Yeast overgrowth.....treatment, PLEASE help ! !!

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I'm sorry I find following fad diets to be unwise. I want proof before I pull a great precentage of what my child is willing to eat out of his diet. The studys I've read have found this is not effective unless there is some underlying disorder. I'm not willing to put my very fragil child threw what would be to him a very tramatic change in order to test a unfounded treatment any unfounded treatment. If this is your choice in life style and you've found it helpful thats wonderful but you must remeber that we are all not willing or able to do so and if we were for most of us it wouldn't work as well as it has for you.

I just want to clarify a bit my position on DAN!. When my daughter was regressing (and her regression was hard!) I called up every doctor I could. The only neurologist with a waiting list less than 5 months long was a holistic DAN! neurologist. She elimnated just about every food there was from my daughter's diet. She diagnosed my daughter as having Leaky Gut Syndrome. I didn't see or hear the letters PDD-NOS until I went to the DOE for IEP and asked the doctor to write something up. The doctor actively told us it would be unwise to seek mainstream medical advice. She referred us to a DAN! dietician for whom finance and reality don't exist. This dietician went through 20 minutes describing to me how to milk almonds before I reminded her that she had elliminated almonds from our diet. Eventually the two of them concocted the idea that what we really needed to do was STRIP my daughter of her intestinal flora and fuana and rebuild it from scratch!! !! At no point would either one of them explain why they wanted to put my daughter throught this!! !! It was even more ridiculous in that they came up with this advice after the regression had stopped and my daughter was IMPROVING!! !! !

There was no question that the diet stopped my daughter's regression. There was no question that when given forbidden foods my daughter regressed. We gave her a bagel and within 8 hours she went from a very articulate girl who with lots of creative play to losing all language, growling like an animal and "running" about the house naked on all fours bashing her head against the wall needing to be held to prevent injury to herself and others. (again, I digress and I'm abit off on the time sequence, this is the first time I've really written out and/or tried to explain the entire experience)

Whenever we asked the holistic neurologist or dietician for advice they would eliminate a new food group. I can not tell you how much of our savings has gone down the drain to pay for these people and the pills/supplements they supplied us with. Ironically, we had been saving our money so we could buy a farm and grow our own food. Goodbye to that dream.
Again, I digress.
As I said, I made appointments with any and every doctor I could get a referral to. In 2 months (from day of total freak out) the child psychologist came. He, serendipitously, happened to have celiac. He explained EVERY ONE of my daughters strange behaviors as being a reaction to gluten and a child's way of expressing the pain and flasing lights caused by gluten induced migraines. In 3 months we met with a very very well respected mainstream gastroenerologist. We went back on gluten for a month so he could run tests for celiac, non-celiac gluten insensitivity, and a bunch of other stuff. It turns out she is non-celiac gluten intolerant and that that is a fairly common condition. In 4 months my apointment with a mainstream neurologist came through. She diagnosed my daughter as apsergers and said the whole diet thing was voodoo. Somewhere in all this we saw a mainstream allergist, who did a skin prick test and said my daughter's not allergic to anything. (He did find out that I am allergic to just about everything )
As of right now we are not seeing either the DAN! neurologist or nutritionist. I don't have mauch nice to say about either of them, other than that they were right that food was causing my daughter pain and they gave me alot of valuable information so that I could begin to experiment for myself. My husband thinks that they are "the last resort for the wealthy". I believe that they are sort of zealots, they truly think they can "heal" autism.
I know, from my own child, who is all I can speak for, she was a bit "different" and "a more difficult baby/child" from the start. I chalked up her hyperactivity/spacing out/inability to sleep as being due to sugar. I baked a lot of very high fiber whole grain low glycemic high gluten content food. The "healthier" I got more problems she had until things came to a head. (She was begging me to cut her eyelids off with the nailclippers in the brief interlude between cyclic gutteral violent tantrums)

At this point, I really don't know what to think, which is why I searched the net and eventually came to Wrong Planet. We put eggs back in my daughters diet and she seem to tolerate them fine. We tried raisins and she regressed.

again, I digress, I'm sorry. This post seems to have gone from me trying to give my opinion on DAN! to my need to tell my own story. Back to DAN!

From my initial reading of your first post, FD sounded like she is scared her child is regressing. She sounded like she beleives the gut-brain theory. She sounded like she is trying diet changes to figure out the problems with her child. I can relate to this. Diet is clearly an issue with my child and we have yet to find a doctor who can explain all of our questions about diet. The doctor who came closest and who was best able to answer my question was the DAN! doctor. This doctor, however, soon went "off the hook" and my husband and I came to no longer trust this doctor. My advice is to find a doctor, any doctor! Explain your concerns to a pediatrician, gastroenterolotist, dietician, mainstream neurologist pyschologist, etc. Diet can be a very powerful thing, it is also very complicated. There are a lot of vitamins, supplements, digestive enzymes, etc. Some of these fall into the "Can't hurt, could help" catagory and some are the opposite. Trust your own instincts. You feed your son every day and you witness what the food does to him. If you are sure that something in the food is giving him a negative reaction then find a doctor who can help you figure out what is doing harm, what can help, and where you can look for answers. I would not advise seeing a DAN! doctor without getting second opinions from mainstream doctors, but if you TRULY beleive that what you are seeing is related to yeast then that is pretty much along the lines of a DAN! doctors specialization, as far as I can tell.
I'm sorry this post was so long. I'm sorry to take over another person's post with my own issues, I guess I needed to vent more than I realized.
I'm sorry if I offended anyone with my opinions on DAN!, everything is based solely on my experiance, I'm sure there are doctors out there who are both better and worse than the ones I found.
Good Luck FD - Keep us posted. I truly do hope things work out for you.

PenguinMom, THANK YOU so much for sharing all that. You've gone through it, and you make really good points about what is - and isn't - "real." I'm just piecing together a million things I've heard from others - my son has never been so severe that we've gone any of those routes - because people seem to need to help sorting it out.

All of this is still in a discovery phase, medically, and that can be really tricky to sort through. I think your story - every digression included - helps makes some sense of it all.

I have contacted the only DAN practitioner who lives anywhere near to where I live. He is not taking on any new patients at this time ! !! ! I asked could they recommend anyone else, and they gave me a name of someone elso who was not a DAN, they said she could guide me through an elimination diet.

I asked would this person do any kind of test to see if I even needed to do this diet.......and she said no!! !! !

The reason I was starting the diet, is because it was something I have often thought about, but been so caught up in early intervention etc. to even have the time to consider it properly. There is nothing about his behaviour or anything that I was desperate to change, he just seemed to have some of the symptoms of yeast overgrowth.

After careful consideration with all the advice given, I think I will just keep up with the probiotic (that can only be good anyhow!!), and pay another visit to the allergy clinic that he has been to before.

I know my son has no allergies (had blood test), but this clinc has identified the foods (intolorance) that affected his health, I guess I didnt think they would be 'qualified / experienced' to identify the foods that may be affecting his AS!! !

His 'regression behaviour' has settled down now, Im not even sure it was a reaction to the diet change at all ! !! We found out early in the week that he also has verbal dyspraxia / apraxia of speech, I have been quite distracted with this information, he ALWAYS picks up on when I am upset, or stressed etc. and his behaviour changes. When I thought of this I made very special time with him and me, let my husband tend to the other kids for a few days, and he is back to himself now!! !

Sometimes I just never know whats going on!! !! Thanks everyone for your support, and advice, it really means allot xx

FD soo happy to hear things are going better. I guese I need to be clear when I say doctor I'm never talking about a DAN doctor they just never cross my mind for alot of reasons. I've found my pediatricain to be most helpful when I explain why I want some tests run. I had a stool test done on my self a few months ago while they were tracking down the cause of my IBS looking for yeast over growth among other things so it can been done by a gp I just droped my little brown bag of you know what off at the hospital lab to get tested not a big deal. Find a doctor willing to work with you and hear what your saying not one thats looking to break your bank. You'll never guess what the found when the ran all the tests for yeast, gutten trouble ect, ect other then the fact that I'm a no latosic kind of gal and that I already knew they found other then a lot of stress nothing was there. I'm other wise fine so I took back-up yoga starting taking long walks and having my husband pull alittle more weight. Bingo I felt better. I've had my Jake tested as well not a darn thing other then like me shocker he's a milk free sort of kid.I guese my point is what works for one person won't work for others the next person or persons that rolls out the wonder cure wagon on me is getting a weggie.