TED is Dead.
December 10th, 2008 by ariana
Time for a little game of catch up!
The day after thanksgiving (oh the irony!!) after 2.5 weeks I gave up on TED, the Dr. Sears recommended Total Elimination Diet.
One reason was that I just wasn’t seeing the kind of improvement that justified the threat to my milk supply and the lack of calcium and overall good nutrition. The second reason was that I consulted a medical intuitive.
Yes, desperate times call for desperate measures!!
Now I don’t know where you fall on the skeptic vs. believer scale about psychics etc, but as you will see from this and my soon to be published posts about NAET I am an agnostic. If it works, I believe it.
This particular woman came highly recommended by our cranial sacral therapist who I trust very much so I was SOOO excited before our phone call.. finally there was someone who could just tell me what foods were bothering Jasper and even tell me which reflux meds he should be on..
HA! Biggest waste of $125 ever. And I don’t say that because I’m a skeptic (I once studied to be an astrologer, so I’m definitely open minded) but rather because she turned out to be so wrong it’s almost comical.
According to the psychic lady (whom I will refer to by her initials JW) Jasper’s entire problem is a candida overgrowth caused by the antibiotics he was given at birth.
Ok, it doesn’t take a medical genius to know that was a possibility which is why i’d been giving him probiotics (with no improvement) since he was about 3 weeks old. BUT, it sort of made sense to me because there was one weekend I deviated from TED because I was afraid my milk supply was dying.. the things I ate had none of the 8 major food allergens but they were sweet. And he did seem to get a bit worse after that, so I thought maybe she could be on to something.
When I asked her about his reflux meds she said that he would react better to zantac and zegerid better than prevacid.
She also said that lifelong Jasper’s three “remedies” would be yogurt (full fat so that there is little milk sugar to feed the candida yeasties), parsley and lemon which supposedly keeps the yeasties at bay.
She then there was no particular food that Jasper couldn’t tolerate. In fact, she said that I should be eating a huge variety of foods, particularly goat cheese. (This would later raise some red flags).
Yes, I was free to eat dairy again at last!!
The following day I went of TED with gusto. I also started drinking mother’s milk tea to get my supply up to where it had been. But something was bothering me..
If all of Jasper’s problems were yeast/candida related, why did they not improve with probiotics? Why haven’t we ever had thrush? And why would she say it’s ok to eat cheese which is a big no no on candida erradication diets etc.?
Then, two nights after being of TED, Jasper had his worst night EVER.
Writhing, screaming in pain all night long. He woke up and pooped and I saw a burn like red rash on his butt in a circle which I knew was an “allergy ring.” Hi also developed this eczema patch on his right cheek:
These were the first outward physical signs of what I had been suspecting all along. Jasper DOES have a food allergy! But to what.. ?
Was it the mother’s milk tea I had been drinking a bunch of to get my supply back up (fenugreek has been known to cause gassiness in babies)? Was it that we had started him on prevacid about a week ago? I still didn’t want to believe it could be anything I’d eliminated on TED because why would his symptoms not be gone on TED then?
Still desperate I called up my pediatrician’s wife who is a NAET practitioner and decided to bring Jasper in for testing. Our journey into NAET is the subject of my next post, but for now, I want to post the answer to a question I received from Jessica who asked
“What did your typical daily diet look like on TED?”
Even though TED didn’t work for us, I’m happy to help others get through it. It’s not as bad as it sounds really, my indecisive nature actually enjoyed not having to decide what to make for dinner each night or what grocery items to shop for! The other benefit is the weight loss.. which can be profound.
So to answer your question Jessica, my typical diet was:
Breakfast: Rice & Shine cereal with Rice Milk and cane sugar or Erewhon Crispy Brown Rice (the Gluten Free one) cereal with Rice Milk.
Lunch: Leftover’s from Dinner
Dinner: My favorite dinner was Sheltons ground turkey (found in the freezer section of my health food store) sauteed in olive oil. When the turkey is brown I would put in one chopped zucchini and one chopped yellow squash in the same pan so it gets the turkey grease.
In a separate pot I boiled some white potatoes and mashed them in that same pot. I would add some olive oil, salt and some plain flavored rice milk. On top of the mashed potatoes put your turkey and them moisten the turkey with the rice milk as well. Top off with zucchini and squash.
It’s surprisingly yummy, like a crustless pot pie!
The other staples were turkey hot dogs, burgers and lots of potato chips and rice rice rice and the occasional yam and/or bakes squash.
I hope that helps anyone about to embark on TED. There is a recipe thread here that also has some ideas and particularly this post here that got me started.
Good luck, I hope it works better for you than it did for us!
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You’ve just confirmed one of my fears which is that we’ll be in treatment forever! :) It’s too bad you have to go through all the basics to get to the “real” problems right? I mean it makes sense but it’s a little frustrating. I’m going to power through until B vitamins (so I can eat whole grains with no problems) and then just eat the foods we’ve been cleared for to evaluate the efficacy for us.
I hear you on the bank account though!
Ariana–why do you think we’re on a NAET break? Hah! We need to shore up the bank account for a while before we could continue. ;) I’d say between srping an dearly summer we had 8 or so treatments. We stopped after one of the vitamins…I can’t recall which! The main goal is his animal allergies (I think). He is severely allergic to cats and very allergic to dogs–and we have two beagles. I say “I think” because you never know with NAET. It can create a snowball effect and once you harness the power to heal, the body can start healing on it’s own.
Wow Jules, I’m so glad to hear it worked for Mikey!! How many treatments did you have to do? So far we’ve done egg and calcium. It’s just so $$$!
Mikey was in NAET treatments all last spring and part of the summer to remedy his many allergies. We had a wonderful success with it, especially his egg allergy. I can’t wait to hear how your experience went.
Sorry, should have linked that! “Nambupidrad’s Allergy Elimination Technique” http://www.naet.com/
What does NAET stand for?
Poor mommy and baby J. I cant wait to read your next post and see how its all coming along.
I got a reading a few years ago as a gift. It was fun, but like you said once I got home and started thinking about some of the things, I was glad it wasnt my money used. But still fun to do!