bonnie/lisaRe: Re: oxypowder/heavy metals/and some comments about diet

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Bonnie, you bring up some interesting things and so I'm going to chime in with *** marks within your post, so anyone interested, read thru till you see my signature... I have been wondering about heavy metals with my 3.5-year-old. ..her pediatrician suspects that her constipation was triggered by her vaccinations (he's not the pediatrician who did the vaccinations) . ***** interestingly, the vaccines that contained the mercury were never recalled and so they stayed out in distribution. Some of them only recently expired. The vaccines that used to contain mercury are now manufactured with very significant amounts of aluminum. Interestingly, aluminum overload can bring about constipation.Also, I have a thought about diet I thought I'd share with the list...maybe I've mentioned this before, but we have had better luck with reducing fiber than with increasing it. ***** my dd wasn't a big veggie eater, however, I do know what you are saying about sometimes reducing rather than increasing in that for her, there is definitely a level of too-much-not-good for her, too. So people should remember that more isn't always better...fiber is good, up to a point, and so they have to play around with the amount. It takes time. By reducing insoluble fiber, and for example, giving her white bread (we're using a good quality white bread made by Natural Ovens of Manitowoc) instead of whole grain bread, we've gotten her to the point where she has three bowel movements a week, instead of one every ten days or so... ***** That's great news. I will check for that bread in that we too are a wheat bread family. We also seem to see improvement if she has no vitamin supplements at all. At first we thought the problem was the iron in her multivitamin. Then I

found that even the all-natural fruit/veg vitamins I was giving her (basically just vitamins A and C) seem to bind her up a bit. **** again, very interesting! I can't think of why this would be the case, but very interesting! Perhaps she gets enough vitamins through her food and the excess was somehow interfering. I am still giving her primadophilus and papaya enzymes, though. **** That's great to bring up the papaya enzymes...for those that don't know, papaya contains a substance that is a "digestive enzyme", i.e. helps us digest our food better. When we digest food better, there is less of a chance for bad bacteria to thrive in the gut, and so more healthy bacteria means better stools and less constipation.Another bizarre thing: we've been allowing her some cheese lately. Previously we banned all dairy products. But adding a bit of cheese hasn't made her constipation worse...at least not

so far. (It doesn't make it better, either--just seems to be unrelated.) ***** That's what we see now, too, in that with the things that my dd needs to keep stool soft, like oxypowder, a little epsom salts, supplemental colostrum with olive leaf extract, celery with nutella on it, and those little mandarin oranges/satsuma oranges-- that she can eat cheese and still be OK. I don't know what to conclude from any of this. Maybe it just means that in my DD's case, her constipation is not diet-related. At one point, I read an article in a medical journal that concluded that chronic, functional constipation in children is usually not diet-related. But the article proceeded to recommend that doctors push fiber even though the study they were doing had shown that fiber didn't help. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll go back and see if I can find the article again. **** Yes, if you do find the article please send it through because

that sounds very interesting! It's all like layers of an onion to me... but I don't know what is at the center of the onion... is it genetics? Is it environmental insults such as exposure to metals, or vaccines, or too many chemical contacts? But it does make sense that if a child has chronic constipation, then diet COULD help some kids, because that is removing ONE LAYER of the onion, so to speak... but for other kids, the diet may not make that big of a change because there could be some other layer that needs to be removed before that one. Since people respond uniquely to medications and substances, it makes sense that food issues could be the "magic bullet" for some children, and have no difference for others, making it such that when a formal study is done, that there isn't a "statistically significant response" to dietary changes. It's one of those things that is probably very individual. Great when it works for the

child, and if it doesn't, then cross it off the list and keep going. Leave no stone unturned.Finally. This will seem really odd, I know. We've been experimenting with giving my DD some flower essences to help with the emotional turmoil of going through all this. ****** Flower essences did help my dd with some nighttime anxiety issues she had been having. They are hard to explain but they are worth a try. Similar to homeopathy... it hasn't been the magic bullet for my dd, but there have been definite stool improvements with homeopathy. For some kids, particularly the younger they are and the newer the problem, a homeopath can pick a remedy and have it be successful fairly soon. I really wish I knew more about it...I have a book on it, and I look at all the remedies for constipation and I see a little bit of my dd in so many of them. Sorry for the long post! I hope some of this is

helpful to someone... **** Don't apologize. It was very interesting and I, too, hope it helps someone! It's always, ALWAYS great to hear when a family is able to sort of "figure out" what is contributing to their child's constipation and when they are able to get some success. We all share in that joy! W __________________________________________________