10 Lessons We Learned About Food Intolerances in Children
It matters what we eat (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)
Why giving up certain foods isn’t always the immediate answer…
Our youngest son was six years old, finishing grade one. We left for a camping trip to celebrate the start of the summer holidays. To make life easier, we had pasta almost every day, compared to once or twice per week.
On this camping trip, his diarrhea started.
It didn’t stop for about two years.
During this time, the lessons we learned about food intolerances, children’s health, diet changes and anxiety, changed our lives, and took us on a personal and unique journey.
Our son did not have any other symptoms, like fever, tummy cramps, itching, or the frequent need to go to the toilet. He simply had a watery stool every time he went for his number twos.
I was worried. Who wouldn’t have been? Persistent diarrhea is a clear sign that something is not quite right.
The number two sign that my child has food intolerances
But what?
It took me some time to link the excessive pasta consumption to our son’s diarrhea. A friend, whose daughter is coeliac, recommended eliminating all gluten from his diet. I followed this recommendation half-heartedly. I did not want to see the obvious. He had been fine before. If we cut the gluten to the level we had been at before, he would recover, wouldn’t he?
He didn’t.
Still, I was in denial. Our son? Coeliac? That was impossible.
Coeliac Australia (www.coeliac.org.au) says the following:
Coeliac disease is an immune disease caused by gluten, a protein in wheat, rye, barley and oats. When people with coeliac disease eat gluten, an inappropriate immune reaction causes inflammation and damage to the small bowel (intestine). Untreated, coeliac disease can cause a range of symptoms and health problems.
Apparently, the symptoms range from ‘nothing’ to pain and cramps, and everything in between. As a result of the small bowel not working properly, the body cannot extract the nutrients it needs. This can cause children not to grow or develop age-appropriately.
Coeliac Australia (www.coeliac.org.au) explains:
If you are diagnosed with coeliac disease, the only treatment is to maintain a life-long strict gluten free diet. As little as 50mg gluten (equivalent to 1/100th of a slice of standard wheat bread) can damage the small intestine of a person with coeliac disease. It is essential to avoid cross contamination with foods containing gluten to maintain a strict gluten free diet once diagnosed with coeliac disease.
That did not seem appealing. In my mind’s eye, I saw us chewing tasteless bread, and banishing everything zesty from the kitchen. I saw us replacing all kitchen equipment, like the toaster, which had been in contact with gluten. I saw us throwing out all plastic containers and wooden boards because traces of gluten might be stuck to them. I saw us never to be able to go out for dinner again, let alone travel, because we would potentially harm our boy!
It was scary.
Yet, the diarrhea persisted. I had to do something.
We started a serious gluten-free diet. We switched to gluten-free pasta, gluten-free bread, and gluten-free candy. I became great at deciphering food labels. If in doubt, we did not buy it.
Two months passed. The diarrhea should have stopped by then. After all, we stuck to this gluten-free thing with the utmost fever and dedication we could master.
Still, it persisted.
We experimented with dairy. Maybe he was reactive to lactose as well?
Nothing changed.
I felt helpless.
I spoke to our doctor about the situation. He recommended a blood test. I cringed. I did not want to drag our six-year old through blood or allergy testing. Still, I called in and made an appointment. The nurse wanted to confirm our son was on a full-gluten diet. I felt confused and said no since we stopped having gluten months ago. The nurse told me a test at this stage would not be valid.
Coeliac Australia (www.coeliac.org.au) says:
Do not commence a gluten free diet prior to being tested for coeliac disease. If a gluten free diet has already been adopted, the tests used to diagnose coeliac disease are unreliable.
This meant putting our son back onto a gluten-fueled diet to eventually get confirmation that gluten was not great for him.
This did not feel like a brilliant solution. There had to be an alternative way.
Kinesiology is non-invasive
An answer came from an unexpected source: my hairdresser. While getting my hair done, I told her of my woes. She recommended trying kinesiology. A kinesiologist communicates with the body without using invasive methods.
The Australian Kinesiology Association (www.aka.asn.au) explains further:
Kinesiology … use(s) the gentle art of muscle monitoring to access information about a person’s well-being. … The … findings may present as physical pain, mental discomfort and the many expressions of dis-ease. These can include allergies, depression, postural problems, poor performance levels, learning and relationship difficulties, digestive and nervous disorders …. Muscle monitoring gives instant access to holistic information held by the core operating unit of the entire body-mind system - the subconscious. This normally inaccessible neural substrate holds all our memories, information about physical, emotional, mental and energetic states, and also determines our muscle tension. Accessing the bio-system, allows the Kinesiologist to quickly determine the specific strategy to best reinstate to the body’s balance.
I had never heard of this concept before. It sounded too good to be true. I booked an appointment straight away.
The practitioner tested our son’s intolerances. Gluten showed up. But not only that. He was also reactive to:
Corn
Soy
Potatoes
Dairy
Eggs
Sesame
Chocolate.
I gasped! What was there left to eat?
I learned there were certain types of food which act as ‘gluten-mimicker’, for example corn.
The Gluten Free Society (www.glutenfreesociety.org) says:
What are gluten mimicking foods? A lot of research has been done showing that some foods contain proteins that mimic or look like the gluten proteins that can damage the body of those with gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.
Finally, the continued diarrhea made sense since most of the gluten-free products we had been eating contained corn as the main wheat-substitute.
The practitioner told us to put our son on an elimination diet for four weeks to clear out his system and return to re-check.
These were four very long weeks. Of rice and sausages. Every day.
We noticed a real difference, though. Our son’s whole body calmed down. He stopped twitching at night when he came into our bed. Before, he had been throwing his limbs everywhere, but now he stayed still and slept.
In the second testing session, the following foods showed up as causing a reaction:
Corn
Eggs
Gluten (though small amounts were ok)
Dairy (though one cup per week was ok).
The other food groups were fine to reintroduce.
I felt relieved but overwhelmed at the same time.
I was relieved because traces of gluten were not a problem. This meant we could travel, eat out, and keep our appliances and kitchen tools. On the other hand, we had to reorganize our complete pantry which felt like a massive task.
This process stretched over many months. I had to play around with recipes which I sometimes found frustrating, especially when the kids did not react well to something new I was trying. Luckily, there are amazing resources that focus on vegan cooking (egg and dairy-free) and ‘free-from’ recipes (typically free from gluten, but can refer to eggs, soy, or other known allergens).
We introduced major changes in our kitchen:
We make our own gluten free bread with a bread-baking machine (I share my recipes here).
We use organic brown rice and lentil/or chickpea pasta.
We make vegan ‘cheese’ cakes with cashew nuts, an absolute favorite in our home.
We eat lots of nuts and seeds (all activated).
We use coconut cream instead of dairy.
We use egg replacer / chia seeds / flaxseed meal / or mashed banana instead of eggs (in baking).
We use chickpea, coconut, buckwheat, or teff flour for pancakes .
We avoid processed food where possible and eat loads of fresh produce.
Adopting the new diet brought relief to some extent, but a few months later, the diarrhea was back. I was utterly frustrated. I kept scanning the food our son was eating in search for an obvious breach of the rules, but I could not find any. What was going on?
A runny gut might be caused by a food intolerance, but not always
We returned to see the kinesiologist who confirmed the diet was not the cause behind the new symptoms. She tested him and advised he needed a detox from chemicals. We had done similar detoxes for our other children (please check my other blog posts for details), so the concept was not new to us. The practitioner prescribed a mix of herbs to flush the toxins out of our son’s body.
Our son’s digestion stabilized, but again, a few months later, the diarrhea returned. I felt overwhelmed. Did he need more detoxing? Was there anything else that was not right? I was frantically scanning his life for answers. We returned to the kinesiologist who confirmed that his diarrhea was part of a detoxing process. This time, though, he was dealing with releasing emotions.
After our son had finished second grade, his two best friends moved from Australia back to Germany at the same time. The three of them had been a dream team sharing everything. It was a devastating experience for all of them. When our son returned to school for grade three, he found himself lost. Sadness, despair and abandonment welled up inside of him toxically. He did not allow himself to grieve, but kept all the feelings inside, blaming himself and the world while being angry at everyone. His body tried to deal with the toxicity in its own way; flushing out the grief in the form of diarrhea. After all, grief needs to go somewhere. I suppose it is better ‘out’ than ‘in’. It took a few months and sessions with the kinesiologist to help our son release the emotions and move through the stages of grief.
By that time, we had been dealing with on-off diarrhea for about 1.5 years. Some days were good, on other days it did run too well… It seemed random and I felt we had lost control. I held a lot of fear and fretted about our son’s well-being. In hindsight, I realize this behavior slowed down the healing process because I was projecting my own anxiety onto him. This, in turn, put him under pressure to ‘perform’. But how can you ‘perform’ a good bowel movement? My anxiety certainly did not assist.
With the continuous help of our kinesiologist and our naturopath, we realized our son’s microbiome was destroyed. It was time to rebuild. This process took about six to eight months. We used a mix of probiotics, mushroom extracts, specific amino acids, and other natural supplements. The protocol was tailored to our son’s unique needs and came in about three to four stages. It took a lot of patience and convincing to get him to stick to the routine. After all, as an eight-year old, he had more important things on his mind than his digestion!
Three years later, his digestion is stable and has been for many months. The greatest challenges for him are birthday parties or other occasions when he cannot participate in the junk food binging. For his overall well-being, this is of course a “plus” and I truly hope he will eventually be able to see the benefit of this … maybe in twenty years?
Ten lessons we learnt:
Intolerances can show up suddenly. Just because something worked well for years does not guarantee it will stay like this.
There are many kinds of toxins that can trigger a body reaction: types of food, chemicals or similar, and emotions like grief or anxiety.
Anxiety puts a strain on our bodies. Whenever our son feels stressed at school, his tolerance level for other toxins (e.g. amount of dairy intake per week) plummets.
It is important for adults and kids alike to get access to the nutrients they need, and healthy intestines are key for this.
Healing the digestive systems requires patience and professional help.
Each body is unique. What works for one person, does not necessarily apply to everyone. I had to heal my own digestive system, but what I was prescribed differed from what our son had to take.
My fear of ‘non-zesty’ food was not justified. The contrary is true; our diet and the flavors in it have sky-rocketed.
While the fear I projected was understandable, it did not help with the process.
It is important to keep an open mind and be ready to try new solutions.
There are many resources available. We had to be discerning about which ones felt right for us.
