Back on Biomeds

I stopped giving Jonathan his supplements the first week of December.  I had decided to change Drs. last year and took him to a new nutritionist thinking that one of the missing links was related to nutrition.  I am thankful because I learned that he has elevated copper in his hair which explains his walking in circle and lack of attention without being hyper (he does not have ADD per the ADD test), but he cannot stay still and the nutritionist explained that that was related to high copper and that the only way to bring it down is to supplement with zinc and remove fructose from his diet.  I started him on a grate zinc supplement and removed all fructose, but he continues to walk in circles.  So there is more to it than what this nutritionist told me.  In addition, the nutritionist told me that I needed to take away most supplements because they are synthetic and the body needs natural supplements from foods and not from pills.  It sounds great, but it is very hard to do in practice. She wanted me to put Jonathan on fermented cod liver oil (which I did for 4 months, but he was suffering too much), green grasses (which was impossible to get him to drink), probiotics, zinc and calcium.  She took him off everything else and gave me a list of foods to feed him.  I don't have time to cook, so this added stress to my already stressful life.  I started this new regime in October of 2010, and by December I as burned out. It wasn't working and I was frustrated that I didn't have a good Dr. to help me with the missing link.  So I threw the towel and stopped everything.

Unfortunately, removing the recommended Yasko supplements was not the best thing for Jonathan.  It affected him negatively. He started to behave badly at home, at school, he started to get very frustrated all the time, lost his temper very easily, could not play with other kids well, could not relate unless the conversation was around video games, was very aloof, etc.  Unfortunately, I was unaware of how severe the situation was at school until February 3rd.  When I met with his teacher and school director to discuss his progress, they explain how bad his behavior was since the middle of December.

That was the push I need to get back to biomed. I started him back on some supplements on February 4th, particularly probiotics and yucca root to calm down his yeast and ammonia.  2 weeks later, he seems soooo much better.  He is getting to school a few minutes early so he can jump for a few minutes before class and that has also helped tremendously.  The director told me that he has made great improvement.  We still need to work on more, but he is improved in just 2 weeks, so that is encouraging.  I decided to change Drs, and found a great one. I am hoping to get an appointment in March. I need to get back to the DAN!/Yasko biomedical world.  Out of everything I have tried, this is the best approach for Jonathan.

We enrolled him this year for the first time in Baseball League team and we were terrified that with this change in his behavior he was not going to do well, but thankfully he embraced it well.  We are terrified, but we want him to start having more "neurotypical" activities.  He had his tryouts this week and did well for his first time.  He could not catch the ball, but he hit it pretty the ball.  I am sooo proud of him.

We also noticed that his obsessions with video games and the computer were too much and decided that as part of this change (reintroducing biomeds) we would take them completely away to try to detox him.  His brain would not stop thinking/dreaming about the video games.  It was too much.  Nothing else in the world mattered or could make him happy.  Whenever we asked him to take a break, he would count the minutes to start again.  It was getting insane.  We hid away all video game devices and the computer this week and we told him that he needs to earn stickers to play video games during the weekend (10 minutes per sticker). At the beginning of the week it was traumatic. But today he was great.  He counted how many stickers he has and decided he is going to play on Sunday (not on Saturday) so not to waste his precious 17 stickers.  He has been writing on his journal, he has been reading his Wimpy Kid book (he is on the 5th one), he is doing a Ninjago Lego all by himself, he has been playing pretend with Vanessa, etc.  He doesn't seem to be as obsessed with Mario Brothers stories as he used to be.  Don't get me wrong, I am sure he is still thinking about his games, but his expression is more relaxed.  He is working hard to get stickers and he is starting to value them.  I told him that he could chose between the Wii, the DSi, the iPod Touch and the computer and he could use the time of his stickers for one or all of them as long as he didn't go over the time (which we will monitor closely) and he was very calm and rational and said that this weekend he will use them all with the Wii.  Baby steps until he is able to just play for a while without making video games the center of his world.  I was starting to get really concerned that he was missing out on a lot of things by not being able to focus on anything other than those darn video games.  They are like a drug.