Category: CIRS

Could my young kids have parasites?

~ mykidshealthjourney ~ Leave a comment

Many conventional MDs don’t even consider parasites as the culprit for chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, or other bowel problems like irritable bowel. It’s a shame. Parasites even in first world countries like the USA are quite common, although most people don’t realize it. In people with chronic conditions like CIRS and Lyme, parasites are even more common.

Our Naturopath looked behind the symptoms of chronic diarrhea, constipation and foul smelling poop. We figured out our youngest had an imbalance of gut flora and parasites; actually our entire family has parasites!

We originally were alerted to possible parasites when a petite worm like critter showed up in our youngest son’s AMD Ion Cleanse Foot Bath on multiple occasions. The feet can be a point of detox or exit for critters but it rarely happens from what I understand. Here’s a link for my Ion Cleanse blog.

We’ve learned recently how parasites are actually quite hard to find. Very few tests seem to yield positive results, although many suspect that the majority of people have some form of parasite.

We found a private pay lab, ParaWellness Research, ran by Raphael d’Angelo, M.D. They do a great job and offer parasite testing on both stool and urine, and they seems to very commonly identify parasites.  They also recommend options that can be considered for treatment and they send a comprehensive reference manual which provide significant additional detail when you receive your results.

Better Health Guy interviewed and discussed “Pondering Parasites with Dr. Raphael d’Angelo, MD”. It’s worth watching.

We are still in the middle of treatment. I will update this blog once we finish the treatment.

The bowel is more complicated than just parasites. There’s bowel flora including virus, bacteria, and yeast that can be off kilter too. Healing the gut is so important to heal the whole body. Parasites is one part of it. Balancing the bowel flora and healing the leaky gut are separate topics I hope to blog more about later.

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AMD Ion Cleanse – A Helpful Tool Towards Recovery

~ mykidshealthjourney ~ 1 Comment

The AMD Ion Cleanse is a helpful tool towards recovery from chronic illnesses like Lyme Disease, CIRS, and even Autism. It is a great tool to help up regulate detoxification in our bodies and will be useful towards recovery and good health.

We started using The AMD Ion Cleanse Foot Bath 2 months ago to help support and detox our bodies. We love it! The best part is it’s safe for kids and they have substantial research behind it.

With consistent use of the Ion Cleanse, each of us notices a huge increase in energy. If I forget my every other day routine of a foot bath, I soon realize how much I am lagging; this fact has made me a believer that the AMD Ion Cleanse is a great tool during recovery and onward.

I originally found out about the Ion Cleanse through my Naturopath. It’s helpful for kids and adults suffering from Chronic Illnesses like Lyme disease, CIRS, etc. There’s amazing research by The Thinking Mom’s Revolution, which shows the benefit of using the AMD Ion Cleanse to help heal Autism.

It is my opinion that the Ion Cleanse has helped our family down regulate our fight or flight sympathetic nervous system and bring it back to parasympathetic rest and digest. It has definitely helped up regulate our bodies detoxification. It has also helped neutralize the acidic environment in our body where parasites grow best. The Ion Cleanse is part of the solution towards recovery and continued health.

Check out the video of Tyler Dahm  interviewed by The Better Health Guy. This video tells Tyler’s journey with her autistic son and how the Ion Cleanse helped heal him. It also discuses how the Ion Cleanse works to support and detox someone with chronic conditions like Lyme, CIRS and autism. Tyler Dahm is a Holistic Health Practitioner with a background in biochemistry. She is internationally recognized as a detoxification expert as well as an authority on autism treatment.

The AMD ion Cleanse website is here.

Safari

Enjoying the little things…when life is so hard

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A friend whom journeyed through CIRS herself once told me while I still was in the midst of struggling to live day by day with CIRS, “You will be recovered, just hang in there. In 3 months, you will be near healed. Hold on.” Her profound words kept me going…

I look back on things, which helped our family heal and endure the hard times. Kids were a big help. Even sick kids have moments of laughter and smiles. On the days we felt decent, we ventured out to parks or activities and made happy memories. We have lots of fun photos and smiles even during the hard times.

Listening to uplifting music and singing all together as a family can lift the spirits and heal the soul. I sang the same songs over and over during different stages in healing. It made all the difference. I would suggest The Beach Boys and Bebo Norman’s CD Ocean.

Getting out in nature whether hiking, fishing, camping, or swimming is the best medicine to heal our body and soul. The fresh air makes one feel alive again!

We told friends and family to pray for us when we had no energy to pray ourselves. We saw miracles in our healing as people prayed. It kept us going…We see now how God provided for us even in the desert times; he gave us what we needed. Friends to listen and a supportive church to walk along side us made all the difference.

Amylose Free, Vegan, Gluten Free Recipes

~ mykidshealthjourney ~ 2 Comments

Amylose free, gluten free, and dairy free cooking is not an easy feat but we found simple yet healthy ways to make scones, pancakes and even waffles.

Some of our amylose free staples at home include Organic Sweet Rice, Ancient Harvest Gluten Free Pasta and our homemade yummy scones, pancakes, waffles, etc using our amylose free gluten free flour mix. We have learned to either prepare our own foods or not eat anything since prepared foods do not fit our diet at all.

Our staple bread is a Bob’s Red Mill Recipe Almond Meal Bread.

Here’s a recipe we love and we will continue making even when we switch back to foods with Amylose. My kids love these scones! Enjoy!

Amylose Free Vegan Gluten Free Scones

2 cups gluten free amylose free flour mix (below)
1.5 teaspoons xanthan gum
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup coconut or almond cream/milk
1 tablespoon egg substitute (Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Egg Replacer works best)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 425 F.
2. In a mixing bowl, (Kitchenaid mixer works best) mix in the flour mix, xanthan gum, sugar, baking powder, and egg substitute together.
3. Mix in the coconut oil.
4. In a separate measuring cup, combine the milk/cream with vanilla extract. Add it into the mixture until you have a dough.
5. Roll the dough into a ball, divide in into eight balls, flatten each ball to about 1/2 inch thickness on a baking pan, and bake it for 13-15 minutes.

Amylose Free Gluten Free and Dairy Free Flour Mix

1 cup sweet rice flour, 1 cup sorghum flour, 1 cup almond flour, 1 cup coconut flour, and 1 cup corn starch.

How we do it: What helps keep our house healthy here and now?

~ mykidshealthjourney ~ 1 Comment

The biggest thing – We work together as a family to clean our house and it makes a huge difference. It’s not all Mom’s job, especially when we are all suffering from chronic illness. It has to be a team effort!

Saturday morning my husband and I vacuum and mop the floors and change the sheets biweekly. We do dusting, clean drapes, toilets etc on a rotating schedule. We put money aside to have a cleaner 1 time a month to clean whatever we don’t get to and it alleviates some of our stress so we can spend more time with the kids.

We use EC3 mold solution concentrate as our go to cleaner to clean our house. It simplifies cleaning and it’s nontoxic for kids and animals and there is no strong odor to it.

Cleaning our clothes with both EC3 laundry additive and an ozone water producing machine, like PureWash is important because it kills off all mold spores and mycotoxins on clothes and keeps them from following you everywhere. The PureWash is quite easy to set up attached to the laundry machine. In the longterm, you can use the PureWash by itself, but just starting off, you will need to use both EC3 laundry additive and ozone water together to clear your clothes of spores and mycotoxins. Check out my blog specific to How to Clean Your Clothes of Mold After Living in a Moldy House

We set up our Purewash with a water hose also to make buckets of ozone water to put down drains and keep them mold free. A side note: if you haven’t cleaned out all the sink traps including kitchen sink, garbage disposal, even laundry machine drain pipe and used a brush to scrub out top down of each drain, do this first. Ozone water can also be used to soak and clean toys for example. It’s useful and inexpensive.

Since we bought a Molekule air purifier, our air stays much cleaner and healthier for us. My kids and I can be in the same room as the Molekule and we have no sensitivities. Prior to the Molekule, we tried the Air Oasis, but I returned it because it could only be running while I was out of the room. I was sensitive to the ozone I believe. What we like about the Molekule, we can have guests with unique smells in our house to visit and our house can stay neutral smelling with clean fresh air. Here’s my latest review of our Molekules after 11 months of use and multiple environments. Do I Like the Molekule Air Purifier?

We have friends to thank for cleaning help along our healing journey. When my husband and I had no more energy to clean and still quite sick with CIRS, we had friends come to help clean and organize. It made all the difference. It’s important to ask for help.

For more info related to cleaning and CIRS check out my previous blog Do you need a perfect house to heal from CIRS?

Do you need a perfect house to heal from CIRS?

~ mykidshealthjourney ~ 5 Comments

We did not need the perfect house after all in order to heal from CIRS. Here’s our journey and what helped us clean our home. The moldy pipes were the biggest problem.

By the time we got diagnosed with CIRS we had moved out of the CIRS inducing moldy house. We live in a 10-year old rental house though, not ideal but in good condition. From onset of diagnosis with CIRS, my husband and I continually asked ourselves whether we could stay in our current house. The house itself had 10 years of dust and grime, no major water damage but lots of small stuff like moldy pipes and a slightly moldy bathroom shower.

Here are a few big things we learned in the process of cleaning and healing from CIRS.

We started feeling healthier in our house after beginning to use EC3 mold solution concentrate to clean our house. What’s awesome is you can wipe down surfaces using one cloth and kill mold spores, mycotoxins, and bacteria along the way. It simplifies cleaning and it’s nontoxic for kids and animals and there is no strong odor to it. We clean our house and cars using it. EC3 is a game changer when it comes to cleaning and getting healthy from CIRS. You can fog rooms with it also and minimize your work.

PIPES!!! Our pipes were moldy! 10 years of use covered the pipes with loads of gunk and mold. How did we figure out the pipes were a HUGE problem? As we started recovering from CIRS for example, I noticed funky smells and felt weird after washing dishes. I couldn’t figure out why until we realized the kitchen pipes and garbage disposal were VERY moldy. We cleaned out all the sink traps including kitchen sink, garbage disposal, even laundry machine drain pipe and used a brush to scrub out top down of each drain. Boy, our house smelled so much better after doing that. It was at that point I started to become biotoxin negative on my VCS score. Our house had become healthy for us!

It’s important to get rid of old couches, rugs, chairs, etc. As we started down the journey towards cleaning and healing we realized our stuff was super dusty. Our couch for example was 15 years old and looked beautiful but held loads of dust. When we removed it from our house, it started smelling more neutral. The same happened when we got rid of upholstered reading chairs, rugs, etc. My new favorite sofa is the Knopparp from Ikea. It has a washable cover and it’s made of all metal and doesn’t off gas.

De-cluttering our house and sorting through old dusty stuff is important for recovery too. We originally had photos everywhere as I love photography and pictures of our kids. Those photos though held years of dust and also made it very tough to keep things clean when I had so little energy. We took down all the photos and it was one thing which led our house to be more neutral smelling. For now, we laminated photo collages and placed them on our kitchen table so we can enjoy photos and have them be washable and healing for us.

We love books but we realized we must get rid of old books, which store loads of dust. Our plan is to scan those books with a book scanner so we can eventually read them. For now, our kids have a new selection of their favorite books but we just keep them in plastic bins to cut down on dust and they have made a new routine of it.

We made our rooms a healing respite. We took out our pictures and clutter which needs to be cleaned and dusted regularly. We still have wood dressers but not much else besides a few books held in plastic bins. Our closet holds stuff in plastic bins to keep dust down and help decrease the need to clean as regularly.

A few other suggestions I will follow up with in additional posts like How we do it: What helps keep our house healthy here and now?.

Cleaning our clothes with EC3 laundry additive and  PureWash by Greentech, an ozone water producing machine is important because it kills off all mold spores and mycotoxins on clothes and keeps spores from following you everywhere. We set up our Purewash with a water hose also to make buckets of ozone water to put down drains and keep them mold free. Read my post How to Clean Your Clothes of Mold After Living in a Moldy House for more information on using EC3 laundry additive and the Purewash.

A Molekule air purifier has helped us keep our air clean and healthy too. My kids and I can be in the same room as the Molekule and we have no sensitivities. Prior to the Molekule, we tried the Air Oasis, but I returned it because it could only be running while I was out of the room. I was sensitive to the ozone I believe. What we like about the Molekule, we can have guests with unique smells in our house to visit and our house can stay neutral smelling with clean fresh air. Here’s my latest review of our Molekules after 11 months of use and in multiple environments. Do I Like the Molekule Air Purifier?

I wrote this blog about 6 months into our journey after diagnosis with CIRS. At the time, I didn’t realize how much our environment beyond mold, affected our health.  I now realize, 1 1/2 years into CIRS treatment that a perfect house and toxin free environment is not absolutely necessary, but it sure helps with healing. I wrote Environmental Impacts on Healing from CIRS and Lyme Disease.