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My 8-year-old daughter had been showing increasingly disturbing emotional and behavioural problems. I had finally reached the point that I knew something had to be done. However, I felt uneasy taking her to a counsellor, because when she was fine, she was the most kind, well-behaved child imaginable. If I took her to see someone on a good day, they would think I was nuts!
At the end of July, we spent a week visiting my parents. It was the most difficult, heart-wrenching week of my life. My poor child would scream, throw things, hit, tremble, and beg to die. I swore that I would find out what was wrong. I felt in my gut that there was some chemical imbalance in her brain. Before an episode began, I learned to recognise the signs in her voice and in her eyes. I don't know how to describe it, other than to say that I could tell that my dear, sweet child was in there, and was tortured. My mother agreed that she almost seemed to be in an altered state. I came home and called her doctor, and began researching everything I could on the internet. I am so thankful I found your site! What I read there made sense to me like nothing I had come across, or that the doctor could find. I ordered your book, and felt that she could be sensitive to salicylates. Her doctor agreed and suggested we try the Feingold diet. Basically, we have eliminated all salicylates, artificial colours, artificial flavours, and some preservatives. She has been on the diet for just over two weeks now, and the change has been miraculous. My wonderful child is back! She is happy, easy-going, and extremely well behaved. She, too, is thrilled. She misses her salicylates (most of her favourite foods were salicylate fruits), but avoids them with a passion. We've had a few slip-ups, and when she comes out of it, she's all the more determined to stick to her diet. As a side note, at my parents' house, she drank orange juice several times a day, and ate more strawberries than I could count. I'm convinced this is what caused such a severe reaction. The doctor has tested her for every condition and imbalance she could think of, and all those tests were normal. It frightens me to think where her life would have headed if we had not found the root of the problem. All the counselling in the world would not have fixed a chemical problem in her brain. |