If you subscribe to my posts or check-in regularly, you know I am following this unusual (poorly scientifically supported) diet called GAPS.  For me, it started out solely to fix my beyond slow, almost-to-stop, GI tract that NO medicine, activity, or dietary change was helping.  Over the year, on what I call my “dietary rehabilitation” program, I’ve seen lots of improvement in my GI situation, and I have observed (incredulously) the effect that foods, even “healthy” foods, has had on my family and me in many ways I never dreamed of.  These foods include dairy, wheat, eggs, chicken, and fruit:  “healthy foods.” Although I follow GAPS in a self-experiment, my blog is to encourage awareness that food treats the body like any drug, with good and bad effects varying in different people; most doctors don’t know or adhere to this.  I wouldn’t either, was I not living it.  Food culprits ought to be considered in many more illnesses.  I want to raise awareness that diet needs to be scrutinized and a dramatic change may help where no medicine or surgery does.  I am talking dramatic food changes, and some [most] people just aren’t willing to go there. Starting with a  traditional medical doctor is the correct place to start; I go to get new symptoms checked out, even for myself.  Bad problems exist, and I don’t want to miss them because I was blinded by nutrition or alternative health treatments.  My blog is not written to be a source of medical information, medical diagnosis or medical treatment, and I am no expert in nutrition or different types of diets, including GAPS.

Today, I am continuing to publish the Kinder Family’s story about how they feel nutritional intervention cured their son’s seizure disorder.  The story is unedited, despite the fact that I would have have perhaps explained things differently or sought help in different ways.  To me, the important thing is they recognized that food matters and they were willing to change.  Thank you, Dan and Tammy, for sharing:

Part 1 of “A Success Story in Using the GAPS Diet to Stop Absence Seizures!”

Part 2:  A Success Story in Using the GAPS Diet to Stop Absence Seizures!

by Dan and Tammy Kinder

…The ENT immediately recommended surgery and stated that he does dozens of sinus surgeries every month. Not wanting to go through surgery unless absolutely necessary, we started researching and reading alternative ways to resolve the chronic sinusitis. We came across lots of information that may potentially help. We read about changing our eating habit and avoiding certain type of food like dairy which causes the body to produce excessive mucus. We read about washing your sinus cavities out with salt water called a saline nasal flush. We read about many other things like supplements and other treatments, but these two made the most sense to us. So my husband stopped eating and drinking dairy products, he continued drinking carrot juice and started doing saline nasal rinse 3-4 times a day. He found out very quickly that the nasal rinsing worked was very effective. These rinses could turn a sinus infection that would normally last three or four week in to one that would last only three or four days. A sixty-nine cent can of salt was all it took to resolve the sinus infection each time symptoms appeared. Changing what we ate eventually gave his body the ability to prevent the infections from even appearing. As time went on the sinus infections disappeared altogether. This long drawn out experience with 13 different doctors contributed greatly to our decision to steer away from conventional doctors that would only give us their best guess and the best known drug at that time to try to resolve our son’s epilepsy, which leads me to my son’s story.

At about four and a half years of age, one of my sons started having what looked like staring or day dreaming episodes. When I first notice the episodes, my husband was convinced they were only day dreams and nothing serious. In fact, the episodes were so infrequent that he did not see one for himself until several months after they started. But as the months went by, the episodes came more and more frequently. They also became more pronounced in their characteristics and duration. The length of the episodes seemed to be mostly random, but would last anywhere from a fraction of a second up to as long as about eight seconds. The characteristics of our son’s body during the episodes also seemed to change as time passed. These characteristics included half-way drooping eye lids, the dropping of his arms to his side, looking towards the ground, staring at or through the person talking to him as though he was in his own world and ignoring his immediate environment. Along with these symptoms he also experienced reoccurring stomachaches. Early in this process we did not relate these stomachs to the episodes, but looking back over the years we now realize that his body was screaming for help yet we did not recognize or listen to what his body was trying to tell us. Another symptom was that certain foods would make him feel “weird.” Sometimes he would tell us that his head felt like it was spinning or vibrating. As he got older, it was certain foods he ate that made his head have these weird feeling or his body feel strange. Sometimes these odd feeling would cause him to want to do strange things. I recall one time that he told us that his body was telling him to scratch his fingernails on the concrete. That thought leads me to another symptom that was very strange. At times, he would tell us that his body was telling him to do things. On occasion he said he would hear voices telling him to do certain things. The older he got, the better he was able to elaborate on how he felt and and how he thought certain foods made him feel weird…

Part 3 to follow soon…