Road to Allergyville: How did we get here?

Before having my own, I looked at mom's whose kids had allergies and truthfully, I always thought it *must* have been something the mom did. She must have introduced solids too early, or highly allergic foods like nuts and citrus, before the child was ready. Now in reality, that does happen, but for the majority of moms, this really seems like this comes out of left field, and its not until they start digging around do they realize the symptoms of a problem may have been around long before they were even thinking of TTC.

In America, our diet and food pyramid are based heavily on starches and sugars. Our foods are mass produced, genetically modified, and laden with chemicals. We are over-perscribed antibiotics. Girls are on birth control for likely 8 years before even thinking of coming off it to have children. We treat symptoms, such as heartburn, rather than the cause. All of this, and our naivety about our own health can lead to the perfect storm of health conditions; long undiagnosed food allergies.

With my son and I, there are actually two things going on that contribute to his allergies: leaky gut and nutritional deficiencies. The are intertwined and to fix both, you need to address the other.

Growing up, and even now, my diet would be considered very healthy, lean meats, steamed veggies, salads, fruit and lots and lots of skim milk. By any normal nutritionist's standpoint, my mom made stellar meals. There were issues though, which no one would have known about at the time, and even now its hard for me and my parents to swallow. I used to crave milk, sneak down into the kitchen after everyone was asleep and drink 1/2 a gallon straight from the jug. I had major anger issues, even at a young age. I had back problems and poppy joints, always needing to see a chiropractor, and any daily pain I had was attributed to years of competitive sports. I was super bright, was put at the smart table every year, but eventually ended up with the trouble kids. I was violent child, tantrums were my forte, and I am talking at about 7 years old. By high school, I was dx ADHD and depressed and put on meds and I did a little better but I wasn't myself and it would be 8 years until I felt somewhat normal again. Into college, when the beer & pizza diet took over, I got much worse. Rxs were upped, and changed, and by senior year I was showing the beginnings of major anxiety disorder. I really couldn't pin down why I felt the way I did, but I knew I hated being who I was at that time.

Other signs that something was up was that I had mild scoliosis, and now that I look at it closely, I also have a mild tongue tie. I always had really dark circles under my eyes, then chalked up to lack of sleep. I have keratosis pilaris, that nice rashy thing on my upper arms that lots of people have. Probably the most telling are my mouth and teeth. I have a very narrow jaw, a high palate, and a ridge on the roof of my mouth. Before braces, my teeth were horridly crooked, I mean it looked like my two front teeth were trying to do a gymnastics split and run away from each other. With braces, the top look ok now, but depsite having braces TWICE on the bottom, my teeth are determined to be crooked.

Well come to find out through this allergy testing, I am allergic to eggs, wheat, dairy, and coffee. Now that I don't consume any of those items, that inner fire of anger that was always stoking deep inside me is gone. GONE! And since I started taking Thorne's B-complex, I feel very calm and cool. I was always the high strung type-A'er, and to now be chill is a very weird, but pleasant experience. My popping joints and back pain that I have just dealt with for years.....um, thats gone too. The brain fog I used to have has suddenly cleared, and I just feel 100% better.

In January, after a holiday season filled with sweets, I decided to go low to no sugar for a while, trying to get my body back in balance. For a few days, I felt like absolute DOG SHIT. I was tired, ravenously hungry, and light headed. Little did I know, until reading The Body Ecology Diet, was that I was experiencing "die off", when the bugs in your gut are starved of their sugar and die. These bugs are yeast, and yes, we are all supposed to have a balance of candida albicans (yeast) and other "bugs" in our guts. When the right foods are not consumed, like say too much starch or sugar, the bad bugs, the candida, can grow and cause an imbalance of the intestinal flora. Then, because the candida wants to stay alive, it sends chemical signals to the brain, craving what it needs to survive. This is why people crave carbs or sugar. Unfortunately, too much candida causes small openings in the intestine, which results in "leaky gut", where food particles, bile, and other intestinal chemicals, leak out of the intestine and into the body cavity. When they find themselves in the blood stream, the blood knows those particles shouldn't be there, and flags them as a bad guy. The next time your body sees a bad guy in the blood stream, there is a histamine response, and an allergic reaction. To the right is a really great illustration of this. Reactions can be mild or build over time, and some, like mine, are so unnoticeable, that they can go on undetected for years. Continuously eating the allergens just makes things worse, and the holes get bigger and time needed to heal gets longer. This is why people with allergies often go on to develop asthma, RA, IBS, Chrons, and other autoimmune system dysfunctions. The image below shows the path that untreated allergies can lead to.


I am taking the B-complex because of the physical abnormalities that I have, most are related to deficiencies of folic acid. Tongue tie, scoliosis, high palate and narrow jaw are all considered mild midline defects. Midline defects are caused by folic acid deficiencies. Your body uses folate to complete the digestion cycle and get the most out of your food. If one part of the cycle is broken, the rest of the cycles don't function properly. That leads to an imbalance of chemicals in the body, and can contribute to gut disbyosis.

I consumed what doctors would say was adequate folate from food during my pregnancy, and yet Chase has not only a high palate, Level 3 tongue tie that was surgically repaired, and crooked teeth, he also has very mild sacral dimples along his bum crack. My body though, doesn't know how to process food folate correctly, and thus, both Chase and I were undernourished in this department. Here is a really complicated map of the methyl cycle that your body goes through as it digests food. Note the teal label MTHFR. This is where I think I have an issue. There are genetic tests to determine if I have a mutation on this gene, which I will be asking for at my annual, but I may be able to determine if I have an MTHFR issue by a homocystine blood test. Taking the b-complex will help bring homocystine levels down, but for me, it may not be enough and I may need to seek other alternatives to get every cycle below working properly.

So Chase's nutritional deficiencies are 99% genetic, but what about the leaky gut. How does a "perfect" little newborn inherit that? Well, they do and they don't. Because I was eating cheese and milk throughout my pregnancy, following the "milk does a body good" addage, my blood was filled with allergy "flags" meant to attack milk proteins in my blood. Unfortunately, the placenta doesn't filter out these flags, so any time my body was having an undetectable (or at the time undetectable to me) allergic reaction, so would the baby. This is why when I started to feel kicks, they were always like Ray Lewis punching bag style. In her book Is This Your Child?, Dr. Doris Rapp goes into detail about intrauterine allergies and how fetuses respond when allergens are consumed. Excessive kicking, hiccuping, and bruising of the mothers' ribs are all symptoms of fetal allergic reactions.

But the other component of this is the leaky gut, how did he inherit that? Well, candid live in all the mucous membranes in our bodies, including the vajayjay. So if upon his exit, he encountered my V that had the wrong flora, then the mucous membranes he picked up on his way out (like souveniers on vacation) would put him in dysbiosis. That's one theory.

The other much more likely theory is that the 3 day course of antibiotics at the hospital, that was not followed with any probiotics, is the culprit. Because I spiked a fever during labor, and it is the protocol of the hospital where I delivered, both Chase and I were given heavy doses of antibiotics for 3 days after birth. At the time, I did not know about gut flora, probiotics, and how antibiotics can WIPE OUT YOUR INTESTINES COMPLETELY, so I didn't put up a fight. Gosh I wish I had and next time (well, next time may be a homebirth) if the same happens, I will outright refuse.

Because of the abx treatment, Chase and I both developed thrush, the evident rash of a yeast (candida) infection. The picture to the left isn't my son, but it looks just like his rash. I had thrush in my breasts, the most painful thing I have experienced next to childbirth. Chase didn't seem to have it in his mouth, but he did have consistent yeasty diaper rashes for the first few months, that had to be treated with Nystatin ointment. I didn't know to be giving him probiotics, so the yeast took hold of this fresh blank canvas that the abx had prepared for it.


So that is kind of the "how" of "how the bleep did this happen?". Next up, will be all the details of how we are healing, and a status update, 2 weeks into formula.