Case Study – Food Allergy and Sensitivity
This is the healing story of a little girl with severe food allergy and painful blistering eczema! Momma brought in her baby girl (age 2), who had a rough start to life. At 3 months old, she started having skin rashes. And not just a little skin redness and itchiness, she would blister, peel and ooze from head to toe! As anyone would, they considered all things she contacted… breathed…and ate. She was nursing, so mom tried avoiding common food allergens. And still the blistering rashes worsened.
So, of course, they took her to the doctor, and after basically just looking at her, he offered prednisone… with the potential side effect of dwarfism. They felt heartbroken and alone to figure this problem out.
They didn’t want the suppression with side effects path, so they turned to alternatives…acupuncture, natural medicine, homeopathy…and still, the skin worsened. From 6 months, to 18 months, a full year, the rash was horrible, the baby was miserable, and mom and dad were desperately…and barely…holding it together.
Mom figures out some things
While all these doctors and natural health practitioners failed to come up with any answers, Mom was able to figure out that if she ONLY ate beans, lentils, tempeh, and chicken, the rash was reduced to tolerable. They learned to live with “normal” eczema, and severe dietary restrictions, which (mostly) prevented the severe blistering reactions.
The next year (18 months to two and a half) was “land mine” year. By that I mean that they tried to stick to the extremely restricted diet to control her skin flares…and just when they thought life might be “NORMAL” they would give her some sunflower seeds…and she would get red welts around her lips. Or they would slip and have a tiny bit of wheat, soy, nuts, fish, apples, oranges…almost anything other than beans, lentils and chicken… and she would end up with a “head to toe” flare up of blisters and oozing.
When I met them, Mom described that the discomfort and itching was still “significant” but they had learned to live with the diet restrictions… and an irritable and angry 2 year old! What ELSE could they do!?
Kinesiology
We did something that I believe (and my experience supports this)…drastically increases the probability of success…kinesiology. Call it weird or unscientific…you can’t affect my belief, when I have results to validate. Do you want something science has proven stops this condition…well, they have one (prednisone, with significant side effects!)….or do you want to do anything…that will get your baby well?
That is what kinesiology provides….direct feedback from the patients nervous system, offering what is stressing her body, and what will combat the stress. What was quite interesting was that the primary stressor or sensitivity was not to foods at all…but to formaldehyde! Formaldehyde is research documented to cause ‘intestinal erosions and inflammation.’ Intestinal erosion and inflammation will lead to multiple food sensitivities and really, sensitivity to anything that passes into the GI tract!
Why!? Think about the skin as a barrier, which it is…what if you scrape, irritate, and erode the layers of skin until it is thin and weak!?? What happens? Yup…it is inflamed and irritated when it gets bumped…and if it is severely inflamed, even a touch could be aggravating.
Environmental triggers
The chemical category of aldehydes are everywhere in our environment… pajamas, carpets, fabrics, perfumes, and even wood contains formaldehyde or similar chemicals.
With exposure impossible to completely control, we looked at how to help her body eliminate formaldehyde. A trace mineral called molybdenum is essential for the removal of formaldehyde from the body, and that was our first “natural prescription”…which began the “4 R’s” of healing the intestinal barrier.
The intestinal wall is a barrier just like the skin, that when traumatized or injured, allows undigested food and waste to enter the blood stream, resulting in allergy and toxicity, just like broken skin allows viral and bacterial infections to enter.
The Three R’s
The first R is Remove source of inflammation. Check…,molybdenum helps the body naturally eliminate formaldehyde. (it could have been bacteria, virus, parasites, food allergies that weakened that barrier…but in this case, it was chemical…formaldehyde)
The second R is to Replace digestive enzymes to fully break down food and prevent undigested food from passing into the blood.
The 3rd R is to ReInnoculate with healthy bacteria (probiotics), and the 4th R, is to Repair the intestinal lining. We used a supplement called IgG, which is a protein from colostrum…that I refer to as “re-nursing.” It’s as close as you can get to starting over on nursing, which, among other things, builds the lining of the intestinal wall.
One other detail…while there are a million probiotics available, from yogurt, fermented foods and drinks, and supplements…we tested the specific probiotic bacteria that strengthened her body. The strains that strengthened were lactobacillus rhamnosus and bulgaricus. L.Rhamnosus is a common beneficial bacteria, used in many yogurts and fermented foods, and has published research showing benefits with allergic dermatitis! L.Bulgaricus is less common, and was identified by a Russian physician who was studying a community in Bulgaria known for their longevity. He found this strain in their yogurt, and in his studies, observed that it helps bind and eliminate environmental chemicals in the intestines, thereby reducing the effects of toxicity, oxidation and aging!
Healing happens
Just like a multivitamin and mineral has some molybdenum in it, probiotics with multiple bacterial strains might have these species in them, but the lesson here is…you have to find the limitation or barrier to healing and meet that need, specifically. We had to boost molybdenum specifically, and these particular bacteria specifically, along with specific digestive enzymes and healing proteins… in order to achieve this:
This little girl’s RESULT…by age 3, the rashes were completely gone, and she was able to eat anything…wheat, corn, soy, nuts…without reaction. No food allergies…no food sensitivities…just a normal little girl!
This led me to the “sunburn” theory of allergies and sensitivities. Which goes like this…if you have a bad sunburn (inflammation)…and you put on a wool sweater, you might think that wool is not a good match for you. But if you keep exposing the skin to sun (more inflammation), you will finally decide that you are “allergic” to all shirts and blouses! So you go to work topless and are escorted home by security.
But, of course, the root cause of the sensitivity is the source of inflammation…and when you remove the source, or in this case, help the body to eliminate the irritation, you can heal and wear clothes again!
Allergies are common
Please SHARE…as this story is all too common. And I bet…someone…within your reach…is desperately seeking relief for their baby girl or boy. If it is YOU…click on the contact page to learn how to be a patient in our clinic!