Food, alcohol, drugs, bacteria, viruses and the environment launch a daily assault on the body’s inbuilt detoxification systems. When the detoxification system is overwhelmed, disruption of homeostasis will inevitably follow, leading to a wide array of symptoms.

I examine the body’s own inbuilt detox processes and ways to support them.

Read more.

Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are umbrella terms for a complex set of conditions. In biological terms they are the result of a number of systems not functioning as they should. If tests are available to identify these imbalances, they can potentially be treated.

Read the article.

Ingredients

2 egg yolks (free range)

2 tbsp organic apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

1/2 tsp mustard

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp sea salt

1 cup olive oil

Method

1. In a blender, combine egg yolks, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt and 1/4 cup oil.
2. Blend for 30 seconds
3. With blender running, remove insert top and drizzle remaining oil in a thin stream until mixture is thick.
4. Scrape into a glass jar with a screw top and it will keep safely in the fridge for 10 days.

Ingredients

It is best to use warm water and warm rice

4 cups hot/warm water

1 cup (160g) cooked rice (white or brown)

1 tsp vanilla

Method

1. Place all ingredients in a blender until smooth.
2. Let the milk set for about 30 minutes.
3. Pour the milk steadily into another container (e.g. old jam jar), leaving most of the sediment in the first container.
4. It can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Please take a look at the article I wrote on the biomedical appraoch to ADHD for Natural Medicine.

Awakening to ADHD

By Sandy Gluckman PhD

Let’s begin by exploring four startling statements based on the newest research.  Here goes:

1. Chronic stress is the No. 1 disease in children today.  It is also the most ignored condition in children, and therefore, the most potentially dangerous.
2. 95% of all learning, behavior and mood conditions that children are experiencing are triggered by, and made worse by stress.
3. We have been misled to believe that when children have a learning, behavior or mood problem, they have a ‘disorder’.  This ‘disorder’ is given a name and the child is given a medication.  This is incorrect!   Learning, behavior or mood problems that children experience are not disorders – they are symptoms of stress.
4. When we identify and treat the underlying stress triggers, the child’s learning and behavior issues are significantly improved and, in many cases reversed.  The biggest problem is that mainstream medicine is drugging the symptoms instead of identifying and removing the stress.

Now, more than ever, it is time for parents to take charge!

This is a highly pressurized world, and as a parent you will need to equip yourself with the very latest information and skills that will help you prevent, and heal, stress-related conditions in your children.

“Okay”, you might be saying, “so what exactly should I do”?

Begin by understanding that if your child has attention, behavior or mood issues, this suggests that your child experiences life as stressful.   This stress has begun to create an emotional and physiological reaction that is throwing your child’s wonderful spirit and body out of balance. In other words, your child has a hurting body and a hurting spirit.  And both must be treated together.

Take Charge of Healing your Child’s Spirit.

As parents we are all so focused on finding ways to help our children overcome their challenges that we forget to take care of ourselves.  This is why on a plane you are instructed that in the case of an emergency you must put your own oxygen mask on first before you are able to help your child.  A great deal of the stress of kids today is, unintentionally, caused, or aggravated, by parents who are stressed.  So if you think the child is unaware that you are stressed, think again.  They feel your stress and this affects their spirits, bodies and brains.

What is the point rushing around to psychologists, nutritionists, speech therapists, doctors and other kinds of therapists, hoping to find a solution to the child’s problems, when they are going to get back into your car and absorb your stress?

So if you want to heal your child’s hurting spirit, you must reduce your own stress first.  Learn Stress reducing skills.  There are many wonderful, easy-to-do tools that you can include as a regular part of your daily interaction with your child.   As you use these fun tools each day with your child, both you and your child are stimulating healthy, anti-stress chemicals in your body and brain.  All you need is a total of 20 minutes every day – five minutes, four times a day. Not only are you stimulating healthy chemicals but you are also building a stress-less relationship with your kids.  This will make a huge difference to their lives!

Take Charge of healing your Child’s Body.

While you are healing your kids spirit at home in this way, you also want to discover if there are underlying physiological issues causing stress in your child’s body.  You would want to find the right healthcare professionals who give you answers to some vital questions such as:

• Does my child have food allergies and food sensitivities?
• Does he/she have any vitamin deficiencies?
• Is my child’s body absorbing and digesting food correctly?
• Are there toxins in my child’s body?
• Is there bacteria, fungus, yeast, worms?
• Are there indications of heavy metals, mercury, lead, mold  and others in my child’s body?
• Is my Child’s Body Detoxifying correctly?
• Is my child showing signs of adrenal exhaustion?

Any of these issues in the child’s body can interfere with the child’s ability to learn and focus and can cause all kinds of negative behaviors.

Parents,  your children need you to be their strongest advocate.  They need you to Take Charge!  and be updated and educated and fully informed.  They need you to invest time in learning all about the role of stress and how this is impacting their lives.  Above all they need you to have the skills that will enable you to play a significant role in preventing and healing the terrible effects of stress, which are reaching epidemic proportions!

In her Take Charge! Workshops Dr. Sandy Gluckman teaches parents and educators easy to use tools that will help children’s bodies heal from the inside, with little or no use of medication.

www.parentstakecharge.com

Your pre-pregnancy BMI will generally give you an indication of how much weight you should gain during pregnancy. It is not true that you need to eat for two! For example, if your BMI is in the obese range (>29), you should only really gain between 6-8kg. However, if your BMI is normal (19.8-26), you may need to gain between 11.5kg-16kg.

A good daily strategy to follow to provide an appropriately balanced and low-GL diet of approx 2,200kcal if your BMI is normal includes:

• 3-4 palm-sized servings of concentrated lean protein
• 6 servings of vegetables (majority non-starchy)
• 3 servings of fruit
• 3-4 palm-sized servings of low-GL wholegrains/legumes
• 2 tbsp of healthy oils plus a small handful of nuts/seeds
• 2 servings of dairy or alternatives

There are six main dietary plans that are usually used as interventions in ADHD and ASDs. It is possible that just one of the six plans will be sufficient but it is far more likely that you will need to combine two or more of the diets (or parts thereof).

The Six Dietary Plans:

1.Blood sugar balancing diet

The most frequent cause of hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) is a poor diet, especially one that is high in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, which consist of sugar or starch, travel through the digestive system very quickly, and can cause a blood sugar spike, which is then followed by a slump. This slump (hypoglycaemia) can lead to symptoms like confusion, poor concentration, depression, cravings for certain foods.  Therefore, the blood sugar balancing diet is based primarily around foods that travel slowly through the digestive process, such as high protein foods and high-fibre foods as well as avoiding high sugar and high starch foods.

2. Gluten-Free, Casein-Free, Soy Free (GFCFSF)

The GFCFSF diet has become the single most popular intervention for ASDs and ADHD.  It requires that the child strictly avoids any foods that may contain gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye, oats, barley, triticale, kamut), casein (a protein found in dairy products) and soy.  Symptoms that often improve on the GFCFSF diet are bowel disorders, mood disorders, insomnia, eczema, poor language skills, to name a few.

3. IgE, IgG and Intolerances

Food reactions include 1) IgE allergies, 2) IgG sensitivities and 3) intolerances. These three types of reactions are very common in children with ADHD and ASDs.  The six most reactive foods are wheat, dairy, eggs, peanuts, corn and soy. There are a number of tests that can be carried out to ascertain which foods are causing the most problems. However, aside from IgE allergies, many IgG sensitivities and intolerances are linked to dybiosis (high levels of bad bacteria in the gut) as well as intestinal permeability. Whilst removing the offending food may help, it is also necessary to work hard on healing the gut.

4. Anti-yeast diet

Yeast overgrowth is extremely common in children with ADHD and ASDs. Symptoms vary but bloating, thrush, recurrent fungal infections, fatigue, poor cognitive function as well as joint pain are all signs. It generally requires a three-pronged approach of diet, supplements and anti-fungal medication to overcome yeast overgrowth. The anti-yeast diet generally  means that all foods containing yeast (liked baked goods) as well as those foods that stimulate the growth of yeast (like sugar) have to be avoided.

5. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD)

SCD is based around stringent restriction of carbohydrates that are believed to aggravate existing bacterial infection and to contribute to inflammation in the gut. The SCD eliminates all disaccharides (two-sugar molecules) and all polysaccharides (starches). Only monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, galactose) such as fruits, honey, and most non-starchy vegetables are allowed. This means that all sugars (except monosaccharides) and starches are out, including but not limited to, table sugar, maple syrup, rice, pastas, breads, potatoes, certain beans, rice milk, and cornstarch. Animal proteins, nuts, eggs and some plant proteins are allowed. SCD is one of the newer approaches to nutritional therapy for autism which many parents have found to be incredibly useful.

6. Low Oxalate Diet

This diet consists solely of reducing or eliminating a food component called an oxalate due to the belief that some children with ADHD or ASDs have difficulty metabolising them. Yeast overgrowth, commonly associated with antibiotic usage, might lead to increased oxalate production. Foods especially high in oxalates include spinach, beets, chocolate, peanuts, wheat bran, tea, cashews, pecans, almonds, berries, and many others. Oxalates are not found in meat or fish at significant concentrations.

A study published in the Lancet this year, looks at the effects of a restricted elimination diet on the behaviour of children with ADHD.  There were several phases to the trial. At the start of the first phase, children were placed on a few-foods diet (rice, meat, vegetables, pears and water) which is a very comprehensive elimination diet.  In the second phase, those who had had at least a 40% improvement in ADHD sypmtoms from the elimination diet, were challenged with either high IgG foods or low IgG foods (foods that each specific child was tested to have an intolerance to – thus the foods added were individually chosen).  Following this challenge, 63% of the children relapsed. The conclusion of the study is that a restricted elimination diet may be beneficial not only in ADHD but also in oppositional defiant disorder.

The article, although widely praised, has come up against a lot of resistance from, mostly, doctors working with children with ADHD. Many have said that ADHD is a chemical imbalance and that “no handul of strawberries is going to fix that.” It is at this juncture that I would like to point out that everything we eat induces some form of response from our body. Some foods increase chemical mediators known as cytokines which can be pro-inflammatory. We know that inflammation is one of the leading causes of chronic disease. We also know that ADHD is an inflammatory state. Additionally, whilst medications like Ritalin may normalise a chemical imbalance, they work on the symptoms, not on the root cause. So whilst giving a child Ritalin may make them less hyperactive (although give them insomnia and affect their growth pattern), it will not reduce any IgG intolerances to foods they may be consuming. If you take the Ritalin away, the food intolerance will still exist. If you leave the Ritalin in, it is quite likely that other mental health problems will arise, for example, anxiety.

I am by no means saying that food is the only cause of ADHD. Issues involving mitochondrial dysfunction, immune dysfunction, gastrointestinal dysfunction and problems with detoxification are also implicated. However, should we not be looking at food hypersensitivities or intolerances as a first port of call? I challenge those working with children with ADHD to start taking a holistic approach to treatment. Prescription medication is not the only answer. It just raises many more questions.

I’ve written an article on ADHD which should be in the May 2011 edition of Natural Medicine.

There has been plenty press of late about the necessity of adequate vitamin D and how chronically low levels are implicated in anything from insulin resistance to depression. Additionally, it is very unusual to test someone’s vitamin D levels and to find them to be adequate – a level above 45 ng/mL or more. Yet, with all the attention we’ve been giving vitamin D (and rightly so), we have forgotten about its essential co-partner in immunological and bone health: vitamin A.

Vitamin A and immunity

Vitamin A is essential to immune tolerance in the digestive system, particularly that to do with the gut lining. And immune tolerance is the basis of good health. An intolerant immune system will lead to a wide range of illnesses, and the gut is where many people first lose immune tolerance. Vitamin A (retinoic acid) is key to our ability to consume a wide range of antigens (food) and yet not react adversely.

Vitamin A is fat soluble and its molecules are known as retinol, retinal and retinoic acid. Retinol is the form in which vitamin A is stored, whilst retinal is crucial for vision. Retinoic acid  functions like a hormone, binding to two receptors (RAR and RXR) and impacting over 500 different genes. Vitamin A is required for innate and adaptive immunity and is an immune enhancer that potentiates the antibody response, maintains and restores the integrity and function of all mucosal surfaces.

Vitamin A cannot be synthesized by the human body; it must be absorbed by the intestines from the diet. The most concentrated source of vitamin A is in liver (meat, poultry and fish), but eggs, cheese and yoghurt area also options if there is no history of either allergy or intolerance.  Some carotenoids can be converted to vitamin A. For example, beta-carotene and lycopene from butternut, tomatoes or green leafy vegetables. However, the converstion of carotenoids to vitamin A is not efficient and research has shown about 50% of women to be slow converters. In addition, up to 50% of beta-carotene is highly dependent on fat consumption at the same time, and cooked carotenoids are better absorbed than raw. Poor protein status or zinc deficiency also affect beta-carotene uptake, and its conversion to retinol (vitamin A).

Vitamin A and secretory IgA

Vitamin A has been well known for its protective role against infections. Indeed, it is often given to children with chronic diarrhoea. An important part of the protective roles might be through its ability to enhance antibody responses, especially IgA antibody responses in mucosal tissues.

IgA is secreted into the gut lining and provides protection against harmful pathogens. It thus helps maintain a healthy flora (good bacteria in the gut). Retinoic acid, derived from vitamin A in the diet, exerts a positive impact on the precursors for IgA-producing plasma cells. With adequate vitamin A our gut is less likely to be chronically inflamed by inappropriate T-cell conversion leading to a myriad of inflammatory diseases – from eczema to depression.

It is possible to have secretory IgA levels tested through saliva and stool (although stool seems to be less indicative of overall secretory IgA status).

Vitamin A toxicity

Unfortunately, vitamin A has been vilified for many years so most people are scared to eat food stuffs high in vitamin A or take any supplement that contains vitamin A. Yet, it is crucial to health. However, as with all nutrients, vitamin A must be balanced. One way of balancing it is to take it with adequate levels of vitamin D. A good example is Cod Liver Oil. This old oil is now back in favour as it contains not only EPA & DHA fish oils which regulate inflammation, but also contains both vitamin A and vitamin D.

Both vitamin A and vitamin D are crucial nutrients. They are sophisticated and capable of wonderful things, but having too much or too little of either one interferes with the other’s capacity to do its job properly.