Welp, we're doing "okay" these days. Gavin is doing a lot better then when I first started blogging. I've met a lot of helpful people along the way too.
He's now at a balanced daily meal intake. Which is awesome news!
His favorite snacks are veggie sticks, organic cinnamon toast rice cakes, and sweet potato chips. We're still working on meats. I think we may have to just eliminate meats form his diet completely. We've tried beef, chicken, turkey, and grass fed beef. They all seem to be irritating his eczema.
Schedule:
Breakfast: Rice waffles and up until a few days ago turkey sausage :/
Lunch: Rice english muffin or rice bread with vegan butter or melted vegan cheese
Dinner: Black rice burger patty
One more thing I just learned yesterday... just by switching from iodine salt to sea salt will help with eczema flare up's!
He does get flare-ups but they're "controllable" now. We've also figured out that he doesn't have any food allergies anymore. It's all eczema related. When he breaks out after eating a food... it's his eczema that gets irritated. It's not a food allergy. I never understood the differences between a eczema breakout and a food allergy breakout but now I can explain the differences. Now when we're out in public we get asked, "Does he have eczema?". When before we got the stare down and wondering looks. That just means he looks better! :)
Gavin recently had a Food Allergy checkup appointment. The doctor changed his skin ointments from steroid to an antibiotic. Along with an oral antibiotic. I'm pretty much over all the medications so I'm back to trying something more natural.
Several months ago we took Gav to a Chinese Doctor. This was when we first started this journey so we were extremely desperate for answers. The doctor knew it was food allergies and eczema. He went on explaining how eczema is caused from the inside of the stomach. He said, "You have to clean the inside of his stomach before the outside starts to heal." Makes since, right?! Anyways, so he gave us some natural herbs to mix in water... that didn't work. It was awful! It tasted horrible and after giving it to him through a dropper he threw it all up. Complete waste in time and money.
That being said, I've been doing much research on how to help eczema flare ups. I recently went to Natural Grocer's to do some shopping. The cashier gave me some info on a blog she follows www.holisticsquid.com she told me about the girl's daughter having eczema and she has an e-book out to help you cure eczema completely.
After reading the Holistic Squid's blog it got me doing MUCH research over "gut cleansing". It all came together... remembering what the Chinese Doctor told us and the Holistic Squid blogger. I highly recommend you all to do some research on "how to cleanse your gut". I've learned a lot. One, my son is lacking zinc. A low amount of zinc can cause skin irritations, skin infections, and eczema flare ups. My son is not getting any zinc foods in at all because of his diet. Therefore, we decided to put him on a natural zinc supplement (photo below). The food allergist asked us to put him on D3 since he's not getting much sun rays too (photo below).
Although I was a bit skeptical about putting him on D3 since he didn't mention anything about zinc we went ahead and put him on D3 because I did my research on that too. Since he's indoors 90% of the week he is lacking vitamin D big time.
He still drink's his Neocate Jr. formula but he'll only have 1 bottle a day (nap time) and it isn't enough to fill vitamin D and Zinc. Here's the vitamins we purchased. You can find them at your nearby natural food store. We give him half of the Zinc supplement and 1 drop of the D3 (literally one small drop). Be sure to look up how much vitamin D and Zinc your child can have or ask your pediatrician.
We plan on having his blood drawn to see what all he's lacking
He was eating breakfast :)
Another tip of advice for those struggling with food allergies... Pinterest is the best for finding recipes. Vegan recipes can be pretty tasty and doesn't have to be expensive. I use to make excuses but once you find a few recipes you like you can just alternate them. I sometimes take my portion of lunch or dinner from his... adding what I want to mine like dairy cheese or cow's milk. It's a routine now.
