Verdict on rice

I made my old, usual rice congee, otherwise known as "jook" today for lunch. In the past, congee seemed harmless, but his face was a bit worse and now, he's down to one patch and it's easier to identify the culprits. My report - his chin was NOT better after rice congee with sardines, veggies & onions. Even the kale in it didn't help. Of course it could be the violation of the food combo rule too - no starch with protein. Or both.

Last night before bedtime
(finally got pic out of camera)

This morning

After nap

Hard to see in the pic, but the spot last night was less red. This morning, it started opening up again and remained so.


Dinner is broccoli & carrots with Almondaise (almonds, olive oil blended to a mayo-like consistency) and some spices. Broccoli is acidic, carrots and almonds are alkaline. If this doesn't get his chin better, then I will follow the acid-alkaline theory as well.


But my faith in the fungal theory is definitely growing. Some extra Limu and silica tonight I think.

Bad

Chin is so bad this morning that I don't want to take pic or maybe I'll take one later when I feel better. It must have been the muffins after dinner, which he snarfed up in the speed of lightning. They were as innocent as can be with only 2 TBS. of agave syrup, a few drops of stevia and mashed bananas for sweetener, really not very sweet at all. Grain was all gluten-free brown rice, amaranth and raw buckwheat, soaked, put into blender and baked. Aluminum-free baking powder. I give up. No grains at all? I'll never make it.


Same thing happened to my princess when she turned 4. I made her birthday cake, ground my own flour (kamut + hard red wheat - didn't soak, moving forward now, soon my $7,000 KitchenAid double ovens will be used for pot storage), used turbinado (raw) sugar and even made my own confectioner's sugar. For icing colors, I used spirulina and strawberries (next time I'll use beet powder). How much more wholesome could a kiddie birthday cake get? So I let her have 2-3 cupcakes (peel-away silicone cups the shape of a teddy bear put together) every day for 3 days or until her cheeks became ultra dry and started peeling.


So is it yeast/fungus or not? It seems likely. Now all I have to do come up with kid-friendly meals that will fit into this new way of eating. No pasta, no PBJ sandwiches, not even pasta 'n pesto, my all-time standby and replacement for mac 'n cheese. Now no rice too and even with the fungal-friendly grains, I have to go easy or just no baked sweet grains. What kind of birthday cake can I make without grains? I saw a meat cake once in another blog - hmm, that might not be such a bad idea.

Worse in the a.m., better by p.m.

It's interesting how instant the effects are - as soon as something bad goes into his tummy, it shows up on his face a few hours later. It's in fact quite amazing that I can track his eczema day by day, moment by moment. His face didn't look so great when he woke up. I've decided to put up just his chin instead of his entire face, even though I can't get enough of his face and love showing off his little face. But you can see how it has gotten a bit redder this morning.


Breakfast was the usual - fruit: apples, mangos (high sugar, not really great for anti-fungal diet, but what the heck, my kids can't get enough of them) and pears. Each of them ate one whole fruit in each category. Yep, they can pack it in, especially when they know all they're getting for breakfast is fruit. Lunch was simple - some cornish hen, which I roasted in a Deni convection oven, one of those cute little round glass bowl ovens that will cook your frozen meat to perfection and it did, with a side of parboiled spinach with oil (olive + Udo's DHA oil). My kids much prefer the cornish hen, which we of course call, "chicken" (every white meat is chicken, except for pork, which can sometimes be mistaken for chicken as well, at least in my family) and I had to insist that my son eat his spinach. My daughter is well-trained, so she ate most of her spinach first and learned to savor the best for last - she's the best.


Spinach is an amazing food or a superfood if you want to use the proper buzz word. I swear my son's face gets better every time he eats spinach. Kale is amazing like that too. It must be the vitamin A or maybe it's the chlorophyll. I'm never too sure. All I know is that I can't go too long (1 or 2 days max) without serving my kids spinach or kale. It is sooooo good for them, that I will tie them down on the floor or give them an hour of time-out to make sure they eat it! I'm kidding, mostly, but thankfully, I've never had to do that. I have, however, allowed meal time to extend to 2+ hours because food was still sitting in the bowl. Mama always wins - until she gets tired and decides to give in.


Dinner was simple too, as I'm trying to recover his chin back to where was. I do think that the key is balance and I suppose this principle is what we should adhere to for ourselves as well. We can junk out one day, but get back on track and eat well tomorrow and the rest of the week perhaps. How long you sustain the healthy eating days or junk food days will determine your overall health. Everything moves in cycles, life is all about cycles, things loop around and back many times over until Darkness hits us and all lights go out. OK I digress again, dinner yes - cauliflower and carrots. I parboiled them with some virgin coconut oil, then sprinkled a mix of spices into it (curry, Ayurvedic blend + Nutritional yeast vegetable seasoning - recipe from Traci at bestfoodist.com). My kids don't like plain steamed veggies anymore. They ate out in restaurants too often, tastebuds got used to the royal Salt Treatment, so now I have to find ways to make food flavorful without being too salty or spicy.


I had meant to put up a pajama pic to show how well the night ended, but it got stuck in my Samsung S860. I snapped it not realizing I didn't have an SD card in it and I can't find the USB connector cord to get the photos out. Why do they give you an internal drive anyway? And why doesn't the camera tell you when you have no card in there?


I'll end on this note - it makes a huge difference the quality of the meat you use. I bought a big log of pork loin for $1.49/lb. on sale once, used a fancy recipe from one of my 50 cookbooks and it was delish. At this price you know the pork was loaded with antibiotics and fed GMO soy or whatever. I decided not to care, because sometimes I think everything I'm doing is totally crazy, that the whole organic health movement is a conspiracy to get us to spend more money, etc. Sometimes I just want to be able to afford a new wardrobe or a trip to Italy and stop caring about what I shove into my mouth. You know what I mean? But there are always consequences that come back to haunt us. Next day my son's face was pretty bad. I had done my usual, gave him huge portions of vegetables with the pork, nothing else seemed to stand out or caused such a reaction in the past. So deductive reasoning would lead me to believe it was the pork. From that point on, I only give him the good stuff, the stuff without all the chemicals. No big deal I tell myself, as too much meat is not good for any of us and many of the health gurus tell you that meat should only be 20% of your daily diet anyway. But who does that? And if you're doing meat, then you should skip the grains, so it's one or the other. No kidding. I did not care about health until after I had kids, was a proud, overweight foodie (don't trust thin people's restaurant recommendations), so I struggle with overwhelming moments of rebellion against all this health advice.

End-of-day update

I am such a poor scientist. I let my DS have eggs (hard boiled), cheese (raw, cow, organic) and almonds (soaked) all in one day - today. Of course, his face was slightly worse after his nap and I have no clue which of these foods caused it or if it was a combination of things. I always do this.


Almonds are not "kosher" on the anti-fungal diet, but they are perfectly legal in alkaline/acid, raw, whole foods/all-natural, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian/vegan diets and on the SCD (special carbohydrate diet), which is targeted for autistic children. Almonds are alkaline, which is good. We are too acidic. And almonds are raw, so they contain their own enzymes - MAYBE. Up until March (or is it June? of this year 2009, almonds were raw. Now they are pasteurized, in the worst way or maybe just flash pasteurized, which supposedly maintains some enzymatic activity. Who knows. My almonds were from Costco, so probably not flash pasteurized, but how bad could they be? Could/would Costco or any reputable store/company risk a complaint of indigestibility or a toxic liver load due to the pasteurization of almonds? Is that worse than the risk of salmonella/E. coli, which presumably is the reason for this law to pasteurize almonds? Even though all almonds in the U.S. are pasteurized, it is perfectly legal to say on the bag, "RAW almonds." Huh? No wonder everyone badmouths the FDA. I'd move to Canada if it wasn't so cold over there. But I digress. Dried fruits and nuts supposedly have mold, aka fungus, on their surfaces, so they are not good. So it could be the almonds. I think it could very well have been the almonds, as I'm going with the fungal theory now.


Eggs and cheese - well, they get a lot of bad rap, except at mercola.com and westonaprice.org, where eggs are supreme protein sources, but only from free range chickens and semi-raw preferably or egg yolk raw, egg white semi-cooked. I don't think anyone in my neighborhood has hens in their backyard, but I could be the first and it wouldn't be in a backyard but in my garage or patio. No, but I use Eggland's Best eggs, the yellow styrofoam container (organic, cage free, omega-3, whole nine yards - from Costco), they were hard boiled and my son ate 1.5 of them, split them with his sister. Donna from eczema.net and Donia from eczema-natural-healing.com say goat cheese is preferable or not harmful for eczema sufferers. For me, the verdict is still out about goat dairy due to my prior experience with goat milk. I also wasn't sure about the raw factor, how much that plays a part in the indigestibility/allergy and how hard is it to find raw goat cheese? Almost impossible, at least as far as general supermarkets are concerned. So I went with raw organic cow cheese. It was his first time for both eggs (white) and cheese, so if I go with the allergy theory, they would be the culprit.


Oh yeah, one more thing about cheese - the ones made in the U.S. contain supposedly aluminum (?) and aluminum is supposedly linked to alzheimer's and other undesirable illnesses. My raw organic cheese is made in the U.S., but I occasionally buy foreign cheeses. Because of this information, I got rid of my cheap aluminum rice cooker pot and opted for the chemicals in a nonstick rice cooker instead.



Will wait until tomorrow to take a pic, crossing my fingers that his chin will be as good as it was this morning.

New day, same great results and a bit about grains

I learned how to sprout grains a few weeks ago, thanks to a cookbook a friend gave me. It didn't work after a few tries, grains just didn't sprout. But yesterday, I had a small bowlful of sprouted quinoa and buckwheat, which did not sprout, possibly because it was roasted (only kind I could get at Whole Foods). So I tested my "sweet guinea" DS on sprouted quinoa for dinner, with cauliflower and carrots. Other than a few dark, mushy poops, which was probably more due to lunch than dinner, his face was fine.


I've been learning that certain grains are big no-nos and some grains are less desirable than others. The whole notion of sprouting grains used to give me a serious headache. Too much advanced planning, how am I ever going to get to the park, run errands or buy groceries?! So I'm only in experimental phase right now.


The Bodyecology.com diet only allows quinoa, millet, amaranth and buckwheat. Donia from eczema-natural-healing.com allows brown rice. Both authors have different theories. Donna from bodyecology.com treats mainly Candida sufferers, but I've found that my son's eczema improved tremendously when I limited his intake of brown rice. Brown rice was the substitute for wheat, a step that also made great strides. Traci from bestfoodist.com (cookbook from friend) has an interesting way of cooking rice, which did not appeal to my Chinese roots. It was rice I could never bring myself to eat, my kids will probably eat it as they love rice and all starchy foods, but I would never prepare rice that way and it would never work in sushi, which was/is a staple (weekly only now). This method of soaking, draining, re-soaking and heating until boiling point, then turning off heat may work fine for other grains, but with rice, it just looked bad, real bad. I am accustomed to fluffy rice with individual grains beautifully cascading off my fork. So that's when I decided to move away from rice for awhile, keep looking and try something new.


No/limited grains' diet is based on the theory that there's fungal overgrowth in the gut, which causes skin eruptions/eczema/psoriasis/acne. All skin issues are related and could even be the same cause. Dermatologists or allopathic medical doctors like to be "specific" and separate each/every slight distinction. Some of these distinctions are important, very important, but could all of it be due to similar causes? For example, I've found that giving my kids copious amounts of spinach or kale definitely help their skin. Meanwhile, if you do a search on acne, you'll find a lot of advice telling you to take vitamin A. Well, spinach and kale are amongst the highest in vitamin A in the plant kingdom. So what about the grains, how are they related. Grains turn into sugar in the body, some faster than others, from what I understand, and sugar feeds the fungus. So if you starve the fungus, it will lay dormant as it should in your body. One source say that all of us 'should' have only about 15% fungus in our gut, that it's normal. But 80% of Americans have more than 15%, a fungal overgrowth, which causes various problems. The way the body express its sickness vary from person to person. So you have a choice, to go with the specific-symptom treatments (allopathic medicine) or go holistically and improve overall health via digestion. I chose the latter. Already had first kid on steroids, have seen folks develop "thin skin" as a result of long-term steroidal use (oral and topical) and I just didn't have the heart to put my second kid through it. Plus I have two kids now with similar issues (eczema, asthma and allergies are all related - "old-man" friend didn't believe me, sent him a link from webmd.com and he shut up), so there is more incentive for me to embark on this journey towards health or anti-drugs.

More on grains later and will post specific links I've researched, advice I followed, etc.

Fast forward to 8 months

Wow, where have I been, where shall I start... Well for one, I was separated from my husband for a few months and now we're back together. He had a gall bladder removal during his withdrawal from substance abuse (alcohol) and realized what a wonderful family he has, despite the fact that his wife is a little obsessed with her kids' health -understandably so considering I've camped out at my daughter's hospital not once but twice- and the kids demand first priority at this age. Men have got to grow up, what more is there to say. I just thank God I managed to stick around for him to get sober, but then again, where else would I go with two young kids having given up work 4+ years ago? But more about the job situation later, as I've figured out a way to work at home during these solitude months. This blog is part of it, but not all of it. I've been wanting to blog ever since I had kids, as the computer seems to be the only way to connect with the world!


So I've been pounding away emailing "experts," researching everything I could find as my emotions followed my son's condition up and down. The good news is that his eczema is down to one patch on his chin. My daughter has NO ECZEMA and I'm proud to say she is officially off the inhaler drugs (Albuterol and Flovent HFA) - yay! Be patient with me as I log everything I've tried and read about, and I'm doing it as much for my sake as for all those moms out there who went stir crazy with this problem.


Here are a couple of recent pics of my little guy, first one taken June 12, second one taken today, 4 days apart. What did I do differently? This question alone made me nutso, trying to figure out and track every little thing I do differently from one day to the next while keeping all other elements intact. Impossible feat!


But doesn't the second photo look like it has been doctored? I'll admit that I've become quite good at digitally clearing up skin (power of the cloning tool), but I've also done quite a bit of graphic design work in the past so no big deal. And no, I did not doctor this one up, don't really need to - first time in all 20 months of my DS's history, which is why I'm celebrating by posting in this blog. (OK, maybe I'm showing off just a little.)


Just looking at these pictures, you'd think I never had a problem, what's the big deal. Scroll down to the bottom pics and oh if you had only seen his face before when he was 10 months old and had to go on antibiotics, the cold sores inside his mouth on which I had to apply a Benadryl/Maalox mix and the "blackberries" that appeared on his face after the pus dried up.


But this is why I want to share my journey with the world, anyone who cares (especially since I've ran out of people to talk to about in my local circle). I don't know everything about eczema, but I do know a few things that have worked for me. It may not work for everyone, but I know when I was seeking for answers, I was willing to try anything, take any advice anyone has to give, because there is a chance that it might work for me. Not everything I tried worked, but it got me closer to the truth and I'm hoping to provide someone out there a piece of their puzzle as well.


Here is a short summary of my latest regimen and I will work backwards in my future posts in terms of what I tried, what effect it had/didn't have and go into more details about the products, what I've learned, etc.


Three key things--
Diet
Supplemental foods/vitamins
Topical creams/ointments

Diet Rules-
1. Fresh fruit only for breakfast, lots & lots of fruit
2. Wait a few hours before lunch, lunch no earlier than 11:30am, no later than 1pm. Lunch consists of meat/fish/chicken & non-starchy vegetables (broccoli or dark leafy greens).
3. Snack after afternoon nap, usually fruit, never dried fruit (or not yet).
4. Dinner served no later than 6pm, whole grains and/or starchy vegetables, no meat.

Supplements-
1. Probiotics before or after fruit breakfast
2. Silica with grapefruit seed extract before or after lunch, mixed with coconut milk and/or coconut water, Vita Enhanced Water, vanilla & stevia
3. Digestive enzymes and Children's multi during or after lunch
4. Probiotics again before dinner/afternoon snack
5. "Super shot" after dinner - Limu Plus juice mixed with enzymes, greens powder, blue green algae (spirulina), grapefruit seed extract, Vita Enhanced water, stevia

Topical-
1. Earthworm Herbals ezcema cream
2. Dr. Christopher's Complete Tissue & Bone ointment
3. Hylands Calendula cream
4. Neem oil
5. Tea tree oil (if fungal infection present and is really bad)
6. Water (1 tsp.) + 3 drops Vita Enhanced Water + 3 drops grapefruit seed extract (gives skin a chance to breathe)

I alternate the various topical treatments, have a jar/bottle in various rooms and basically use whatever's within nearest reach. Personally I don't think it matters a whole lot what you put on the skin externally, there are plenty of good, chemical-free products and I avoid chemicals, because there's the notion that whatever you put on the skin has to be ingestible as well. The herbal ointments violate this rule, because of the comfrey, yet comfrey is a powerful healer, so who knows. Also, I wondered if using the same product will allow the body to become too accustomed to it and then it will no longer work. This seems to be true for herbs taken internally, like echinacea; we are only supposed to take it for two weeks, break for two weeks before starting again.


Some of these supplements I found by accident, like the silica. My brother sent me a link as he was looking for fertilizer for his garden and I decided to buy the food grade version. It is hard to get down, tastes and looks like chalk (yes, I've tasted chalk), so I put it away for a year, until I came upon the latest theory - eczema is due to excess fungus in the intestines. I googled and found Syclovir, which appears to be the same stuff as the 10-lb. bag of silica I had purchased before. So I mix it with coconut water, vanilla and stevia and the kids slurp it up no problems. Many of the supplements are from Vitamark and this is because I am an affiliate - yes, I'm selling you something. But before you get alarmed or think you're being lied to or that I'm trying to rip you off, I suggest you to shop around and do some price comparisons of these products. Don't buy if you think they are a rip, but be sure you're getting good value for similar products; not all supplements are alike though they appear to be the same. I provided the links for the other products so you have an idea of what it is, don't feel you must buy from that particular site, go to your local health store if it's available there. I tend to shop online for supplements, because they tend to be cheaper. I shop at iherb.com often, because I save on shipping if I order a certain amount and there's a $5-off coupon you can use if you decide to shop there: RAM696.


Not sure how long it will be before I post again, because I started homeschooling my daughter, but here are a few more pics so you'll see how my son's face looked in the past. No matter what, he is the sweetest little boy in the w orld. :)

History of Eczema Battle

Let me introduce my kids - Alexa is born 1/18/05, Travis is born 9/18/07.


Some history. Alexa had baby eczema (on face only) at around two months, but it went away after a couple of weeks. She was also allergic to dairy. I breastfed her for one year. She developed asthma at 16 months, was hospitalized, then got another attack two months later and was again hospitalized. Then she had facial eczema again shortly after she was hospitalized. It took over six months before the eczema went away and almost a year before the scars completely cleared. Now she has two eczema patches, one on her arm and another on her leg. She hasn't had an asthma attack in approximately two years however.


Travis developed cradle cap and eczema at three months. To this day, he still has eczema, also on his face only. He was breastfed until he was nine months and after two weeks of fighting with him, I put him on goat milk with an infant liquid multi following Dr. Sear's advice, which gave him severe constipation and anal bleeding. So I doctored up the goat milk according to Sally Fallon's homemade infant formula recipe, which gave me mixed results and I'll get into that later.


With Alexa, I used Aquaphor and breast milk for the eczema, not sure if any of these things helped. When she got older, I used Lanacane to fight the itch, then I tried some other anti-itch creams-chemicals so she wouldn't scratch and leave ugly scars. It only helped mildly, because you have to apply the cream every few hours in order for it to be effective. Also, these anti-itch creams offer no emollients, so I was always torn between treating the dry skin or the itchiness. Sometimes I went with the dry skin and used Eucerin, Cetaphil, Aquaphor, then later decided to try purer oils such as unrefined shea nut butter from Ghana, tamanu oil, Bio oil or virgin coconut oil.


With Travis, I used shea nut butter and virgin coconut oil only, but then started wondering if he was allergic to nuts. So I gave up nuts while I was breastfeeding just to see and his face seemed to have cleared. I stopped using shea nut butter, just the virgin coconut oil, sometimes olive oil and sometimes Aquaphor. Now I use Desithin on his face as a cover-up, to lighten up the redness of it. When he's at home, I apply Limu Plus juice on his face 3X a day, but more about Limu Plus later.