Results Of The Feingold Diet List For Babies Who Are Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome
There are some diets which have been distributed often for a baby with developmental problems such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome. The GFCF and Feingold Diets are among the most admired for this context.
Modifying The Paradigm
I want to compliment the developers of these diets for modifying the paradigm about what might be the root of the world-wide growth in the incidence of developmental issues for babies. For a long time our modern doctors could not understand that the things a person consumed could alter that person’s developmental health. These diets are quite popular in the communities concerned about Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as other developmental problems and these diets are exhibiting that they are positively impacting the lives of these children.
These diets succeed for some children with important improvements in a range of symptoms. For other children there is less improvements. And, for others there is no improvement at all from these diets. One of the ongoing questions is why are some dramatically helped by these diets and others are not?
Isabel and I have been working with children with developmental problems for decades. We are now concentrating in this area of restarting the developmental process and getting it back on track. One of our advancements has been an appreciation of the relationship between sensitivities and intolerances and developmental issues.
Sensitivities and Intolerances
We all have some things around us to which we are sensitive, or of which we have an intolerance. This is not like an allergy where we have a forceful and fast immunological response to some thing. This is much more a subtle defensive response we have to something in our environment over time.
If someone is allergic to bee stings, they have an strong and quick reaction to being stung by a bee. They can have swelling or even enter life-threatening anaphylactic shock. But, consider the possibility that someone has a sensitivity to, or an intolerance of, a deodorant soap bar. They may not have a reaction to it until they use it for many days, and then they may develop a minor skin rash as the response because of that sensitivity or intolerance. If you determine that this skin rash is related to the deodorant soap bar, you can stop using it and the rash will go away.
Developmental Problems
We discovered that a baby with developmental difficulties, such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, have mixed environmental factors to which they have these defensive responses. And, it is the collections of these multiple responses which seems to be at the root of these developmental difficulties. The collections of these defensive reactions results in the body shutting down functions which are non-essential for immediate survival.
This defensive response process evolved in a less contaminated time and the body only needed this defensive reaction to last for a few minutes or hours while the person walked or was carried away from the things to which the body was responding. A few minutes of a conservative, defensive response was usually enough for offending thing to be over the hill. So, if the body shuts down some functions not needed for the process to get away from the offending environmental factor, it would not have an impact on the long-term survival of the person.
Shutting Down The Developmental Process
The problem is that our world is much more contaminated now and children with developmental difficulties are much more sensitive to contaminants than when we evolved these reaction processes. If the baby has these kinds of collections defensive responses to something that is eaten at every meal, the defensive responses can never end. If the child has these collections defensive reactions to the laundry detergent or fabric softener used in the house, the child always has residue of those chemicals against the skin, so the reactions can never stop. Imagine if the child has an ongoing series of these kinds of sensitivities and reactions and the child’s body never gets to stop having these responses.
One of the functions commonly shut down in these compounded defensive responses is the developmental process. If a child’s defensive response includes shutting down the developmental process, and the defensive reaction never stops, the developmental process never gets to move the child forward toward maturation. In this case, the child does not get to develop.
Casein Free And Feingold Diet Lists
Here is where the Feingold and Casein Free Diets come in to play. These diets provide a list of restrictions of things to which many children with developmental problems are responding defensively. So, the children with developmental issues who have a sensitivity to the items restricted by the diet will show some dramatic results. The children who have an individual menu of intolerances which is aligned with the diet will benefit from it. For those children who try the diet, but whose set of sensitivities are not aligned well with the restrictions of the diet, there will be little help.
For this reason we applaud the significant contributions the Gluten Free and Feingold Diets have made in our understanding of developmental difficulties. They help us all understand that the children with developmental diagnoses are reacting to some list of things in the environment and we can help these children get back on track, if we eliminate their access to those things on their list.
These diets are on the right track, but there is an assumption that some particular environmental factors are causing the developmental difficulties. The difficulty with this assumption is that the defensive responses these children have is about their own personal list of offending factors (not a generic list). Their own list probably will not include all the restricted items of the generic diet. Each child needs to be using a diet which is specifically tailored to their own individual list of intolerances.
Sensitivity Evaluations Is The Key
What we have developed is an approach for testing each of our client children for their own specific menu of intolerances. This gives the parents a precise menu of things to eliminate from the child’s environment. So, instead of a generic diet plan which might (or might not) have the items a specific child needs to avoid, we give each parent a precise list of things their child needs to eliminate.
Much More Than A Diet List
Our testing technique includes anything that the child eats, breathes, and touches. This includes more than what the child eats and drinks. It involves testing the child’s reactions to medications, household chemicals, and everything in the child’s environment. Our thorough testing technique will help you develop an appropriate plan to clean all of the offending things from your child’s environment.
What Happens When Your Child Stops Having These Defensive Reactions?
There are many different developmental problems in children. Each has their own set of signs which are recognized as the set of symptoms of that specific diagnosis. Many children have so many of these symptoms that they have many diagnoses, because their own set of symptoms cross boundaries from one diagnostic category to another.
Because of this symptomatic and diagnostic complexity, we cannot envision which symptoms a child will move out of initially as a result of living in an environment where their offending factors have been eliminated. But, our experience is clear that when children enter and stay in an environment free of their offending environmental factors, their developmental process kicks in and their developmental process begins to move them forward through their missed or next developmental steps. You know this approach is being successful when you see your child start moving through developmental stages.
We encourage our clients to establish a developmental baseline of their child with our free Developmental Checklist before they start working with us. We encourage them to use this same checklist, monthly, to track their child’s developmental progress as they continue.
By tracking the child’s developmental movement, parents can see that their child has restarted the developmental process. This forward movement means that the child is losing the symptoms which were used as the basis of the child’s diagnosis.
Intolerance Re-Testing For The Long Term
After some months of developmental movement using our process, we encourage parents to re-evaluate their child’s sensitivities. Many of the offending things will have stopped producing defensive responses, and the child can slowly re-integrate those things. Many other things will still cause those defensive responses and they will need to stay on the list for this child. Which items can be brought back and which items need to stay restricted is individual for each child.
It Is Time For Your Child To Re-Engage The Developmental Process
If your child has developmental problems such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, come by our free, private social network for parents. Talk with us and each other about your child’s situation.
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