As of tomorrow, Gabe has been on the SC Diet for a whole month. Time flies when you're having fun, so they say. ;)
We are really starting to get in to a routine with everything and it is definitely getting MUCH easier. It is still very time consuming compared to GFCF, but that is just because you are constantly making something from scratch and there are only so many hours in the day. It's been nice that Mike and I have both been home off work the past two weeks and Gabe has been out of school for break. We even ventured out of town to visit Mike's family in Cincinatti for two days. Getting brave aren't we? lol
We still haven't been seeing much progress other than the improved bowels that I mentioned last time. No need to go in to detail on that again. I will spare you. ;) We realized two days ago that we were using Sea Salt that was Iodinized and had a bunch of added illegal stuff (dextrose, Silicon Dioxide, etc.). We didn't even think to check sea salt for added sugar. We definitely will be checking everything more closely from now on.
We also got a HUGE lucky break by getting in to a local DAN doctor who is wonderful. She usually has a 9-12 month wait, but since we have already been seeing one of her colleagues she got us in the very next day for a consult. It was so our lucky day or something. Her name is Dr. Mary Lou Hullsman. She recovered her daughter from autism a few years ago and has personally done the SCD diet for her family. We really like our current DAN dr., but his son is only 3 and they haven't tried SCD yet due to food issues. So, speaking with Dr. Hullsman was awesome since she could really relate to our questions specifically about the diet. She also noticed that Gabe's pupils were dialated and that is usually a symptom of adrenal fatigue. We bought a supplement from her office that helps with AF called Cytosyme-AD. Hopefully that is a big key to helping Gabe. We'll see I guess. She also said that we need to resume all of Gabe's probiotics that we previously had him on before starting SCD. We thought we needed to remove them since they weren't SCD legal, but she said that he really seems to need them to kill of the yeast. The diet alone isn't really getting rid of it as fast as we need it to. She thinks that if we do that we will really start to see great benefits from the combination of the diet and probiotics. We had him on ThreeLac, S Boulardii, Pro-bio Gold and Nystatin to fight yeast before and now he is only on Pro-Bio Inulin Free. It was really nice to hear that the supplements won't affect the diet enough to have to stop taking them. Gabe is clearly a kid who needs probiotics to fight bacteria off. It's funny how having a fresh set of eyes and ears can help you that much. We were really, really happy to have gotten the chance to meet with her. I would really recommend always getting a second opinion every so often from another DAN dr. if you can. I know we will in the future!
I will keep updating on our progress as much as possible. Hopefully I will have more exciting things to post soon with our new plans. :)