new/recent info on healing from food intolerances or food chemical sensitivties?

[caedmyn]

I have three kids, 5, 2, and 3 months.  They are all sensitive to naturally occurring food chemicals called salicylates and amines.  The older two have multiple food intolerances.  I *think* the baby has issues with a couple of foods as well but I'm seriously unmotivated to trial foods at this point unless he develops worse symptoms than extra spitting up and a little bit of congestion at night.  I have problems with dairy and gluten and a few other foods as well.

I've done the whole "healing the gut" thing that was big around here 4-5 years ago when DD was a baby.  I was really, really into it, did a TON of supplements, whole food supplements (herbal infusions and that sort of thing), various whole foods healing diets, loads of probiotics and fermented foods, etc and as far as I can tell it did not one single bit of good.  We did a little bit of homeopathy and saw a holistic nutritionist, a chiropractor, and a cranialsacral therapist as well with no results.  DD has a ton of food intolerances and continues to develop new ones if I let her eat certain types of foods (particularly grains) too often.

I'd pretty much given up on healing by the time DS1 was born.  I just gave probiotics, take a few basic vitamin & mineral supplements, and eliminated foods as reactions arose.  I still feel like there is SOME answer, SOMEWHERE, some way for my kids to heal from their food intolerances (and me too).  I mostly think the food chemical sensitivities are genetic, but I'm just not seeing WHERE these genes are coming from.  DH doesn't appear to be sensitive to food chemicals at all, I'm mildly sensitive to really high levels of sals & amines.  My family doesn't have a bunch of signs of food chemical sensitivity.  DH's family doesn't have a bunch of obvious indicators either though I don't know them very well.  So maybe there's some solution there as well.

Anyhow, I'm wondering if there's new information (in the last 2-3 years) out there about healing from food intolerances or food chemical sensitivity, or possible causes of it.  Or possibly a really concise website about healing or causes.  I'm NOT interested in trying the SCD, a candida diet, Body Ecology, or other diets to supposedly promote healing.  We don't have much extra money so probably anything that involves seeing a homeopath, NAET, or anything like that is probably not possible.

[CrunchyChristianMama]

I recently read this article about it and found it quite interesting. 

I've also given up on thinking there is some miracle cure to make kids no longer have sensitivities.  My DD has Celiac, but also some other sensitivities.  I just hope she outgrows them, but I have no real hope that she will, nor am I willing to spend a ton of money trying.

[newcastlemama]

Yeah...4 years later and grains and dairy are still giving me inflammation/digestive issues ect.. and I wish that I could change that. I did GAPS for 9 months and got eggs and tomatoes back and helped stop my IBS sympotoms but could not keep going mentally/socially/emotionally on a diet like that. I've tried enzymes, nutrients, ect.... I am kind of done trying to actively heal those issues. As I am sure you know, it gets frustrating, time consuming, and expensive. My ND said that maybe over a long period of time (like 10 years) my body could tolerate those things again if I stay healthy. I don't know. I have kind of moved into acceptance at this point.

The only thing I can think of is something that WuWei on mothering has started a site about healing and opening detox pathways (something like if your liver/body could detox stuff better then the allergies could be alleviated..so it is info on how to support that process). Maybe you could get some more clues over there if that sounds appealing to you. http://heal-thyself.ning.com/       

Jen

[tanyalynn]

My kids haven't had as many food sensitivities as yours, for DD (she's 7 now), it's just gluten and dairy, and for DS (4), add cashews, chocolate, and soy.  They've had health and behavior things, but maybe/probably less than yours?  I don't know, things with them were not good/normal, but not enough for a diagnosis. 

I am still in the hoping-to-heal-relatively-fully stage (so not all my optimism has worn off, though it's been tarnished at times), and for us, the progress we've seen so far has been a combination of nutrients to support detox pathways (and sometimes stuff beyond nutrients, like DMG) and figuring out the underlying reason, for me it was my amalgam fillings (the mercury messing with me and thus the kids).  Chronic lyme seems to do very similar things to people (and a few lucky contenders get both, or one and something else), and there are other heavy metals (or light metals like aluminum) that can reduce our ability to *use* nutrients (so supplementing helps maybe some, but not as much as other people).  Mamafish9 found that her son's low mag symptoms were only relieved slightly with mag supplementation, but getting out some of the antimony he'd built up allowed the supplemental mag to work a whole lot more.  Anyway--that point was, for us, nutrients (way more than we can get from food) plus searching for root cause, seem to be the helpful things for us. 

Am I done?  No, no I'm not.  I've seen improvements in both, in terms of cognitive leaps and health improvements, but we're not done.  And although I feel a lot better, my cycles are still weird, so I'm not healthy/normal yet.  But I feel like I've got some potential (but yeah, if this doesn't mostly resolve in a couple more years, my tune could change). 

Specifically for food chemicals--Andy Cutler says salicylates are related to a specific detox pathway (sulfation), IIRC amines are as well, and between nutrients for those pathways (obviously more than average people, cause your kids clearly eat better than average) and genetic quirks that make problems more likely to show up there (I *think* SUOX is the enzyme, some people have a variant that makes food chemical sensitivities more likely, though you need other stressors at the same time).  But the search for root cause seems the tricky part, and figuring out the blocks in the way.