Intolerance - reintroducing foods???

[fizzymom]

After 10+ months, we finally figured out that DS2 was intolerant to gluten and rice. How long does he need to have them out of his system to allow his gut to heal and how long before we can try reintroducing them?

[fizzymom]

Does anyone know? Gluten-free is very doable, but the rice is killing me. So many gluten-free foods rely on rice. I don't want to unnecessarily set him back by trying to reintroduce too early, but with school starting, I am going to have a lot less time to do meal prep and was really hoping to be able to use some baking mixes to help out.

Anyone?

[tanyalynn]

Whoops, your post slipped through the cracks earlier. Kathy has lots of experience with re-introducing.

Is it only gluten and rice? And everything else seems at a good, happy baseline?

Common wisdom is at least 6 months, and maybe some people have success after such a short time, but it seems like it often doesn't work. Maybe the combination of happy-gut stuff (probiotics, homemade stock, all the gut healing stuff Pat has great posts about) plus nutrition stuff (the detoxification discussion that whoMe has championed, there are some getting started threads in the Resources sticky) that should shorten the time period before you get rice back.

For the detoxification/nutrient discussion, putting together your health issues (big and small) plus your LO's health oddities (big and small) mostly seems necessary to start figuring things out. Things like folate and B12 and zinc and magnesium are all important.

Long answer, short on actual answers. I'm sure someone with more ideas will come along shortly.

[fizzymom]

Thanks! Yes, just gluten and rice. Dairy was questionable for a while, but he has been eating it in small amounts recently without any problems. Everything else has been fine. I haven't done any broths - only started meats a few days ago. We have been off gluten and rice totally for around 4 months. We saw some improvement with just gluten, but had a huge breakthrough when we also eliminated the rice. I am soooo thankful that I didn't start him on solids (especially rice cereal!) until I knew what the problem was. He started solids about 3 months ago and has done really well with them. I don't mean to sound impatient about reintroducing them, I just want to have some more options for quick meals that my picky older two will eat - we are all just horribly tired of corn based everything. (I'm also seriously craving chocolate cupcakes and can't find any without rice)

How do I know if his gut has healed? Are there any signs I should look for?

[tanyalynn]

Everyone's impatient to put foods back in, it's not just you!

If you can make your own, sorghum works really nicely instead of rice. And if you need to keep rice out for longer, I'd make up big batches of dry ingredients for whatever you guys like--bread, cornbread, cupcakes, like that.

How old is your LO?

As for gut healing, well, mostly people figure out by re-introducing foods and seeing if they still cause symptoms, either the old ones OR new ones. That's the tricky part.

I need to run, maybe we can help you with ideas/recipes for easier-to-make stuff without rice until you feel ready to try it? 4 months seems sorta short IMO.

Have you seen Kathy's website? kathysrecipebox.com (hope i got it right) has LOTS of allergens. one of her kids can't have rice either iirc

[kjbrown92]

Our GI doctor said 6 months for the gut to heal and for the immune system to "re-set" itself.

We are no rice too, for DS (the rest of us have rice). It is very difficult to do gluten-free without rice (and corn too, for us) but we manage. I've found buckwheat noodles and tapioca noodles. You can use quinoa for a grain instead of rice as a sidedish. And there are lots of flours. But yes, it makes "prepared" gluten-free foods difficult. I know!! But if it's already been 4 months, then you only have a couple months left. And remember, when you do re-introduce, do a small amount at first, and check ALL reactions. When we've reintroduced to our kids, they've changed reactions pretty much every time. So what was a projectile vomit became a rashy butt became "growing pains" became bedwetting and screaming at night, etc.

[fizzymom]

DS2 is 14 months. I guess 4 months without mucusy goo is kinda short when he had 10 months of damage. *sigh*

I've never used sorghum, I'll have to try it. I'll check out Kathy's recipe box, too. I've been so frustrated partly because I had found some really yummy GF foods (prepared) that even my seriously picky DD would eat and then had to eliminate them again because of rice.

[fizzymom]

Kj brown - where did you find tapioca noodles? We have tried buckwheat noodles but DD won't eat them because they are "scratchy".

The rice gave DS2 diarrhea and made him wake up in the middle of the night screaming. I really don't want to do that again if at all possible, although I'm afraid of missing a reaction if it's something else.

[luminesce]

Originally Posted by fizzymom

Kj brown - where did you find tapioca noodles? We have tried buckwheat noodles but DD won't eat them because they are "scratchy". .

Have you tried quinoa pasta (made from quinoa and corn.) My DS likes the elbow shapes. We aren't GF but these are - and they are really tasty.

[kjbrown92]

Originally Posted by fizzymom

Kj brown - where did you find tapioca noodles? We have tried buckwheat noodles but DD won't eat them because they are "scratchy".

The rice gave DS2 diarrhea and made him wake up in the middle of the night screaming. I really don't want to do that again if at all possible, although I'm afraid of missing a reaction if it's something else.

tapioca noodles are at the Asian market. they're thready as opposed to noodley, if that makes sense.

The corn noodles are all awesome and taste exactly like regular noodles. And they have those at WF and a bunch of places on line. There were some "egg noodle" types (in shape, no eggs) that were great with stew. Of course we can't do corn either so those went away.

[fizzymom]

We usually use the quinoa-corn noodles, Ancient Harvest brand I think. We love them, but they don't work very well in soup - they kind of dissolve. I will try to find the tapioca ones and see if they will work in soup. Noodles seem to help the "Friday-night-what's-left-in-the-fridge" soup go down.

[Hedwig_Fly]

We lost rice too and it is so hard to find any prepared GF products without it. But we also can't have corn, oats, and many of the typical oils so most prepared foods are out for us.

We stopped trying to put noodles in our soup, instead we just have chicken vegetable soup - carrots, potatoes (sometimes sweat potatoes instead), onion, celery, with lots of turmeric for extra flavor.

We just tried Kathy's mint chocolate cookies (from her recipe blog) I had to change a couple things to make it safe for us but my girls really loved them. Beyond having to wait 1 hour for the batter to cool - the prep was only about 20 minutes. They would be easy to make a bunch and keep around for treats during the week.

I also found some great banana bread recipes from a thread in this forum a while back that we really love. It is very easy and even our normal eating relative liked it - but more importantly the girls and I love it - doesn't last too long around our house.

For baking I like Sorghum flour as a sub for rice. We use some buckwheat but never straight because the flavor is really strong for us. I see Kathy's recipes call for light buckwheat and I haven't checked to see if there is a difference normal buckwheat and light buckwheat.

For pancakes and flat bread we like to use garbanzo bean flour mixed with tapioca and potato starch. My husband does most of the dinner cooking and I do most of the baking - he is getting really good at making flat bread and then we make fish taco's with it - Yummy.

We also have started doing lots of lettuce wraps - which makes dinner fun and easy. Romaine lettuce leafs - scope some applesauce in and top with diced chicken - wrap it up and tasty dinner that is almost like a treat. We do the same with refried beans and ground hamburger. Sometimes there just is not enough time at the end of the day to do a big meal and we need something that my girls with eat without much fuss these two idea work well for us.

We also use lots of Kathy's recipes from her blog - what a lifesaver that has been for us. She has lots of dinners you can make in the Crockpot - they help with the shortage of time.