An Autism Mom with Cancer Needs Our Help

An Autism Mom with Cancer Needs Our HelpBeing an autism mom is extremely stressful.  It’s like having PTSD:  Perpetual Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Unfortunately, all that stress can really do a number on mom’s health.

One of our own, Melanie Baldwin, aka “Booty Kicker” from The Thinking Moms’ Revolution, now suffers liver, spine, and bone cancer in her other hip after already surviving breast and bone cancer.

She and her profoundly autistic son need our help.  As she struggles to overcome her current issues, her severely affected son, Luke, still requires 24/7 care and attention.  He is self-injurious and quite ill, suffering the lingering effects of severe autism.

Click here to donate: http://tinyurl.com/njeq66s

All funds raised will go directly to assist Melanie and her family.

Healing Hashimotos Thyroiditis

Healing Hashimotos ThyroiditisPlease join me for my webinar replay interview of my guest Jillian Burne, NTC, CHHC, AADP in which we discuss ways of healing Hashimotos Thyroiditis. Sign up below to listen to the webinar replay:

Jillian has become my go-to practitioner for understanding Hashimotos Thyroiditis, which is the most common cause of low thyroid function. However, most doctors fail to diagnose it and treat it properly.

Jillian Burne educates clients on how the body works, what it needs to function optimally, and how to navigate today’s challenging food climate for better health outcomes.

She uses a combination of nutrition and medical diagnostics to get to the root of a client’s health issues. Creating custom diet and lifestyle programs to effectively target weaknesses and rebuild health from a foundational stand point.

Jillian’s Story:
A chance encounter with a functional medicine doctor led to blood work that revealed she has a condition called Hashimotos Thyroiditis.

In an effort to understand what that really means she started researching autoimmune, the role of nutrients and food in regard to the immune system, as well as supplements and alternative therapies for treatment.

The knowledge she gained empowered her to reverse her condition. Now she’s focused on helping others do the same.

Body Ecology Diet: An Interview with Donna Gates

Body Ecology Diet: An Interview with Donna GatesDonna Gates is the developer of the Body Ecology Diet, a gut-healing diet that can be used to recover symptoms of autism, ADHD, autoimmune diseases, hormonal imbalances and more.

Sign up for the webinar replay below.

In this interview, Donna talks about how she developed the Body Ecology Diet, almost as an offshoot of what she learned studying macrobiotics.

We talk about gut health is important for the immune system and how, if you have gut dysbiosis (an imbalance of bad bacteria, yeast, parasites and pathaogens vs. good), that it leads to ill health.

Gut health also affects brain health, as most (95%) of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut.  Most, if not all, people with neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders have impaired gut function, which is why cleaning up the gut can help recover people from symptoms of these chronic disorders.

Find out how this diet can help those with:

  • Allergies
  • Food allergies
  • ADHD
  • Asthma
  • Autism
  • Neurological disorders
  • Thyroid disorders
  • Autoimmune disorders

 

Listen to Your Gut

Listen to Your GutIn the fall of 2013, I attended “An Evening of Inspiration“, a fabulous benefit put on my non-profit, Epidemic Answers, to benefit our Canary Kids Film Project, a film in which we’ll be documenting the potential recovery of 14 children from autism, ADHD, asthma, atopic dermatitis, juvenile RA, mood disorders and type 2 diabetes as they receive free healing and recovery services for 18 months.

My fellow board member and friend, Patty Lemer, the Executive Director of Developmental Delay Resources, was interviewing people on film at the event about how they got involved in the project.

I told Patty my story of how I originally started blogging for Epidemic Answers four years ago after I heard our Executive Director, Beth Lambert, give a presentation about her just-published book, “A Compromised Generation:  The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children” at the Wilton library.

I found myself finishing Beth’s sentences and was astounded that someone else was on the same page as me and had also recovered her children.  Of course, I immediately asked to volunteer for them, which is how I started blogging for them.

If you don’t know my story, I’ve recovered my sons from sensory processing disorder (I call it “autism light”), asthma, acid reflux and eczema, and they also have had or continue to have developmental delays, hypotonia, hypothyroidism, mitochondrial dysfunction, immune dysregulation, methylation defects and failure to thrive.

It has been a long row to hoe, but it has very much been worth it.  Along the way, I discovered that many of my own health problems were related to and/or contributed to the health problems of my children.

I would not have achieved this level of success in our health if I had listened to what my western, allopathic doctors were telling me.

I would say, “My son barely eats; he eats 2 spoonfuls of yogurt and 5 Cheerios, and it takes him an hour to eat, and then he throws it all back up”.  They would say, “He’s fine, don’t worry about it”.  They said that all the way from his beginning at the 40th percentile for weight until he fell all the way down to the 3rd percentile at 18 months, when he lost weight.  THEN they said, “There’s a problem.”  Really!?!

I would say, “He has poor motor skills.  His first crawling happened when he was 8 months old, and he slithered backwards.  Then, he army-crawled until he was 19 months old.  He cross-crawled for only a couple of weeks before he began to walk at 20 months.”  All along, they were saying, “He’s fine; don’t worry about it”.  Until he hit 18 months, THEN all of a sudden they said, “There’s a problem.”

I would say, “He projectile vomits, and my clothes, his clothes, his car seat, chairs and rugs are covered with it constantly.  He throws up after every meal.”  They said, “He’s got a weak gag reflex; he’ll grow out of it.”  They said this until he was 2-1/2 years old, and THEN they said, “He has acid reflux.  Give him some Prevacid.”

I would say, “He’s hypersensitive to sounds, lights and motions.  He cries all the time.  Something is wrong.”  They would say, “He’s fine; he’ll grow out of it.”  By this point, my son was 3 years old, and I had had enough of being told that, “He’s fine.  There’s nothing to worry about.  He’ll grow out of it.”

The truth is, there was a gnawing feeling inside of me that “something’s not right, something’s not right”.  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  So, even though my then pediatrician du jour said, “Don’t worry about it; he’ll grow out of it”, I had grown a pair by then and learned to put my foot down for my child.

I badgered her with questions until finally she gave up and said that maybe we should see a developmental psychologist.  We did, and voila, we got the diagnosis (even though it’s not a DSM diagnosis) that my son had sensory processing disorder.

From then on, nothing could stop us.  I began to research WHY he was like this.  Therapy obviously helped, but there was more to it.

Why was he sick all the time?  Why had he had so many ear infections?  Why did he develop asthma?  Why did he have developmental delays and acid reflux?  Why was he so sensitive?

Nobody that I knew really knew, so I had to keep digging and digging until I got to the point where I figured it out.  It’s toxicity, gut dysbiosis, nutritional deficiencies and hormonal imbalances.

Try getting THAT answer from your pediatrician.  Unless you’re one of the lucky few with an integrative pediatrician, you’ll never hear that answer, despite a multitude of peer-reviewed medical research journal studies out there that they just don’t have the time to read.

The system is broken.  If you want health and recovery for yourself and/or your children, you will need to take your health back into your own hands and stop giving away your power to the religion of worshiping men and women in white coats as if they know everything.  They probably don’t.

You need to listen to your gut instinct when it tells you that something is wrong.

It’s so easy to push that knowing down and stuff it aside and listen to the authorities who tell you that nothing is wrong and don’t worry about it.  I’m telling you don’t do it; you’ll regret it if you do.

I teach my clients to become their own and their children’s own advocates.  If you don’t do it, who will?  You can’t expect that someone else will care more about you and your children than you do.

My children and I would not have recovered from our health problems if I had not listened to my intuition, that little voice that said, “Something’s wrong.”

 

Pollution in Newborns

Pollution in NewbornsI’m sorry to say that most people just don’t know this.  I didn’t either, despite the fact that it was published by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in 2005, the year my older son was born.

In their landmark report, Body Burden:  The Pollution in Newborns, the EWG pointed out that an AVERAGE of 200 toxic chemicals were in the cordblood of newborns, meaning that there is only one place these could have come from:  the mother.

They found a total of over 280 carcinogens, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, plastics, neurologically damaging pesticides and other nasties in these babies.

I remember telling our former pediatrician about the shocking levels of heavy metals that I had discovered in myself and my sons.  She said, “But you don’t live in a toxic waste dump!”

The point is, I don’t think you have to anymore to be this toxic because we’re all being exposed to these toxicants on a daily basis, then unknowingly passing them onto our children, whose toxin load will accumulate over time, and they’ll pass it on to their children.

It’s one of the main reasons we’re seeing such an epidemic of chronic illnesses like cancer and autoimmune diseases as well as developmental delays and disorders such as autism, ADHD, PDD-NOS and sensory processing disorder in children these days.

The good news is that people can be recovered from these conditions.  I’ve recovered my own sons from sensory processing disorder, asthma, eczema and acid reflux.

Here’s the trailer from the well-thought-out documentary, “Unacceptable Levels“.  It’s 2 minutes long and worth it for you to get a glimpse of what’s going on.

Top 10 Reasons Why Fresh Food Is Best

Top 10 Reasons Why Fresh Is Best

Eat like your grandma did, and your health will improve!

  1. Fresh food tastes best: I think we’ve gotten away from knowing what real, fresh food tastes like. Chef Jamie Oliver is famous for going into schools and asking children to name the vegetables he holds up. Very few can correctly identify them because they never eat them!
  2. “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison” (quote by Ann Wigmore): If we have to detoxify from the processed food that we eat, then our bodies are not able to properly detoxify. Eating whole, fresh foods made from scratch ensures high nutrient levels.
  3. Our “food” isn’t food if it’s packed with artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and long chemical names: “The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children” is a book that shows us how food additives contribute to declining mental health. Your brain and your child’s brain are starved for nutrition, and they’re not getting it if your “food” comes with a long list of chemicals in the ingredients.
  4. Artificial colors, flavors and preservatives can cause ADHD symptoms: The Feingold diet for ADHD shows how all of those pretty blues, yellows, reds and other colors in our kids’ fun foods can cause spaciness or hyperactivity, especially in children. Artificial flavors and preservatives, especially BHA and BHT, do the same. Food isn’t fresh if it’s got these ingredients in it.
  5. Canned foods have high levels of endocrine-disrupting BPA, BPS and phthalates: That plastic lining on the inside of your canned food is doing more harm to your health than you think, as it can lead to hypothyroidism and gunk up your cells’ mitochondrial dysfunction. Plus, the food is definitely not fresh!
  6. Even frozen food isn’t fresh: The late Dr. Annemarie Colbin, author and founder of The Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City, said that freezing fruits and vegetables ruptures the cell walls of the plants, thereby reducing the nutritional value of the food.
  7. You can add love to your food when you cook it: Have you ever noticed how much better food tastes when it’s homemade or made by your mom? Some people think it’s love that makes the food taste better.
  8. Processed food contains more sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup: Robert Lustig teaches how harmful sugar is to our health. I know you’ve read that statement before, but did you know that sugar is the most inflammatory food there is AND it feeds cancer?
  9. Processed food typically contains unhealthy canola, soy and other harmful vegetable oils: I know you’re scratching your head at this one. It took me a while to wrap my head around it, especially because many “healthy food” magazines tout the benefits of canola and other vegetable oils. The Weston A. Price Foundation shows us how the extreme processing of these oils leads to rancid oils containing high amounts of inflammatory free radicals. Grandma didn’t eat these oils, and neither does my family!
  10. Fresh food has more nutrients: Compared to “healthy” fast food alternatives, fresh, homemade food has more nutrients plus the love you put into it!

THE “R” WORD

road to recovery signYou may or may not know my personal recovery story. I have recovered my 2 sons, now ages 5 and 7, from sensory processing disorder (SPD), asthma, allergies, acid reflux and eczema with a biomedical approach, which means correcting nutritional and hormonal deficiencies, removing toxicities and correcting gut dysbiosis.

I’m still working on failure to thrive, mitochondrial dysfunction, hypothyroidism and persistent eczema in my older son. In addition, they both had developmental delays, and my older son had severe hypotonia as a baby.

I have recovered from immune dysregulation, in which I had shingles twice, the worst case of poison-ivy ever, bronchitis (which I’d never had before), constant sinus infections and constant colds that would last 3-4 weeks at a time.

My older son had immune dysregulation, too, when he was younger: he would go to preschool, get sick and be out for at least a week at a time, then go to school the next week, get sick, and the cycle repeated ad nauseum (pun intended).

I also had severe adrenal fatigue, which was caused by dealing with my older son’s severe SPD.

Adrenal fatigue caused middle-of-the-night insomnia, in which I would be awake for hours at a time in the middle of the night and be so dead tired the next day that 3 hour naps wouldn’t help.

I later learned that adrenal fatigue was the cause of the onslaught of my “female problems”, which I’d never had before: a suddenly irregular menstrual cycle, a uterine fibroid and ovarian cysts.

I also found out I have two types of anemia: iron-deficiency (the more commonly known about kind) and folate-deficiency. I learned how these and most of out other problems can be tied back to gut dysbiosis and its chronic infections, especially Candidiasis.

I also discovered that I am hypothyroid and that this may have played a large part in my sons’ problems when I was pregnant with them.

I found out that I was loaded with heavy metals, especially mercury and lead, which are the most neurologically damaging. I immediately had my sons tested and found out they were full of them, too.

It’s been very hard going through this, as most people, even most doctors, don’t know about the causes of all these problems. They don’t understand that all of these problems are related, and they certainly don’t know that recovery is possible.

We got a lot of help from changing our diets and seeing a naturopath, a functional-medicine doctor and a holistic nutritionist, as well as from me doing never-ending research about how all of these problems are connected.

We’ve recovered from so much, although there is still more work to be done. In any case, we are so much better off now than we were 4 years ago, when all of these problems hit a crescendo.

I want people to know that recovery is possible, which is why I joined the non-profit Epidemic Answers. We seek to educate parents about the causes of these problems as well as let them know that recovery is possible.

In fact, we’re making a documentary film to show the world that recovery is possible because most people just don’t know that.

Most people don’t know that a child can recover from autism or asthma or that an adult can recover from an autoimmune disease, even multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis.

If you want to learn more about our film, you can find out more by watching this video or by visiting our website. Please help us get this film made!

 

BOOK REVIEW: IT’S ALL GOOD, GWYNETH PALTROW’S COOKBOOK

Gwyneth Paltrow It's All Good book coverMy husband bought me a copy of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, “It’s All Good:  Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great” the other day for my birthday.  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised!

She openly talks about the health problems that she had that led to her needing to make dietary changes.  I can relate because I’ve had to do the same for myself and my children.  [Read more…]

ADRENAL FATIGUE

exhaustionI became severely stressed when I began taking care of my two boys without any help because that’s when my older son’s sensory issues and “fight, fright or flight” issues really kicked in.  [Read more…]

CAUSES OF NUTRITIONAL DEFICIENCIES

apple with vitaminsNutritional deficiencies are rampant.  I believe many people are falsely lulled into a sense of security by RDA (recommended daily allowances) listings on food and nutrients.

What you don’t know is that RDA requirements are the bare minimum to stave off diseases of deficiency like scurvy or rickets.

RDA requirements do NOT promote optimal health!  [Read more…]