Why Gluten Free Works for Us

There's an article making the rounds of Facebook entitled "Science Proves Gluten Sensitivity Isn’t Real, People Are Just Whiners" that you can find Here if you're so inclined to read it.

As the mom of a kiddo who's on a gluten-free diet, articles like this tend to piss me off. Not because there is disagreement about the benefits of a gluten-free diet because I actually think healthy debate is a positive thing and I'm all for better education about what people choose to eat. And I get that some people are just jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon as yet another fad. If Jimmy Kimmel makes fun of you because you don't even know what gluten is and you're on a gluten-free diet, well, you might want to read up on your dietary options.

What bothers me is the headline has to mock people to make its point. Quite honestly, if the only way you can get your point across is by making fun of people, then you are immature and your argument has no credibility in my opinion. I don't argue with children.

I don't really care what some hipster, trying-to-be-too-cool, I-act-like-I-know-everything-but-I-still-live-at-home-with-my-parents "author" has to say about anything. They haven't lived any sort of real life yet and I don't see it as my responsibility to educate them.Whatever. Just go back to posting your ironic photos on Instagram of you and girlfriend at SXSW, stay out of my family's health choices and we'll all be fine.

For the grown ups out there though, let me tell you a little bit about what a gluten-free diet has meant to us. My son, because of his early childhood experience with trauma in foster care, has severe ADHD. He was put into foster care at the age of 2, bounced around NINE homes and finally landed with me at the age of 3. This was extremely traumatizing for my little guy and although he has a stable, loving home now, the damage has been done. His brain just didn't develop the way a "normal" child's would and he is extremely hyper, lacks impulse control and has trouble learning. We get care through the Developmental Medicine Center at Boston Children's Hospital and I also keep him on a strict routine, strict diet and make sure he gets enough sleep. It's a small sacrifice on my part to see a huge difference in his behaviors and that makes it all worthwhile.

My son's diet is both gluten free and artificial dye free and both help his behaviors tremendously. For the record, I don't think he has a reaction to gluten per se but more of a reaction to the wheat, which breaks down into a simple carb, spikes his blood sugar and makes him go crazy out of control.

So the issue really is wheat....not gluten. But no one really says let's have a wheat free diet. It's a gluten-free diet. It really is just a name though.

Of course, people might say that we've been eating wheat for thousands of years without issue so why are so many different people all the sudden saying that they're intolerant of gluten? The fact is, we've been eating wheat for thousands of years yes but we have only been eating "modern" wheat for a few decades. It's a fact that the modern wheat we eat today is not the same wheat we ate a generation ago. The Dwarf Wheat we have today is more compact and it is also processed differently so it's much less nutritious and jam-packed full of carbs. Through processing, we are now able to mechanically separate the nutritious components of the grain (the bran and germ) away from the endosperm, which is where most of the starchy carbs are contained. This change has led to an obvious reduction in nutrient density, contributes to rampant weight gain and gives refined wheat the ability to spike blood sugar very fast. That's where my son has his issues. Rapidly spiked blood sugar in a kid that has ADHD is never a good thing.

That being said, I will admit that recently I started to speculate whether my son was really affected by gluten or if it really was all just a myth. So a few months ago, I started to relax his diet because he was not gaining weight and he complained about missing bread. I felt like a guilty mommy denying my son something he loved so much. So I started letting him have peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, which he LOVED.

Unfortunately, I did not LOVE his peanut butter sandwich breakfasts because all the behaviors came right back and he started acting completely out of control again. I couldn't get him dressed in the morning and we'd be late for camp or school. Every day was a constant battle and I was starting to feel overwhelmed.

It all came to a head one morning last week when I was worn out from a night of insomnia, stressed about the day of work ahead and the kiddo was running around the house, screaming and throwing his toys. He wouldn't put on his clothes, was downright mean and mocking to me and then on top of it all, ended up peeing in his pants. I lost it and started yelling, which made him cry and which made me feel terrible. This is not the kind of relationship I want to have with my child and it certainly would not work long term. Something had to change.

Since then, I've put Christopher back on his strict gluten-free diet and it has worked tremendously well for him. He still has a lot of energy in the morning and requires some redirection to get dressed but I am at least in control of the situation and that's a good thing. When I drop him off at school in a good mood, I can relax and feel good about our relationship and about my parenting. If it means he's not getting whatever he wants for breakfast, well that's just the price we have to pay for a good life.

Unlike Buzzworthy, NPR has news written by actual grown-ups and there's an article that says there is still a great deal to learn about gluten that science hasn't figured out yet. This is especially true regarding how diet affects kids with ADHD, Autism and learning disabilities. We definitely have a lot to learn. I would also like to recommend a book called Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis. It's very enlightening.

For the record, my son ate Leapin' Lemurs GF cereal mixed with Corn Chex for breakfast an hour ago and right now he is quietly watching a video on the Kindle while I type this blog post up. I certainly cannot complain about that!

All Boston School Kids to Get Free Breakfast and Lunch

There's no such thing as a free lunch....unless your kid attends public school in Boston, MA.

Earlier this week, a Facebook friend posted a status sharing the news that all Boston school children will now get free breakfast and lunch courtesy of a Federal program called the Community Eligibility Option, regardless of the parents' ability to pay. I found the debate that followed the post interesting and chose to participate myself.

Basically, the program was put into place because too many parents were sending their kids to school without food or even the money to purchase food. The schools were dealing with an epidemic of kids who didn't have any food in their bellies for 8+ hours. Wow.

Perhaps the parents couldn't afford to feed their children but found filling out paperwork too difficult (especially if English isn't their primary language) or too invasive (they didn't want to publicly list their salary).

Perhaps the parents just forgot to give their kids money. And of course, there is always the small segment of parents that just couldn't be bothered.

Whatever the reason is, instead of penalizing the offending parents, we're now using our tax dollars to feed all kids, regardless of need. In Boston apparently 40% of children all qualify for a subsidized lunch. But what about the other 60% Why can't their parents pay?

Let's not even talk about the crap that these kids are eating because that's another discussion entirely. Instead let's talk about parental responsibility. We need to feed our children. That's a basic requirement. When we start ceding these responsibilities to the state, what comes next???

Please understand that I am in no way against providing assistance to children in need. And I truly believe that children need food in their bellies to be able to learn. They shouldn't suffer because of the actions or inaction of their parents. I firmly believe in "hand ups". But when that "hand up" turns into a "hand out", I start taking issue.

Programs like this create a culture of dependency and make it so easy for people who have no business having kids to have even more. And then we as a society become burdened with caring for those children, whether it be financial care through taxes or physical care through fostering. This is not going to be sustainable and it will affect our economy, our healthcare system, our school systems, basically every aspect of society. It needs to be addressed before it gets any more out of hand.

But let us now talk about the food these kids are getting. Bread, pizza, hot dogs and sugary desserts filled with artificial dye. What they call "healthy" does not constitute healthy by my parental standards. Nope not at all.

So when all kids will start getting a free junk-food lunch, it makes my job of providing a healthy lunch to my child more difficult. Christopher cried to me the other day when I picked him up from school because it was pizza day and all the other kids got pizza but not him. He cried, "I hate our gluten free diet!!"

The thing is, I don't want my kid hating healthy food. I want him to love it and embrace it. How do I do that however when he is surrounded by junk food being labeled as healthy?

I don't see this issue going away anytime soon and I guess I just need to educate my kid on what's healthy and what's not. What else can I do?

Anyway, I've got to get off Blogger because my child is telling me he's hungry and I've got to go feed him his healthy, nutritious breakfast because he wants some (gluten free) brownies instead. Signing off now!

To read more about this topic, please click here:

Brown Rice Syrup as a Substitute WORSE Than High Fructose Corn Syrup?

I have been reading over the last few years how organic, "healthy" treats for kids are substituting brown rice syrup for high fructose corn syrup. After all, high fructose corn syrup is the devil's food right?

However now studies are showing that rice has measurable amounts of ARSENIC, which could create long-lasting, negative effects on your health. But the FDA is taking no action. Say what???

We are being told that brown rice is "organic" and organic = good. We pay more money to shop at Whole Foods than at Market Basket because organic = healthier. However it looks like this might be a myth. Arsenic has been linked to Cancer and who knows what else. Yet the FDA deems organic products with rice and rice syrup to be safe. Yikes.

With autism, ADHD and youth food allergies on the rise, it's obvious to me at least that food and water contamination must be be a huge contributor to the wide-spread epidemic. However the FDA is doing nothing with their data, meanwhile we continue to unknowingly harm our children.

I don't know about you but I'm getting to the point where I feel like I need to go buy a farm in the Midwest somewhere and start producing my own food supply off the grid.

If you're interested in reading more on the subject of arsenic in your rice products, please click here.

Red Dye #40 is a neuro-toxin????

Now that we're on a gluten-free, dye free diet, my son no longer likes to "spin". And by spinning, I mean he would spin around at high rate of speed and then slam into whomever or whatever was next to him. It was really really aggressive and everyone within a narrow radius of his orbit hated it.

I noticed a few days after our new diet started that he wasn't doing this anymore. I was like, huh. Awesome. I didn't know which component of the diet had caused the change though. Was it the gluten or the dye? Then I read an article about red dye #40.

The reporter for this article interviewed a woman who's daughter stopped spinning around in circles as soon as they eliminated red dye #40 from her life--in her case it was in the child's allergy medicine. I had no idea that there were so many artificial colors added to kids' medicine but apparently that's something being addressed by the FDA now. Wow.

Artificial food coloring is derived from petroleum and can be described as a "neuro-toxin." Per the article:
"Neurotoxins damage nervous tissue. Dr. [David W.] Schab, the Columbia psychiatrist, concluded in his report [a review of 30 years of scientific studies involving food dye and behavior] that the dyes likely cause 'neurobehavioral toxicity.' When I asked him why the reaction occurs in some kids and not others, he said ... artificial food colorings have a drug effect, the same way nicotine has a drug effect, or Vicodin. This is probably why AFCs [artificial food colorings] have a greater effect on children; children are smaller. Dosage is a size-relative factor." And all this is why the FDA is considering the link between AFCs and behavior, and whether the agency should ban them or require warning labels."

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), our use of food coloring has increased five-fold in the last 50 years. Yes, Americans are clearly eating a lot of junk and it's affecting our children.

The CSPI wants the FDA to ban eight artificial food dyes. They are specifically targeting Red #40, Yellow #5 and Yellow #6. These dyes make up 90% of the food dyes on the market and cause the most problems.

The bigger "wow" is that the EU already bans these food dyes but the FDA isn't so sure there's actually a link between aggressive behavior and artificial food coloring. Um, really all they have to do is go online and find the study after study showing causality. Really makes you wonder if the FDA is truly an independent government entity or if it's getting some $$$$ from the huge food distributors who would stand to lose millions if they couldn't keep mass producing this garbage. Hmmmm.

Anyway, change won't happen overnight so in the meantime, we need to be much more vigilant about what we as parents are feeding our kids. The bottom line is we need to educate parents and medical professionals about the dangers of artificial dyes. If we all knew that we were spoon-feeding our children a steady diet of neuro-toxins, would we really continue to do so? I think not.

If you'd like to read the original article I referenced, please see it here:  http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/03/31/hidden-food-dyes-five-surprise-grocery-store-items-to-keep-away/

You Are What You Eat

When my son was on the foster adoption track, he was deemed "hard to place" because of behavioral issues. He was in a total of seven foster homes before me, two of which were Intensive Foster Care homes. He was scaring his care givers with self-harming behaviors and so intensive measures were taken.

Because of this, Christopher came to me with a host of issues that we've had to work through over the course of the last two years. Some stuff has gotten better. For example, he truly believes now that I am his mommy and that this is his Forever Home. Lots of one-on-one attention, stability, love, consistency and nurturing has gotten him to that point. He also has therapists he sees once a week and has a weekly visit with a therapeutic mentor, all which helps immensely. I also think it really helps that I got him pretty young. He was three years old when he came to live with me and the resiliency of the little kid spirit is pretty darn awesome.

We were doing well in some ways but I just couldn't stop the aggressive behaviors no matter how hard I tried. No matter what I did, he would still hit, push, bite or kick kids. When we were on vacation earlier this summer, multiple family members came to me with their concerns. They caught Christopher attacking a baby on the beach with a piece of wood. And they all told me that not only was the action disturbing but also the weird smile on his face while he was hitting this baby. They all told me it was kind of scary. And as the parent, that was scary for me to hear.

We are waiting for our evaluation with Children's Hospital but the wait times are looong. I needed to do something while we wait, so I decided to amend Christopher's diet and you know what? It was the best decision I could possibly make.

The Diet

I have Christopher on a gluten-free, dye-free, processed-food diet now and I have seen a DRAMATIC change in this kid's behaviors. He is calm. He listens. And he is happy. I LOVE THIS HEALTHY NEW DIET!!

Christopher's nanny told me that she noticed a difference. My friend who we had a play date with yesterday told me that Christopher was the best she's ever seen him. I literally could cry I'm so relieved.

I can't control everything unfortunately and there was one day where Christopher got back into his old diet habits last week. On Thursday, the nanny gave in and got him pizza (full of gluten) and his therapeutic mentor, Daniel, got him a slushy (full of sugar and dyes). After eating the slushy, Christopher had an epic meltdown, threatening to beat me (WTF??) and screaming holy murder on the bike trails in Cambridge. I think his body was reacting to all the crap that he hasn't had in a week and simply revolted. Needless to say, Daniel will not be giving Christopher slushies anymore and the nanny needs to follow my diet requirements for Christopher. I pay her a LOT of money. Not to mention, it makes her job easier if my kid is calmer right? 

It kind of stinks that I have to constantly say "no" to my kid when he wants a sugary, neon-green treat but I'm looking at the Big Picture here, as this is really in his best interest. He's happy when he's able to control himself and his self-esteem is stronger too. Kids want to play with him and he feels better about himself. If it takes eating fresh veggies and organic meats to get him to that place, then that's just what I've got to do as a parent. It's expensive sure but in the end, my kid is really worth it. And it's a lot cheaper than ADHD medication, that much I know.