Tourettes and Allergies

Many believe that tics are worse due to allergens  The problem is trying to identify these. For my son we saw that his tics would be bad for three days and then subside. A doctor suggested a food sensitivity due to the cycle and sure enough we have reduced the severity of his tics by eliminating  nitrates, food coloring’s, and anything else containing chemicals. But what if that was not enough? Next week I’m taking him to the Chiropractor to do a NAET muscle-testing procedure.

The Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET) is based on curing the pathways of energy in the body using applied kinesiology and acupressure points. It is very far removed from Western Medicine!

The treatment begins with muscle testing for the “basic” allergies, as defined by Dr. Nambudripad: eggs, calcium, Vitamin C, B-Complex, Sugar, iron, Vitamin A, mineral mix, salt, corn and grain mix. When holding a vial of one of these allergens in your hand, your other arm is tested for muscle strength – the practitioner tries to push your arm down.  If you continue to have muscle strength, no allergy is present. If you become weak and can’t hold your arm up, an allergy is present.

If you do have an allergy, then acupressure points are stimulated while holding the vial of allergen. After that you must hold the vial for 20 minutes. Subsequent to the treatment, you must stay away from all foods that contain the allergen for 25 hours.

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Avoid green potatoes

When buying potatoes, avoid the slightly green ones. The chemical solanine, which gives the potato a green tint, can interfere with nerve impulses, cause diarrhea, vomiting or abdominal pain.

Avoid Trans-fats

High fat foods linked with brain chemical changes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/12/12/fat-food-brain-chemical-changes-depression-withdrawal_n_2287880.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
“It’s clear that trans fats are bad — both for your heart and now, we see, for your brain,” the researcher of that study, Dr. Gene Bowman, of Oregon Health & Science University, told HuffPost Food. “So I would recommend that people stay away from all trans fats. If you aren’t sure whether something has them, just look at the ingredients; if there’s vegetable shortening, partially hydrogenated anything… just put it down. That’s the big message here.”

Soups for Winter

Soups are the best way to get our kids to eat their veggies. Make them from scratch and they should be appreciated.   The bodies of our little ones are so challenged by their tics that their immune system could be weakened. It is up to us to help their immune system as much as possible by getting our kids to eat properly. And that means getting their servings of fruits and vegetables. I serve smoothies all year long, salads on warm days and soups on colds days. The wonderful thing about soups is that you can also prepare a big amount and eat it over several days.

My son prefers the veloutes which are creamy and tasty (if you do a Google search you can easily find a couple of recipes) and I like them cause they are simple and get the kids used to the taste of vegetables.

Nutrition and Tourette

Good nutrition is essentional for good health. There are four basic nutrients the body needs: water, carbs, fats and protein. Half the US population suffers from a deficiency of one imortant nutrient. Nutrients act together so to correct a deficieny you need to add it to the others, ie eat a varied diet. To help my son get plenty of nutrients we make him a smoothie every day.

Smoothies have carbs, fats and protein! Today my husband took what he could find and blended it all together. A handful of spinach, grapes, OJ, apples, oranges, a banana, chia seeds, dried apricots and cabbage, raisin, almond milk and presto! The dried fruits sweetened it and the apple and oranges made it taste great.

A proper diet is necessary for health. And our kids need all the help they can get!

Essential Fatty Acids Essential For Mental Health

Omega-3 and omega-6 are essential fatty acids. Lab research suggests that the fats affect certain brain chemicals involved in nerve-cell communication and inflammation. The body cannot make them on its own, we obtain them from our food. In modern diets, there are few sources of omega-3 fatty acids, mainly cold water fish such as salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel, canola oil,  walnuts, flaxseeds, leafy vegetables and chia seeds.Omega 3s are necessary for the membranes of neurons in our brain.

By contrast, sources of omega-6 fatty acids are numerous in modern diets. They are found in seeds, nuts, and refined vegetable oils, such as soy oil, that is used in most of the snack foods, cookies, crackers, and sweets in the American diet as well as in fast food. Soybean oil alone is now so common in fast foods and processed foods that an astounding 20 percent of the calories in the American diet are estimated to come from this single source. I won’t go into the possibility that the soy could be GMO.

The body also constructs hormones from  fatty acids. In general, hormones derived from the two classes of essential fatty acids have opposite effects. Those from omega 6s tend to increase inflammation (an important component of the immune response), blood clotting, and cell proliferation, while those from omega 3s decrease those functions. Both families of hormones must be in balance to maintain optimum health.

This dietary imbalance may explain the rise of such diseases as asthma, coronary heart disease, many forms of cancer, autoimmunity and neurodegenerative diseases, all of which are believed to stem from inflammation in the body. The imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids may also contribute to obesity, depression, dyslexia, hyperactivity and even a tendency toward violence.

Bringing the fats into proper proportion may actually relieve those conditions, according to Joseph Hibbeln, M.D., a psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Health, and perhaps the world’s leading authority on the relationship between fat consumption and mental health.

If you follow a anti-inflammatory diet, you should can get a healthy ratio of these fatty acids (1:1). In general, however, you can cut down on omega-6 levels by reducing consumption of processed and fast foods and polyunsaturated vegetable oils (corn, sunflower, safflower, soy, and cottonseed, for example). At home, use extra virgin olive oil for cooking and in salad dressings. Eat more oily fish, walnuts, flax seeds, and Chia seeds ( I sprinkle them on everything) for more omega 3s.

Diet to help with Tourettes

It is very important to follow a nutrition plan that includes healthy, wholesome foods that can address all your nutritional needs. I recommend concentrating on stress reducing, nerve helping foods for those with Tourette.

Remember the expression ” you are what you eat” ? Well the nutrients you choose to eat are very important. Vitamins are essential to life and are considered micronutrients (the term micro is for small amounts.) There are three Macronutrients, essential for the body to function, proteins, fats, and carbs.

I found out our son was very sensitive to what he ate. His tics would get worse after going out to eat Chinese. He got Tourettes after a year of school cafeteria food. When we stopped vinegar, peanuts, and malt for three days we saw a marked improvement. The fist week of November was horrid, perhaps due to the Halloween candy!

After all these observations we have changed our son’s, and ours as well, diet. Fruit smoothies, almond milk, no candy, organic eggs, grass fed meet… Etc…

I would say that this helped tremendously and helped get rid of the tics his medication did not alleviate. After a year, we started reducing his meds in fact.

Yeast-Free Diet

When we called Martha (see Electrodermal Screening post) for the first time she suggested that Kendrick might have a Candida infection and we should eliminate malt, vinager, and peanuts (fermented foods). That seemed very easy to do, and quite amazingly three days later my son was way better!!!! About two months later, when we went to see her, we started a yeast free diet when she confirmed my son had a Candida infection.

The Candida yeast is a part of the gut flora, a group of microorganisms that live in your intestine. When the Candida population starts getting out of control it weakens the intestinal wall, penetrating through into the bloodstream and spreading throughout the body. As it spreads it produces toxic by-products that cause damage to your body tissues and organs, weakening your immune system. Candida infections, also known as candidiasis, can be controlled and eventually eliminated through proper treatment and care.

Tourette’s Disorder is a neurological disorder, which means it originates in the brain and/or the nervous system. It is believed it may be caused by a malfunctioning in the way the brain uses its neurotransmitters. Although sometimes neurotransmitter abnormalities can be genetic and one may be born with them, they may also occur later in response to a variety of other situations. Other factors that alter or deplete neurotransmitters are a diet lacking in adequate protein, a diet high in sugar, white flour and other refined junk food, caffeine, nutritional deficiencies, Candida overgrowth, food allergies or sensitivities.

After eliminating malt, vinegar and peanuts, we eliminated sugar, except for natural sugars in fruits. Then I read two books and used the yeast free diet guide on the women to women’s website. It has a nice list of of foods you can and can’t eat. The books were “An Extraordinary Power to Heal” by Bruce Semon and Lori Kornblum and “Feast without Yeast” by Jeannie and Bruce Semon. They helped alot to understand what we were doing and why. We did not eliminate milk from his diet.

My son is doing way better. He is still taking Resperidone, but we have been able to reduce the dose substantially. He definately has a food sensitivity and his diet is very important to reduce the tics. The hardest part of this diet was finding bread. So many contain malted barley or vinager. The one we use is the Tuscan Pane Bread from Trader Joes. The ingrediants are wheat flour, water, sourdough starter, salt, and natural enzymes.

Tourettes and Halloween

Halloween just proved to us, once again, that our son is very sensitive to what he eats. Friday before Halloween, there was a party at school, after the parade, and candy was distributed. That evening our Church had a Harvest Party where the kids go and play games and receive candy for participating. Then the night of Halloween there was candy at home. I was away that weekend, and when I got back Sunday afternoon, he was having tics again, one whole body tic about every three minutes or so. They were not harsh, but very noticable. I immediately told him he had to limit the candy he was  eating and sorted through his pile to remove what I knew had maltodextrine and was brightly colored ( of course the ingredients are not on the small candy pieces, you have to read the pack they were from to know what chemicals you are eating). Then there is sugar, which is everywhere. It took a week for the tics to go away. My question is why does candy make him worse? Is it the Candida, hyperglycemia, the food coloring, …

Here are some interesting studies done on additives:

Synergistic Interactions Between Commonly Used Food Additives in a Developmental Neurotoxicity Test. Lau K, McLean WG, Williams DP, Howard CV., Toxicol Sci. 2006 Mar;90(1):178-87, 2005 Dec 13

Neurotransmitter Release from a Vertebrate Neuromuscular Synapse Affected by a Food Dye, G.Augustine, H.Levitan, Science Magazine, March 28, 1980, Vol. 207, pp. 1489-90

“…FD&C No.3 … produced an irreversible, dose-dependent increase in neurotransmitter release … These results suggest that erythrosine might prove a useful pharmacological tool for studying the process of transmitter release, but that its use as a food additive should be re-examined.”

Food, drug, and cosmetic dyes: Biological effects related to lipid solubility. Levitan H (1977). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 74, 2914-2918.

“The synthetic coloring agents increased the resting membrane potential and conductance of the neurons in a dose-dependent manner by increasing the potassium permeability of the membrane relative to that of other ions.”

Currently Reading “Lifeforce” By Dr. McCombs

I’m learning alot reading this book on Candida infections and how to elimitate them. As I mentionned in a previous post, just three days after starting a yeast free/anti-Candida  diet, my son was doing much better, his tics dimished in number and in strength. We followed a simple diet where we illiminated a couple of elements at a time. The program description in this book does not work for children, I think, because of the need to sweat in saunas 6 times a week and the pills. It was still very informative.