Brandy
I hold the same true where in our home and always have until Ethan came along. His food allergies were the exact opposite. He ate all the foods in large quantities that caused his body to react due to the opiate like addiction factors it was causing in his brain. I did not find out until late in the game that those foods were actually allergen foods causing us a lot of skin rashes, nasal congestion and more.

I truly believe that when given healthful choices our kids can pick and chose what their bodies need. I see this clearly with my daughter who has no know allergies and how she eats when she is feeling not well in her body.
Now she is a veg-head like her mother-so food allergies -no but dietary choices yes which makes the meal making time just the same in stress.

I cannot eat sugar (chocolate) either. If I do I pay, coughing and phlem.

I hope we can come together and figure out how to make cooking an grocery shopping fun again here because it is a major stressor here in our home as we also cook 4 different meals.

I am the last one to sit down at the table by the time I am done preparing everyones meals.

My husband sometimes will cook his own stuff(usually the meat-I do not do meat) and that helps but not always.

Going to the grocery store is so stressful I procrastinate until we almost have no food at all in the house...lol..

I want to say that just snacking all day long (healthful) is a better option for all of us but do not know how to make that work.

Hi T! <wave> Girl, we are cut from the same cloth I swear it! hee hee

These all apply to me/us too. I crave what I can't have and that's a big reason why I was such a stickler about Creed not having any of his allergens as a small toddler. I have a tough time and it feels ridiculous that there are some things I feel like I can't stop eating!

I too am the last one to sit down and eat and it feels lonesome in one way (my fam always sat down and ate together) as well as a pain. I end up going to the store bc we don't feel like we have anything to eat but still end up buying the same ole things...which we already have in our cabinets!

I'd love to know how many people on this forum have allergies and have kids that do. Most all kids I know have parents that have them too. My mom has issues with pork (one I forgot to mention before) and just found out about eggs/tomatoes. I think she's one w/ chocolate too but she'd never admit that one!

We have different allergies through the family, Dan can't have wheat, Breanna can't have corn, and Avari can't have milk. Everyone has their own shelves in the kitchen with their own food bins, they can get their own foods. We do a lot of compromising.

We're also an allergy family. I am the only one in my family that does not have food allergies. My oldest daugher, Hannah, is allergic to dairy, peanuts, tomatoes, and beef. I am starting to wonder if she is allergic to more, because her eczema is terrible. She wakes us up a few times a week in the middle of the night to lather her down with lotion to stop the itching! Her skin feels like sandpaper. I'm not sure what to do, because getting her tested the first time around was so traumatic for her. Can they test for food allergies through a blood test instead of the skin scratches? My husband is terribly allergic to lobster and shrimp and my baby, Lily, has shown a sensitivity to cinnamon...and I'm sure there is something else, because she's starting to develop eczema. It is so frustrating to not know what is bothering their little bodies.

brandy
i can't imagine having to manage so many allergies. that's tough! esp. when you love food, the thing you love becomes such a headache. well, i don't have a lot of advice, but i am wondering if there are any treatments for the allergies or a way to treat your body so that it can function w/out tiptoeing around so many foods? just throwing this out there, don't really know....

Blood test vs scratch test

I'm sorry to hear your fam has so many allergies too! To answer your question, there is a blood test that can be done for allergies which my trusted chiro back in CO. said was better IHO than the scratch test. He said that most people will have some type of reaction to food placed in their skin because it isn't supposed to be there at all and I tend to believe him because the people I know that have had that test done seem to have a LOT of sensitivities even if they are low on the charts. He said that he believes that the blood test is more accurate because it tests the reaction in the blood that stems from the food.

Here's an excerpt on the tests (the whole document can be found here):

What types of tests are available?
Two commonly used tests are blood (IgE RAST) and skin prick tests. The blood tests require a small sample of blood to be sent to a laboratory, where the amount of IgE antibody to the specific food is measured. The result is reported as a numerical value, or “class.”

I did find on a different site where it said that they believed the skin test to be more accurate...naturally you will have some people who believe one thing and some the other. I'd say it sounds like your dds are reacting to foods of some sort since their eczema is so bad. I only had a bit of it with my rash on the insides of my arms and it drove me nuts so I can only imagine how awful their skin must feel! Poor girls! to them!

Anyway, I'd look in to the RAST test to see if it's something that you can have done.

See my next post for more info on what my family did to find out which sensitivities we have.

HTH!

Hi Dedra! <wave>
I am SO missing our chiro right now. We started with one in CO. that we knew as a friend and he did muscle testing (definitely read more on the site to get what I'm talking about) and he was able to determine which foods our bodies were reacting negatively to. I swear it worked and when I eliminated the foods for a few months I saw *dramatic* improvement. I didn't understand or know anything about Applied Kinesiology at the time but I just knew that he had targeted what it was that both my ds1 (2 months at the time) and I were reacting to. Once I eliminated the foods that ds1 was reacting to through my milk, he settled down some and his bowel movements went back to the normal BF color/consistency.

After that he continued to work with me using acupuncture, energy work, structural adjustments, etc. I was also using a homeopathic detox kit which worked really well to detox both ds1 and myself (however, I wouldn't have done any form of detox w/o his care). I was feeling better than I had in a few years and could finally eat some of my offending foods a little at a time.

He moved away and my second chiro did some of the same things as well as more intense emotional work and they got even better. However, we moved from CO. to Atlanta 8 months ago and I have neglected to find a chiro here that would do some of the same work. So now I have been gradually back sliding and with the boys having additional allergies it's adding to my stress level surrounding food, which just makes it worse.

So yes, the holistic care we received really made a huge difference and I'm seeing how much help it was and how hard it is now w/o it. I haven't found anything else that has made that much of a difference and for us, I found that having our structure, emotions, and mental well being taken care of really made the difference in how well we responded to our allergens.

Now I should get off of my duff tomorrow and make some phone calls right!? hee hee

hi brandy!
i am totally into AK (also alfie kohn, but here i mean applied kines.) we just spent some time there today, so i totally get what you mean. did your chiro ever mention, though, that he'd be able to get you back to a "normal" state, where your body would be able to tolerate foods that most people can?

we also see a homeopathic D.O. and she claims that a good homeopathic can treat and heal the body so that it is able to process those foods again. now, i'm not talking you should be able to eat doritos (no one should) but that you can eat organically grown, natural tomatoes, etc?

i will add that from personal experience, my son is GF/CF and none of the above treatments seem to be able to help that. i'm just curious, that since your seeing (or have seen) the same kinds of docs that we have, if any of them have promised anything like that?

and yes, you should get on the phone tomorrow!

Hey Dedra!
Very cool that you use AK too! My first chiro told me that he'd be able to get me to a state where I could eat allergens maybe 1-2 times per week but that I probably wouldn't be able to eat them as frequently as other people can. He did that and I found that I really had to watch myself or else I'd starting thinking that I was "cured" and go overboard.

My second chiro said that he has had good success with an emotional/energetic healing method but that it took about 25 visits and they had to be somewhat closer together. We lived about 1 h 15 m away from him and the boys detested the drive and dh had to go with me to occupy them while we were there. So it wasn't an ideal situation to do the 25 visits thing nor was it financially feasible. He didn't promise me that I'd be back to eating foods regularly but basically said the same thing that our first chiro said.

We have only seen a dedicated classical homeopathy prac once and that was this winter when ds2 was sick. I wasn't impressed with her particularly but we love to use homeopathy at home. I have some great books that are usually spot on. They are more for pregnancy, infant and first years kinds of ailments though and not for things like food allergies or adult issues if you kwim.

Anyway, I'd be interested in knowing how it goes for your son if you go that route with her. Oh I have also heard great things about NET
from various people when I lived in Boulder. Again, successive treatments that weren't cheap there. At this point, neither is our grocery bill so it might be worth it in the future! hee hee

i will let you know how it goes, brandy. i LOVE homeopathy for myself. it has changed my world, but i get so frustrated w/trying to treat my kids. they're such an enigma

OT: homeopathy

Click here to see the book we use for the kids. I like it a lot and really liked it when I was pregnant with ds2. It is much more symptom specific (and has a materia medica in it as well) than Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child. I do like this book though because it has all different types of healing modalities from allopathic OTC remedies, to herbs, to homeopathy and flower essences (which we like a lot as well). It's a great book for everyone really and I like it for that specifically. I do have to say though that using homeopathics out of that book isn't a really great thing to do (I've found the hard way myself) because it's isn't as symptom specific as you surely know it has to be. They only give you a few symptoms and say "try this". If a parent hasn't used a whole lot of homeopathy then they may try it, not see results and chalk it up to homeopathy not working at all. So that's a bit disconcerting to me because it has worked so well for us in the past.

Anyway, I don't know if you have either book but I really like the first one. Melinda Castro also goes in to detail about the history of homeopathy, how to chart symptoms, use and store remedies correctly, etc.

*I should note here as well that these are just my personal experiences with my family in particular and that my experiences here do not necessarily reflect how API feels about this or other topics in this thread. Thanks for understanding.

Thank you so much, Brandy, for the information that you sent my way. I will definitely check out the test that you mentioned. I am very, very interested in it.

As for chiropractors...I also see a chiropractor that uses applied kinesiology (the same as Dedra, actually ). I seriously do not understand why it is not more popular...it's amazing. Anyways, we were supposed to move a few months ago to southern Georgia (but, ended up not moving) and, at the time, my chiropractor checked out which chiropractors in that area practiced applied kinesiology. I guess there's a book that they can do a quick reference check. If you would like, I can give him a call and ask him to look up all of the chiropractors in Atlanta (I'm sure there are plenty) that practice applied kinesiology. Interested?

By the way, my aunt lives in Boulder. I got a chance to visit her a few years back...holy cow that place is amazing! Different world!! I absolutely loved it.

brandy,
i finally got a chance to check out this website. it looks to me as though they're using combination homeopathic to treat emotional health. i've had a great success through my classical homeopath. she found a constitutional that has turned my life around!

You're welcome! I hope it helps.

Thanks for the offer! I know of someone up here actually, I've just been to lazy/busy-not sure which when it comes to this, hee hee-to call them up. They do this amazing technique called "Atlas Orthogonal" which I LOVE. My first chiro used it and boy, it was the first time I've been able to move my neck without so much restriction. I was tossed off of a jet ski going high speeds (thanks to a careless friend who was driving) and hit the back of my head against the water. When my first chiro adjusted my neck with this technique I felt amazing! It's extremely gentle. It requires x-rays though (perhaps that's why I've been hedging this time around...they are kind of expensive) but when he initially took them and then did a follow up x-ray, you could see that my head actually changed shape! It rounded out more appropriately than it was to start with. It's awesome![/QUOTE]

Ahh....yes, it really is a different world I'm finding. Atlanta is just not the place for us and there is so much that each of us miss about Boulder. We are currently trying to find our way back there. My dh graduates from Emory this Dec. so he is currently exploring options that will eventually lead back home. If we end up there again and you go see your aunt, we'll have to hook up!