When Liam was about one, he started to get really stuffed up in his nose and turned into a mouth breather. We saw natural doctors and were advised to cut off dairy and wheat, which at the time sounded like something I was not ever able to do.
So I cut down, but not off completely and matters got worse.
At his second birthday his stuffiness got so bad that I worried about sleep apnea and his general well-being. We saw an ENT specialist as well as an allergist. According to the ENT we should have scheduled surgery right away (she wanted to remove his tonsils and adenoids).
Liam was not suffering from infections of any kind, he just happened to have large glands and obviously something in his environment caused them to fight something that he was exposed to constantly so they never got a chance to shrink in size.
I made another appointment with Dr. Lawrence Palevsky and followed his advice 100%:
- cut out wheat of any kind completely
- reduce any bready, doughy stuff (breads, crusts, pretzels, crackers,...)
- cut out dairy of any kind (milk, yoghurt, cheese)
- reduce processed soy to a minimum (tofu, soy milk, soy yoghurts and puddings,...)
- minimize processed foods
- minimize sugars
Within a week of changing our diet (I put myself on the same diet since I was still breastfeeding), he got 90% better. The open-mouth breathing during the day stopped, the snoring got much, much better and you could just see how much healthier he looked.
Now that he's 4 years old, his tonsils and adenoids are still on the large side and he still sleeps with his mouth open, but his glands are "keepers" and don't need to be removed.
I will post ideas and recipes how to incorporate this kind of diet into a normal family's life on this blog.
