Salicylates and healing

In fall of 2009, Hannah and Audrey muscle tested for sensitivity to salicylates. If you aren't familiar with this particular food chemical, it's in pretty much everything. Berries, spices, apples, peppers, tomatoes, almonds, potatoes...the list goes on and on. At the time, Audrey was covered with horrible eczema and Hannah was having multiple accidents a day at 4 1/2 years old. We were pretty desperate to try whatever we had to try. And so this became a way of life. There was this random list of foods that we just didn't touch (along with all the other biggies like gluten, dairy, soy, corn...) And since I didn't want to make multiple meals, we all pretty much ate that way.

Things improved enough to keep me motivated to avoid those foods. Hannah would have accidents for two days after eating too many salicylate foods. Audrey would have an instant scratching attack. It was hard, but what choice did we have?

So here we are, a year and a half later. Their health never got much better than shortly after going off all those foods, which was mediocre at best, but I felt trapped. If they were sensitive to those foods, I didn't want to feed them something that would make them sick.

When I read the GAPS book, I was interested to see that she addresses salicylate sensitivity (and the even more intense phenol sensitivity, which I suspect Audrey tended toward as well). Her take is that avoiding all those foods, while it may alleviate symptoms like eczema, in the long run causes other problems. You end up cutting out so many foods that you end up with nutrient deficiency. Essentially, you are reacting to the antioxidants in those foods, the very nutrients that also carry toxins out of the body, sometimes through the skin which results in eczema.

It would be easy to feel guilty about all of this. After all, I kind of became "that mom," the one who wouldn't let her kids eat anything because of how they would react. I never wanted to get like that. But when your three year old is covered in scabs from head to toe, you tend to do extreme things that you normally wouldn't. We felt we had no way out. These experiences are the source of my determination to do GAPS.

Based on the advice in the GAPS book, I am slowly reintroducing things we have not eaten in literally a year and half. I added black pepper and paprika to our homemade breakfast sausage that I am poaching in broth in the morning. I added whole peppercorns to my meat stock this afternoon. I put some small pieces of red bell pepper in our turkey vegetable soup last night. It feels...really strange. I have been in protection mode for so long, trying to keep those "evil" foods that caused my kids to be sick, out of our diet. And yet those foods we have avoided probably hold the very nutrients we need most right now.

Thus far, Hannah has had no noticeable reactions, and seems to perk up when I tell her she's eating something she couldn't have before. Audrey has been scratching some, but it's minor and she hasn't broken the skin. I'm feeling heavy-hearted about this whole thing today, but determined to trust God's guidance on this path.