she would only say something if it really hurt, but I wasn’t sure if that was how it felt (I was hoping it wasn’t, because it sounded so excrutiating). H pylori is a bacteria that about 50% of people in the world have, but that causes infections in a only some of those people.

A little later in the day I spoke to her and asked if this was an accurate description, and she said that’s exactly how she feels.  I told her all about what he had shared with me, and then while I went off to do some shopping for her, she went on to do some research about it.   When I got back, an email was in my inbox from her, saying she looked at the detailed symptoms and she thinks it looks like a good match for her.

Since then, we’ve done lots more testing and eliminated the possibility of H pylori, and since she had taken massive amounts of this probiotic without change, I was pretty sure even prior to the testing that it wasn’t H pylori.   Before this testing, a naturopath and osteopath both also were strongly inclined to think it was H pylori as well based on her symptoms, so it was a very good guess.  Though it wasn’t what dd16 needed to remedy her stomach issue (and I unfortunately still don’t know what to do to help her – nothing we’ve tried has helped), I strongly believe probiotics are very valuable for the digestive system. 

And back to dh – he and I both feel it would be helpful for him to really get the full benefits of gut healing that are supposed to result from the GAPS diet.  But even inexpensive probiotics aren’t cheap, and so we pushed off purchasing any for dh.  That is, until today, when in preparation for our move to Israel in two weeks, I ordered 200 grams for dh of the customized GAPS blend so he’d have enough to last a good while. 

By the way, I’m very impressed with the owner of Custom Probiotics.  Back in January, in addition to spending 20 minutes talking to me and sharing some ideas about treating H pylori that he’d have no benefit from me buying since he doesn’t sell them, he insisted on sending me the probiotics Fedex at his expense – I told him I’d rather the cheaper shipping option, but he said he wanted to be absolutely sure it arrived to me before I left to visit dd, and he’d cover the difference in shipping.  Today, I asked if there was a larger container available than 100 grams (you know how I buy everything in bulk!), and he said there isn’t but is doing me a favor and filling the bottle fuller (beyond the weight I’m paying for), and charging me the same amount. 

In case you’re wondering about the cost of this particular blend, it’s $175 for 100 grams.  (There are a number of different probiotics blends available and most of them are less expensive than this one.)  I know it sounds insanely expensive to pay that much for a little bottle, but when it comes to probiotics, you have to see how many billion cfus there are in a given serving, then compare that.  Once I did that, I realized that this probiotic was much more powerful than others I looked at, and as a result, a smaller amount was necessary.  We originally bought the BioKult probiotics that are recommended in the GAPS program, and using it was shortlived since we couldn’t keep up with the expense – this is comparable quality and lots more affordable. 

I really appreciate dealing with people who care about what they do, and offer great service in addition to great products!

(This post is linked to Real Food Wednesdays and Pennywise Platter Thursdays.) 

Avivah