Week 4

Another week of Brain Balance is behind us.  Whit doesn’t believe me when I tell him it’s an hour long.  He always refers to it as a half-hour.  He asked me on the ride home Friday how many BB sessions there are total (36), and how many he had done (11).  He said, “Already? Oh, I really like it there.”  So that is good news.

In other good news, I’m not bothering with that diet.  I took the Metametrix results to the pediatrician (Dr. Lye at Eastover Pediatrics) along with BB’s paper explaining nutrition and “leaky gut.”  He called Christopher and me a couple of days later with his thoughts on the matter.

First he reminded us that years of research backs pills to alleviate ADHD.  And that Brain Balance was developed by a chiropractor (we all enjoy getting in that little dig ;-) ).

The important part, though, was concerning the IgG test itself.  That test, unlike the IgE test for allergies, isn’t standardized.  There’s no accepted or proper protocol (“gold standard”) for administering and reading the test.   Every lab can do it its own way.  The results therefore don’t really mean anything.  (Actually there's a lot of reliable web sources saying this same thing, now that I'm looking.)  Dr. Lye said if we were concerned that there’s an allergy, we should take Whit to an allergist.  An elimination diet only makes sense if there’s an allergy.

He also told us that the “leaky gut” theory, (that undigested proteins are seen as foreign objects by the blood and thus elicit an immune response) is from the 1980’s, and that it’s never really been substantiated. 

The take away from the conversation was that, even though the Brain Balance exercises won’t do any harm, there’s no real research to suggest it will do any good either.  Where there is a potential for harm would be following a strict elimination diet and risking his nutrition.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to try to feed Whit less cheese and more legumes.  I might even try the sloppy joe recipe that the BB nutritionist emailed me, and definitely some of the other recipes that came with their pack of paperwork.  I’m also open to the supplements and vitamins they want him to have.  Inevitably they’ll ask me how the diet is going, and I am going to say “fine, thank you.” Hopefully Whit will keep his mouth shut about bagels and ice cream.