We've never had success with baked goods, neither commercial nor homemade. This point was driven home when John reacted to Walker shortbread cookies on two separate occasions. The ingredients are: wheat flour, butter, sugar, and salt. That's it.
I can't believe these cookies are fermented the way bread is. There couldn't be any hidden amines or glutamates. In fact the most MSG-sensitive people on Earth can eat these cookies (I checked). Is there something else in these cookies, not listed on the package, or does wheat change chemically when it is baked?
In an effort to crack this conundrum we made our own oatmeal cookies using essentially the same ingredients. (We replaced some of the wheat with oats.) Pure as can be, plain and simple. The cookies baked for about 10 minutes. They didn't ferment; they didn't burn. I told him to eat "a lot of cookies", and he happily obeyed. I wanted to know whether baked wheat was a problem. Well I found out.
The next day I had to hold him down in his room for several hours, so he wouldn't trash the place, or harm himself or others. He didn't threaten anything animate with the scissors, but I took them away, just to be safe. This was probably the worst reaction I'd seen in four years.
"Is it big today?" I asked. For a brief moment he was able to step outside himself and answer my question. "Oh Daddy, it's huge!" Then he went back to crying and screaming.
If you've been following this story from the beginning you know that several years have elapsed. John is becoming a big strong boy. If we don't figure this out soon, I won't be able to contain him.
All right, let's review. Gluten seems ok; he eats pasta and pancakes all the time. Dairy is ok; he eats some ice cream almost every day. Sugar is ok; homemade lemonade is his favorite drink. Either something happens to wheat when it exceeds the boiling point, or salt is a problem. We've known for quite some time that MSG is very bad, but I always suspected the G, never the S.
At this point in the narrative you don't know John's race, because up to now I didn't think it was relevant. However, African Americans, (as opposed to African Nationals), have trouble eliminating excess sodium. This is a lasting legacy of slavery, where unnatural selection favored black individuals who could retain salt, despite great heat, dehydration, and deprivation. Now these "survival" genes find themselves at odds with our 20th century western diet, which is extremely high in salt. The black community is unusually susceptible to hypertension and stroke, and a low sodium diet is recommended for this segment of the population, and perhaps for the rest of us as well.
What if a small percentage of these African Americans have additional symptoms that result from an electrolyte imbalance? I've seen patients with improper sodium or potassium levels before; it isn't pretty. Symptoms can include rage, paranoia, hallucinations, depression, lethargy, you name it. So I wonder - is there a connection?
I did some math; the cookies that he ate contained about 1,300mg of sodium. That's a lot, but, he usually does well on Aunt Jemima pancakes, which contain almost exactly the same ingredients, with the same amount of sodium. We ran this test again, just to make sure. Six pancakes in the morning, containing over 1,000mg of sodium, and he's fine! Flour, oil, sugar, salt. What's the difference? It has to be the method of cooking. This is not unprecedented. Amine-sensitive individuals know very well that cooking methods can create amines. But I've talked to these folks; they can eat these cookies. Apparently baking produces some other chemical, not yet discovered, that drives my son insane. What could it be? There is no book I can read - no web site I can visit. This seems unknown to science.
Here is another data point. Baked sweet potatoes are fine, but if I slice them up and add a little oil, and bake them on a tray in the oven, i.e. homemade fries, the demon returns. There's something about baked oils, something very bad. And all this is separate from his MSG sensitivity.
Unsaturated oils might oxidize under high heat, however, butter is highly saturated, and should stand up to baking. I don't know what went wrong with our cookies, but I guess we're going to keep him away from baked goods for a while.
We tried low salt, as described above; he only got worse. Then we tried no butter and low fat; no good. Next we tried gluten free, for the zillionth time; and he's even worse. The only thing left is sugar, and as if in confirmation, the strange breath is back. I haven't smelled that in a long time. Apparently candida (or something) has returned.
In retrospect, this is not surprising. We decided that fruit, by itself, was ok. In other words, natural salicylates are not an issue. So go ahead, "Have all the fruit you want. It's healthy. It's good for you." Well it's even better for the opportunistic yeast.
Once the candida takes hold, you almost have to start back at square one. We put John on a low sugar diet, and I'm reading all those yeast books again.
What to do about starch? Some books claim carbs are carbs, and should be avoided altogether. Some books say starch is different, and doesn't really promote the growth of candida. A few articles say starch is good, and patients should eat pasta and rice etc. The idea is that the good bacteria utilize starch better, or faster, or more efficiently than the yeast, hence they out-compete the candida. Well that's the idea anyways. I don't know whom to believe, and I'm sure the answer depends on the individual circumstances presented by the patient. The particular strain of yeast, the remaining intestinal flora, the precise makeup of the diet, and the patient's immune system.
We're permitting a moderate amount of starch, simply because we have to. John would never tolerate the 100% meat and veggie diet that is the first line of defense against candida. He has to have his noodles and his chips. So on we go, running a low sugar, moderate starch, glutamate free diet.
One thing's for sure, the homemade cookies were a disaster of unprecedented scope, and all those ingredients seem safe in other contexts. So once again I started looking at the chemistry of cooking.
The maillard reaction became my prime suspect. Protein and sugar combine, at high heat, to make an assortment of compounds not found in nature. John could be reacting to one or more of these compounds. To learn more, type "maillard reaction" into google and find hundreds of web sites. Here is a <place to start>.
Butter promotes the maillard reaction, and he's always had trouble with butter cookies. He also reacts to sliced sweet potatoes, but not baked sweet potatoes, and not sliced white potatoes. I guess the extra sugar in the sweet potatoes combines with the oil and protein and oxygen to produce maillard compounds.
| Oh man, it's the sugar! You've gone around and around it for years. You've ruled out everything else. Seems like every three months you talk about carbohydrate reactions, and then you back away from it. You've read all the candida books, they're in your reference section at the end, but you don't want to believe it. You've smelled the byproducts of candida on his breath and skin on three separate occasions spanning a period of two years. That's the smoking gun! Don't go off on yet another tangent looking at maillard compounds. You've been on enough tangents already. |
A candida patient can have a great day, a great week, even a great month on a high carb diet. Sometimes the yeast colony is held in check, for reasons that we'll never know. And sometimes it explodes into a teeming infestation, and even modest amounts of sugar can spell trouble. My "evidence", good days here and there with lots of sugar, is circumstantial at best. Contrast this with the unequivocal fact of the fermentation products on his breath, so concentrated that even a human can smell them. (My dog must think I'm an idiot.) Case closed - court is adjourned! This does not mean candida is the one and only issue in John's past present and future, but with his headaches and asthma and nasal allergies cured by other dietary protocols, candida represents our last great battle, and it's as serious as any of his prior maladies.
Keep in mind, I've got advanced degrees in technical fields. I wrote, single-handedly, the <Math Reference> web site. I mean I'm very intelligent, and well grounded in the scientific method. So why do I have to have somebody else read my journal and render a diagnosis for me?
Apparently none of us are truly objective about ourselves or our children. We have too many desires, fears, and biases. Remember when I quoted Richard Feynman, saying science keeps us from fooling ourselves? Well Richard forgot to mention that we all have to do it together, and watch each other, and correct each other's mistakes, and compensate for each other's biases.
So why am I so afraid of candida? Why do I run away from this conclusion every time? Why did I have to shoot all the way around the PT boat, saving sugar for last? Why can't I get past denial and bargaining, and jump straight to acceptance? The reason is probably obvious to you, the dispassionate reader, but I am just beginning to understand it. Only now has it been dragged from the dark recesses of my subconscious into the light of day.
I'll do anything to avoid the candida diagnosis because I don't think John can follow the prescribed, ultra-low-carb diet. I even said this much in the last section. Allow me to quote myself.
"We're permitting a moderate amount of starch, simply because we have to. John would never tolerate the 100% meat and veggie diet that is the first line of defense against candida. He has to have his noodles and his chips."
Well guess what. He can't! At least not for a while. The good news is, candida usually abates, and most people find they can eat more and more carbs, but only if they follow the low carb diet religiously for the first six months.
So, now that I'm awake, and can smell the coffee, how can I keep John on 60 to 80 carbs per day? How?
There's something new in the 21st century, something that really pisses me off! It's the school system. They insist on serving snacks at mid morning, and snacks in mid afternoon. When I was a kid we ate lunch - that was it. After kindergarten we were done with naps and snacks, thank you very much. A diabetic girl in my class had scheduled snacks, and everyone else understood it was a medical thing. We didn't clamber and whine and complain, we just went through our school day. We ate lunch - lunch that we brought from home - that was it - that was enough. Well not any more!
In addition to these two scheduled school-day snacks, there are surprise treats when somebody has a birthday, and more treats for good behavior. If the class reads a certain number of books they all get a pizza party. If they do something else it's an ice cream social. What ever happened to stickers? This obsession with food makes my life, and John's life, five times as difficult. Follow along as I do some math.
Suppose John eats 80 carbs per day, amongst breakfast lunch and dinner, and perhaps a dessert. Well that's not too bad. Serve 20 carbs for breakfast, 20 for lunch, and 40 for dinner + dessert. If dinner is meat and vegetables, you might have room for some fruit, or maybe even a small pastry.
Now let's solve the same problem with everybody grazing all day long. John has to eat 7 times a day: breakfast, morning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack, home from school snack, dinner, and dessert. He can't skip any of these mini-meals because his classmates or his sisters are eating right next to him, and he's not strong enough to sit there and abstain. When others eat, he's hungry. I don't blame him - I'm the same way. So the breakdown is basically 10 carbs per event.
Lunch is almost manageable. He can take some meat and vegetables in his lunch box and heat them up in the microwave. But what kind of portable, tasty snack can I give him, that will compare favorably with the cupcakes and fruit and chips that everybody else is eating? I have to come up with two school snacks every day, and he doesn't particularly want the same snacks day after day.
As I write these words, I really can't think of a thing. Ok, I can think of one low-carb snack that he likes, fresh red pepper strips. And if I put a lid on the number of crackers, possibly crackers and cheese. Two snacks, that's it. That's all I can think of right now.
With all that said, I'm sure you understand why I would do anything, try anything, to avoid the candida diagnosis. It was all being done subconsciously, without my knowledge, but it's plain as day if you read this blog from the beginning. Well I've hit bottom, and I can't avoid candida any more. It's there, and it must somehow be dealt with. I know what must be done, but I don't know if we can do it. I don't know if John can do it. We need a long list of tasty 10 carb meals and snacks, and right now I'm coming up with perhaps 7 meals and 2 snacks. Yes, I've read through the menus in the various yeast books, but they're not very helpful. They assume you eat three meals a day and that's it. If only life were that easy. The only snack ideas in those pages are carrots and celery. Hello! John isn't going to eat celery sticks while his classmates eat cupcakes. It ain't gonna happen.
My apologies for driving this point into the ground. I'm just not sure how we're going to proceed.