Saturday, March 31, 2012

Preserving the Gut

I know, I know -- I'm sorry! I had every intention of doing this daily or at least bi-weekly. The last few weeks have been incredibly hectic. Matt travels a lot in the spring and, on top of dealing with Max's issues, I've had writing deadlines and teacher-related disputes.

Things are mostly the same here. The big changes:
1.We've eliminated dairy from Max's diet.
2. We've noticed that Max reacts unfavorably to chocolate and other oxylates. We're working on that to see if they need to be removed or limited.

The improvements:
1. Max has gone about 3 weeks without a major meltdown. His issues at school continue, but he has been using his chewie necklace and some other self-soothing tactics.
2. Max has been happy, overall. We've seen a behavioral specialist twice now and I think she sees most of his behavioral issues as minor and correctable.

The negatives:
1. From the slips we've had over the course of the last six weeks, I'm pretty sure it will be a long time before Max can eat salicylites again. It makes me sad -- there are things he misses, like berries and peppers. And we will try them -- but I'm going to wait until I can pick them myself from a garden or orchard. Then I'll know exactly what Max is reacting to.
2. Max is still having behavioral issues. I think Matt and my parents think I'm being too hard on him -- that I expect too much of a four year-old. But I'm around other four year-olds and I know what they're like -- Max still has a long way to go.

Our next step is to start probiotics to help heal Max's gut -- this is a Austism Spectrum treatment that many use for ADHD and other diagnoses. Taking a probiotic, like FG diet itself, can't really hurt -- so we'll see. After we see some success from that, we plan on adding in a digestive enzyme.

We have hope -- we continue to see improvements. There are steps forward and back. It's challenging and somewhat disheartening at times. We just keep on keeping on.

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