My first daughter—an amazing kid, a delight and blessing to our family, and I can’t believe how grown-up she is.😭❤️We celebrated her 14th birthday yesterday with sushi for dinner (her request!), chocolate chess pie for dessert, the game Apples to Apples, and the movie Avengers. 🍱🥧🦸♀️
If you had read this caption to me 10 yrs ago I wouldn’t have believed it possible!
I consider her today to be a true overcomer. Back then we were in a difficult season where we could barely get her to eat “normal” food. She routinely complained of her stomach hurting, and her skin was in a constant vicious cycle of eczema flares. At rock bottom, after literally not growing for a year, she was officially diagnosed with “failure-to-thrive.” 😢
This after years of regular, ongoing consults with pediatricians, allergists, dermatologists, and pediatric gastroenterologists. And us following their advice.😱
The question always begging was: what is CAUSING all of this and how do I NOURISH my kid??
As knowledgable and qualified as they were in their respected fields, the doctors we were seeing just couldn’t pin that down.
So I kept researching and started digging down the path of a holistic approach and traditional foods. For the first time it began to register that maybe what she needed was a protocol that activated her healing from the inside out.
Are you going through a similar challenge right now?? There’s hope and light at the end of the tunnel, and I’d love to encourage you with my daughter’s story! 🙏🏻❤️
Bottomline, here are the first five steps we took in her journey to purely thrive:
1. We cut out inflammatory foods as much as possible for about 6 months, including the biggest culprits--gluten, dairy, and sugar--and replaced those with gentler, more nutrient-dense foods.
2. We focused on consuming high quality protein, especially the kind rich in zinc and iron, such as grass-fed beef and liverwurst.
3. We swapped out heavily processed cooking oils (which are often genetically modified and high in inflammatory Omega 6 fatty acids) for quality, traditionally healthy cooking oils, including coconut oil, lard, ghee, and beef tallow.
4. We added in fermented foods for probiotics, specifically lots of kombucha and sauerkraut.
5. We addressed her anxious feelings (which we realized was a huge factor for our sweet girl with the miserable tummy and skin) by practicing calming and relaxation techniques recommended by our integrative physician.
Keep reading for the detailed, inside scoop!
But before I go on, an important disclaimer: I‘m NOT a doctor or a medical professional, nor am I qualified to diagnose or treat illness. What I’m sharing here is simply our experience and the resources that helped us. My hope is that it affirms you in your journey and encourages you to advocate for your own health and that of YOUR loved ones! ❤️
When we first started down this path, our particular medical history and health concerns were so complex that we had to seek out a trained, medical professional for recommendations. Thankfully, I had wonderful crunchy friends who helped us find an amazing integrative/functional medicine doctor.
And here in detail are the five things we did:
1. We cut out inflammatory foods as much as possible for about 6 months, including the biggest culprits--gluten, dairy, and sugar--and replaced them with gentler, more nutrient-dense foods.
We also ditched corn at this stage after learning through a series of tests and lab work that Amelia’s system couldn’t tolerate it. It’s one we suspected, as corn tends to be a high-inflammatory food for most people, but it took testing confirmation for us to get serious about dropping it from our routine. (What can I say—we LOVE popcorn and corn-on-the-cob! 😂)
I replaced wheat flour with almond flour, rice flour, coconut flour, and a whole host of other gluten-free flours. Who knew there were so many options out there?? My mom has celiac disease, so we were familiar with the gluten-free routine. Even so, it felt like a whole new wide and wonderful world of flours I never dreamed existed.
Through this process we learned that while Amelia couldn’t tolerate cow’s milk, she did fine with sheep milk. It was something offered by our trusted local dairy source, so we started getting a small amount of sheep milk, as well as sheep milk yogurt and cheese. When you can get it, sheep milk is a highly nutritious option...but expensive! We also supplemented with unsweetened coconut milk, almond milk, and cashew milk. (Thankfully we were only avoiding peanuts at that point.)
With regard to sugar, early on Amelia showed particular sensitivity to foods high in fructose. For a short period of time we even had to take fruits like apples and grapes off the table---her gut inflammation was so heightened that her body just couldn’t break down those sugars in a healthy way.
Further testing by our integrative practitioner revealed additional food triggers, including some you wouldn’t expect, like chickpeas. 🤷♀️
Point being, when your gut is inflamed, you’re at the mercy of an immune system misfiring in all directions, generating antibodies for foods that in and of themselves are generally considered healthy otherwise. THANKFULLY, we learned that when you give the body a rest from the irritating foods, the immune system has a chance to reset and heal. So going without some of those foods is only for a season!
2. We focused on consuming high quality protein, especially the kind rich in zinc, such as grass-fed beef and liverwurst.
Healing from the inside out is as much about what you put IN as what you take OUT.
We had to pay special attention to our breakfast habits, making sure to begin each day with good protein. Protein helps stabilize and maintain healthy blood sugar and cortisol levels. When either spikes it creates stress on the body, exacerbating inflammation.
Zinc is also a critical player in maintaining healthy skin as well as a healthy immune system overall, and if you're deficient, as Amelia was, it's even more important to make sure you're eating plenty of zinc-rich foods.
3. We swapped out heavily processed cooking oils (which are often genetically modified and high in inflammatory Omega 6 fatty acids) with quality, traditionally healthy cooking oil, including coconut oil, lard, ghee, and beef tallow.
We used (and still use) a LOT of coconut oil! I'm a big fan of Tropical Traditions cold-pressed, gold-labeled variety, and the most budget-friendly option we've found is to purchase the five gallon pail when it goes on sale. Ghee, lard (sourced from a local, beyond-organic farm), and beef tallow (also from a trusted source) are other fantastic options that we've routinely used.
4. We added in fermented foods for probiotics, specifically lots of kombucha and sauerkraut.
Kombucha is actually very economical and simple to make--you just have to be willing to learn how and stick with it! I started making it routinely so that we always had gallons at our disposal for drinking!
(These days we've outsourced and purchase it from a friend.)
5. We addressed her anxious feelings (which we realized was a huge factor for our sweet girl with the miserable tummy and skin) by practicing calming and relaxation techniques recommended by our integrative physician.
These included deep breathing exercises, certain kid-friendly yoga poses, and detox soaking baths. The whole detox bath thing was really difficult for Amelia at first because her skin was so raw and sensitive, but we stuck with it and soaking baths with Epsom salts, Lavender, and Melaleuca became one of our go-to soothing therapies.
If you've made it this far, can we be friends??
I realize this is a LOT to swallow. We had to take it one thing at a time, make incremental changes, and stick with it consistently. I'll be honest--I tend to have an all or nothing personality. But for my family I give more grace, and if we could stay on plan at least 85% of the time, I felt like that was making progress. And after all, it's PROGRESS we're after!
So you're probably ready to hear the RESULTS of this undertaking... After just two weeks of being gluten free, we noticed a tremendous difference in Amelia's appetite and demeanor: she started eating ravenously again, and her complaints of stomach ache dramatically lessened. She began putting on weight and over the course of the next year shot up in height by about four inches, which after what we'd been through was AMAZING. The skin recovery was a longer process, and we had to make several tweaks along the way; but after a few months of nutritional changes we began to notice her skin eruptions subside. And the instances of "angry skin" gradually grew less and less.
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