Four Health Updates in One

Okay I've been somewhat slacky. I like the combo feeding post I wrote but I haven't posted videos or even very many pics for ages!

One reason for this was that my sister Kate was visiting me since Sunday night! We attempted to clean and organize while she was here, but instead just took care of james--not sure how that manages to take up SOOOO much time! But it was fun to have a buddy to help!

Anyway, I thought I'd do a few short updates all together. I also have like a million other things to update about but you have to start somewhere, so here we go:

Allergies/Rash--We are making great progress on james food allergy situation. The ATT works AMAZINGLY. Like, if I eat something he has tested sensitive to, he will immediately break out in a red rash after eating. BUT then if I get treated for it, three days later I can eat it, and no rash. It's amazing, and I recommend it for everyone!

So far we've gotten him treated for: histamines, digestive mucus (these two are generally helpful), yeast, caffeine, chocolate, tomatoes, soy, sorghum, graham flour, corn oil, coconut oil, sesame seeds, cashews, peanuts, hazelnuts, almonds . . . wheat is the last thing on the list to get treated, simply because I am used to avoiding it and he's so allergic to it I prob won't be able to eat much anyway. Meanwhile, I missed peanuts like a MOFO! So that's what we most recently did. ;-) So obviously my diet is widely expanded.

PFB (Project Fat Baby)--My attempt to fatten james is coming along. With the bed-sharing and other things, I definitely think he is eating more now daily than he was a month ago.

And I do actually think his cheeks look fatter! I hope to find that he has gained at least a pound by next week, so I'm hoping he'll be around 17 lbs. Fingers crossed!

My ear infection--As you may recall, I was attempting to use natural cures for my ear infection instead of antibiotics. So I went for a checkup on Tuesday so see how I was progressing! My new doc that I love took one look at my ears and said: "Oh no, this is not what I saw last time!"
And I said: "All better?"
And she said: "Oh yes, this is definitely not what I saw last time! Hahaha.
"Great," I said, "I'm glad!"
"Just shows you the amazing power of the body!" She said, hehe. LOVE HER!!!

Therapy--Started going back to my old therapist about a month ago. Love her, too. It's been hard and good. There are things I shelved dealing with while I was pregnant but it's time now. Last week I talked to her about one of my biggest issues/traumas . . . it was really hard to talk about it and I was in emotional upheaval for days afterward. I told her that this week and she said it is normal to feel like that after moving some big stuff.

I honestly don't know how people deal without therapy. Given, I am a bit of an emotional trainwreck and I'm super sensitive, and have plenty of baggage from my ADHD life and all the big stupid mistakes that have marred my life . . . but I have to think EVERYONE needs support with their mental health, EVERYONE needs to talk about things that hurt them, that shaped them . . . I wish therapy was mandatory--at least once a year--why do we get "physicals" but not "mentals"? Is our mental health less important? I actually think it's more important.

AAT

Alright I am finally writing about AAT!

AAT stands for Advanced Allergy Therapeutics . It is a new treatment for allergies based on acupressure.

When you describe it to someone it probably sounds super new-agey and hoaky but it totally works.

I guess there was this scientist who worked at NASA who somehow had reason to figure out that when people ate certain foods, certain areas of the brain lit up. So he isolated all the different foods and components (somehow). Then he figured out which electrical impulse would stimulate the same brain activity (as if the allergen had been introduced). Now, it is well known that muscle weakness can be observed if someone is exposed to an allergen.

So you go in there, and you get this cuff hooked on your arm and they send the electrical signal through and try to push your arm down. This part is really remarkable and you have to feel it for yourself but your arm literally becomes like a noodle and loses all strength, compared to just a second before, if they send an allergen through to you. So in this way they find out all your allergens and sensitivities. The initial testing session is long, like an hour, I think.

Then after that you go in for 15 min treatment sessions. They send one allergen at a time and it's related components through the cuff, and then they use this tool to stimulate the acupressure points up and down the spine. This is supposed to "reset" the brain's reaction to the allergen, so that it no longer interprets the stimulus as bad, preventing the immune reaction that an allergy is.

And as much as it might sound crazy it works. James (the hubby) went, in a handful of treatments, from spending 10-15 mins every single morning sneezing and blowing his nose to never doing it. Just like that.

So Ya-ling (our chiropractor friend) has found that certain things are more important to treat than others. She always treats histamines first. See, people that have a lot of allergies and sensitivities are almost always ALSO allergic to histamines. Your body releases histamines in response to an allergen. But when people are also allergic to histamines, then this response triggers a cascade of continually releasing histamines which makes the response to ALL allergens worse. So she does this first.

Next she does digestive mucus and fermentation toxins. If these are not functioning correctly, they will cause your body to over-react to everything, similar to histamines, since these things are involved in the digestion of ALL food. Luckily james was not sensitive to either of these things so we didn't need to do that on him.

So next we tested him for food preservatives, colors, and dyes. I think he was just allergic to one (dyes? I forget), so we did that next.

At this point (maybe 2 weeks ago now) I decided to start coming in twice a week. My back has been really messed up (just from stress), and I figured I could use the extra adjustments and that way we would get more food groups treated sooner.

So then I decided to do soy, because it is a really huge part of my diet and not avoiding it would make everything a lot easier.

And then last week I did chocolate--perhaps it doesn't seem like an important food group, but for me it is. And some things make life worth living, LOL. And tomatoes--we picked tomatoes because out of a few different things he was most sensitive to that, and it's a pain in the neck avoiding ketchup and tomatoes because they are veggies and I am used to eating them on sandwiches and stuff.

And then on Monday we did yeast. He was very allergic to it and it's one of the things I haven't even been trying to avoid because it's just too much, so it was good to get treated. He was allergic to more than six components of it so we have to take two sessions to do it, so we finished yeast on Wednesday.

Anyway, it definitely seems to be helping a lot. He is breaking out some still but I haven't been avoiding things in general as strictly. He is DEFINITELY not reacting to soy, chocolate, or tomatoes as much as he WAS, but he might still be reacting a little bit (which I can totally live with). So we're going to keep going with it and hopefully soon I won't have to be very careful at all about what I am eating.

I am still going to careful about what actual foods I give him, and might try to avoid feeding him most of the foods he was originally allergic to until he's closer to a year or two. But yeah things are progressing!

And I would definitely encourage anyone dealing with food allergies (or any kind of illness, sickness or problem, really, food sensitivities are the basis of more issues than you might think!) to look up where there are AAT treatment centers near you, and give it a try--totally worth the money, in my opinion!