[KimS]

I've managed to find some of my old notes (many are still lost but these were the most important ones - I think)... Hopefully they will be able to help someone else who has chosen to take this path...

Elimination Diet - How to do it... and *not* do it First of all I want to say that I am no expert. I am simply a person who has gone through this process, made many mistakes and hope to share the information so that others can follow this route more effectively than I did. (Cara: Have I stolen your line here? It seems awfully familiar! What would we do without you! )

This thread originally started to be about how *not* to do it. However, with the help of many people here, I am, hopefully, slowly turning it into a source of how *to* do it.

We had no support doing our elimination diet. No doctor ever suggested this for us (I have seen at least 10 different doctors over the years for both my children and myself). We did this diet completely wrong. Why? Because I didn't know all the considerations it would involve. So...

Suggestion #1: Find an Environmental Physician.

I have heard stories of allergists saying they don't do celiac tests and other doctors don't do allergy tests. I have never heard of an environmental doctor saying any of this. They seem to be able to coordinate it all. Please post anyof your experiences with 'categories' of professionals here to help others know which road/type of physician they should choose.

Suggestion #2: Know more than I did going in. It's good to be able to speak knowledgeably with your doctor. Of course, sometimes we're so affected that there's just too much brain fog. This is just one more reason why it is better to go through this process with a professional who knows what they're doing.

Finally, our elimination diet story that was originally in this first post can now be found in post #13. I appeal to anyone who has done an elimination diet to please post your stories telling about successes and failures so that others may enter this 'food zone' with more knowledge than we had.

I am going to try to list a table of contents here so that I can condense this first post somewhat. Therefore, you may want to check this first post every once in a while for changes, rather than reread all the posts below.

Posts that I feel are necessary knowledge, I will try to make sure are in italics (usually research oriented). The numbers will coordinate with the post number, which means there will be skipped numbers for those posts which are purely discussion.

Table of Contents

1.
2. Our Experience: The Ten Day Commitment
3. Book List
4. Various Findings - KimS
__________________
KimS - who only gets to participate occassionally with two hands these days
01/02/2002 Small Amounts of Gluten Cause Relapse in Children (see: docguide.com)

12/20/2002 The symptomatic response to a gf diet with borderline enteropathy (see: docguide.com)
Last edited by pakisa100 : 08-28-2005 at 10:13 AM.

[KimS]

I will try to clearly delineate the steps below that we went through. This will a big commitment for you... and I mean COMMITMENT! However, I will focus here on the first ten days as that will give you a good enough picture of how we did it. If you decide to read through my first ten day layout, and then decide that you want to do it this way, you will be well on your way to finishing up on your own.

Please note that this is how we did it, and were successful. However, I have no qualifications at all. So make sure you go to the doctor to verify how you decide to do your elim. diet.

What is typed out below is mostly me, talking to myself. These are the exact things I said to myself, with some notes of hindsight included. If you talk to other people who have done an elim. diet, they may have done it very differently, so ask around.

GOAL (after the elim. diet): To NOT eat anything within four days of itself. For example, if we eat beef on Monday. We try not to eat it again until Thursday. This is the bottom line in most food sensitivity books I've read. It, kind of, falls into place as it follows an elimination diet rather naturally as you expand your food choices. This has fallen apart for us now, but we gave it the old college try for about six months and it did pay off.

Step 1 - Base Knowledge Collection

Pick up a couple of books from the library (you won't be needing them long term).

One I liked was by Dr. Doris Rapp, "Is This Your Child". It's an excellent book for everyone to read. It describes, very well, what symptoms to look for in a reaction. At first these symptoms seem to be too vague or general to pick up on. However, as you go through the process of an elim. diet, these symptoms become quite marked and not as vague as they are when you are eating things that are toxic for your body every day. I have two criticisms though. One, I do not remember it saying to isolate gluten. And two, I strongly believe that milk products should be further broken down into categories.

I also like (SCD), The Specific Carbohydrate Diet - Guide to Intestinal Health, by Elaine Gottschall. I haven't put the title in quotes because I can't remember the exact title but it is something like this. This book explains how complex molecules can really jam up your system. It has useful, basic recipes too. This is one book I would suggest buying because it's nice to fall back on. Having said that, I have yet to go out and buy a copy. I've mostly memorized most of the stuff I really like anyway. And there many websites based on this 'special' diet.

Step 2 - Choose your starting foods.

Adjust your attitude because this is going to take a long time. However, if you adjust your attitude to that of a bull, (yes, I said a 'bull') and focus on only 'this week' (the first ten days), then you can do it! You MUST DO IT RIGHT (or as right as you can) from the start or your results will not be clear or helpful (and you might have to start all over).

Do you know what is safe for you? We weren't sure at all. But you have to start somewhere. We chose chicken, cabbage, carrots, grapes, apples (peel them - I didn't and that was a big mistake - you should PEEL and SEED EVERYTHING), tomatoes (don't pick tomatoes- we had to do another elim. diet based on nightshades because of this mistake.), garlic, salt, pepper, honey and rye flour. Do not allow any grain in this first four day period! I really wish someone had told me that. We did find out in the end, obviously, but it would have saved a lot of time if we had cut out ALL grain and not tried to keep even one. After all, it's only 4 days.

Documentation is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Just put one blank paper on your fridge for each person so you can write down the time and what is eaten. It doesn't have to be neat, just readable. If you feel funny after (impatient/ depressed/sudden mood swing/ pain/sinus pressure/flushed/heart beating 'funny') write down the time and the symptom on this same paper on the fridge. This way you will be able to isolate what causes what and how long it takes for the symptom to arrive.

Step 3 (Days 1 to 4) - The Four Day Cleanout

Some people like to do a full seven. We found 4 days to be sufficient. The purpose of this EXTREMELY restricted period, is to let your body get rid of all the toxic stuff so that you have a 'clean' starting point.

We ate mostly soup and rye biscuits for four days. A big pot was kept on the stove and whenever someone was hungry, they got some soup. (This seems like a starvation thing, but people in challenged countries survive on less than this for a lifetime. Kind of brings some perspective to our lives, doesn't it?) Note: Rye Biscuits - Gluten products should *not* be in your startup phase. Gluten ended up being a huge issue for us and it is clear to me that the help of a physician would have prevented this mistake and shortened our trial times enormously.

Warning: This can be VERY hard. I was crying by the second day, thinking I would never make four days. I wasn't really hungry, but I was really 'freaked out'. I put on a good face and attitude through the day for the sake of the children, but the moment my husband got home from work and the children were out of the room I started to cry. The third day was more do-able. The fourth day I felt superhuman. It was weird. I have since spoken to quite a few other people, familiar with elim diets, about this phenomenon and almost every person I spoke to knew EXACTLY what I was talking about.

STEP 4 (Day 5) - Starting to add back in.


I chose to add yoghurt in the morning because it is the least offensive of all milk products (if incubated for 24 hours according to SCD- although very sour). Also, I didn't want the children going any longer without the higher calcium intake. Finally, it seemed a good idea to re-colonize the gut, first, right after a 'cleanout' period and before adding anything else.

I chose rice because I felt like we needed some bulk in our food. Although, I am finding now that I don't think rice is 'as necessary' as I thought it was then. So we had chicken and rice for dinner that night. It seemed like heaven. The rice came in about eight hours after the yoghurt and this seemed enough time, so I began adding two things every day, with eight hour intervals in between (one for breakfast, one for dinner).


Step 5 (Day 6)

We added bananas for breakfast and beef for dinner.

Step 6 (Day 7)

We added egg in the morning. Here is when we ran into trouble for the first time. Sinus trouble mostly, so we took eggs back out to retest them again later.

The children and I cheated on this day and went to McDonald's. We felt awful afterward. We just wanted to go home but had a full day of events planned and so had to just work through it. The children's behaviour went right back to what it was before we started the elim. diet. The bonus was that I could now identify this particular behaviour with diet induced fatigue. This is the marker I use now more than anything else with the children. I might consider saying it was a mistake to go to McD's so quickly, but I don't think it was, as the attitude/behaviour changes were SO blatant that I now KNEW what to look for in a child's negative reaction to food. It also proved to me that MOOD and ATTITUDE, of all things is rather heavily dictated to by the food you ingest.

We added fish for dinner (I think it was Haddock).

Step 7 (Day 8)

We added hard cheese (cow) for breakfast and spaghetti with butter/garlic for dinner.

The spaghetti was a mistake because I was left wondering if our impatient/easily frustrated behaviour was carrying over from McDonald's or the wheat flour. So we had to cut out all wheat again and retry later... at least four days away from a McDonald's visit.

Step 8 (Day 9)

Oatmeal for breakfast (My son had a total freak out session after eating this. It was so horrible that I've never been able to bring myself to give it to him again).

Lamb for dinner. None of us like it and dh and I seemed to have food poisoning. Have not eaten lamb again since. Luckily the children didn't eat it because they didn't like it.

Step 9 (Day 10)


We had to go back to soup for a couple of days because we weren't feeling well. But for the children, we added cow milk for breakfast and they just had soup with us for dinner. My daughter had her leg pain back after 8 or 12 oz. of this milk (within about two hours), so we pulled it back out of our diet, I did some research about milk and bone pain and then later we added goat milk in without issue. Months later, I had picked up a bag of milk and she had the bone pain again. I thought, 'Oh no, she can't even have goat milk now - her favourite food!' But my husband noticed I had, in error, picked up cow milk. So she had the cow milk challenge twice, even though we didn't plan the second one.

I would actually suggest adding milk product back in every 'other' day in the following order: SCD yoghurt, hard cheese, soft cheese, milk. The reasoning behind this order will become clear if you read the molecular makeup of milk products in the SCD book (It has to do with the amount of bacteria content and the fact that they will pre-digest the complex sugars in the milk product. The less bacteria, the more complex sugar in the product, the more difficult for your body to break down and this *can* affect your intestinal flora for the worse.).

This about when I decided to do SCD and things went much more smoothly after this... not so many errors and good healing time was finally attained.

Here is a search I did on all the SCD posts I did over a fairly long period of time: http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/...earchid=816344
__________________
KimS - who only gets to participate occassionally with two hands these days
01/02/2002 Small Amounts of Gluten Cause Relapse in Children (see: docguide.com)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_docsum

12/20/2002 The symptomatic response to a gf diet with borderline enteropathy (see: docguide.com)
Last edited by pakisa100 : 01-13-2006 at 08:37 AM.

[KimS]

My "knowledge base" could've been *a lot* better. So I will try and keep a booklist up here for people to access. I believe the first two books are absolutely essential. The first book (thanks for this Karen) is a book of food groups. Most of my mistakes were made because I did not have a resource book like this. The second book is geared to children but can be applied to adults. It explains what signs to look for in a reaction. It also explains all types of things that can cause reactions... including what to look for in your home.

I don't suggest buying these books at first. I suggest taking them out of your local library. Then, after completing your elim. diet, if you do find that foods are an issue for you... the first book about food families would be an essential addition to your library. It's on my Christmas Wish List.

If you choose to go through this process and find another book that you feel is necessary... please post the title and why it was so valuable to you! There are a lot of people here who want to know! (including me)

1. food families:

An Alternative Approach to Allergies
Theron G. Randolph, MD


2. signs, symptoms and sources of reactions:

Is This Your Child's World?
Doris Rapp, Environmental Physician
http://www.drrapp.com/

3. chemical explanation of simple vs. complex sugar (layterms) & recipes
This book is a good 'no brainer' elimination diet. I wish I had followed this. It would've spared me a whole lot of wondering if I was doing something right.

Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet
Elaine Gottschall - degrees in biology, nutritional biochemistry, and cellular biology
http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle....aine/elaine.htm
__________________
KimS - who only gets to participate occassionally with two hands these days
01/02/2002 Small Amounts of Gluten Cause Relapse in Children (see: docguide.com)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_docsum

12/20/2002 The symptomatic response to a gf diet with borderline enteropathy (see: docguide.com)
Last edited by pakisa100 : 12-09-2004 at 09:00 PM.

[KimS]

The soup was chicken, cabbage and carrot with garlic, salt and pepper because those were our starting foods that I chose.

Offenders have been added in but there is no improvement in the response. For example:

Eggs still cause sinus issue. If the we want eggs, we have them, but only once every week or two. I'm waffling on whether we should be having them at all. We did end up discovering that eggs seem to be fine in baked goods though, which is very interesting. I have spoken to another woman at a local church group who also finds the same thing with eggs.

Sugar (refined): are severely limited and avoided whenever possible. Eg. I love Cara's crepe recipe, so I sweeten with ground carrots or apples rather than using sugar. I used to use only apples but 'Concerned Lady' mentioned that she likes using carrots, so now I alternate.

Other grains mixed with milk/cheese product: (like macaroni with cheese) fatigue. We only eat this about once every six weeks but it still gets us. This consistent response has started me on a 'combination' path of discovery. I have found articles that support our personal findings with this type of combination. However, I am also becoming more suspicious of all grains (starches) in general. I will try to ascertain whether the problem is simply grain or the grain/goat cheese combination..

Deep fried foods: fatique, brain fog, lethargy
We enjoy Chinese food, so I learned to make gf chicken balls at home. Also, french fries, as we don't trust any large vats of grease in restaurants. Also, a type of donut replacement recipe. These foods all seem to cause the same response. Therefore, we try to keep our 'restaurant' foods down to once per month.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who 'lost' their response simply due to avoidance. The cow milk was avoided for about six months in total, yet the response (leg bone pain) returned with the same immediacy as before it was withdrawn.

The children were three and five years of age. My son was listed failure to thrive (since six weeks of age) and no one could figure out how to help him. I fell to this elim diet in desperation and by chance (the SCD was in the wrong section of the library... so I feel the angels sent it to me ). I did not believe food could have this profound an impact on a person (as long as it was 'good' food). I did not follow our pediatrician's train when she suggested Celiac disease. Celiac Disease might be for other people but not for us. I would not let them do any more 'invasive' tests on my son because he had been through so many, yet nothing was ever found.
__________________
KimS - who only gets to participate occassionally with two hands these days
01/02/2002 Small Amounts of Gluten Cause Relapse in Children (see: docguide.com)

12/20/2002 The symptomatic response to a gf diet with borderline enteropathy (see: docguide.com)
Last edited by pakisa100 : 09-04-2004 at 09:13 AM.

[KimS]

I've added a Rotation Menu thread so that people will have some follow up help after they complete an elim. diet.

Rotation Menus
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...4151#post54151