After several pieces of homemade, failsafe pear pie (similar to apple pie), I noticed a strange smell on John's breath, and, to a lesser extent, on his skin. I couldn't quite place it, but it was correlated with his bad behavior. My wife, who has a better nose than I, locked onto it right away. "He smells like he drank a six-pack last night." And indeed he did - fermented grain. Bear in mind, he is 7, and has no access to alcohol. Returning to the Crook Book (and others), I found a dozen cases of Drunken Man's disease, wherein candida converts the sugars we eat into alcohol, and dumps this byproduct directly into the blood stream. Needless to say, this has frightening consequences for a 7 year old's brain and liver. Maybe he wasn't just acting drunk - maybe he was drunk.
Much to his disappointment, I put him back on a strict candida diet, as described in The Yeast Syndrome. His recovery was instantaneous and miraculous. The next day he was just fine, as though nothing had gone wrong. His teachers couldn't believe the difference, and neither could I. In the future we will have to be more careful about carbohydrates, especially simple sugars.
NFF: For two years John's microbial colony waxed and waned, with no discernible pattern. No doubt the microbes were responding to the overall carbohydrate levels in his diet, and a dozen other variables that we were not tracking at the time.