IF YOU HAVE A CHILD WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES PLEASE READ!!!

“Virtually nothing is done in medical school to teach students that nutrition may often be the most important element of diagnosis and treatment. Consequently, they begin their practice unaware that food allergies are the primary cause of many childhood ailments and that adequate nutrition is the basis of good health. This ignorance compels them to use drugs in the treatment of diseases that could have been cured with a simple change of diet.” How To Raise A Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor, by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.

America is the most unhealthy and overweight nation in the world. America consumes 70% of ALL (legal) drugs produced in the world. Most Americans are trapped in a cycle… abundant toxicity, foods low in nutrition, antibiotics, vaccinations, foods high in sugar, creating a weak immune system. Then we get sick and go to the Dr. and get ANTIBIOTICS. Further weakening the immune system. Since becoming introduced to our local Maximized Living office I have learned so much. I am so grateful that Dr. Matt took the time to come and speak to our church one Wednesday night. It was literally an answer to prayer for me. I had a wreck when I was 16 years old that probably should have killed me. What it did do was misalign the top of my spine. Though I had been to the chiropractor, amazingly they had never seen that. I was suffering increasingly difficult to ignore neck and back pain, bad headaches, major allergy and sinus issues, tinnitus, chronic fluid in the middle ear, along with increasingly severe digestion and hormonal issues. A thermal nerve scan and Xrays revealed that I was in phase II degeneration. Phase III is beyond repair. My family goes regularly to be adjusted since and we have seen a lot of issues we used to struggle with, disappear.

Having your spine in proper alignment is only one piece of the puzzle though. We must reduce our exposure to toxins; environmental toxins (mold, lead, mildew), toxins in food, medications & vaccinations, toxins in household products and cleaners. Some things we can change easily enough. After learning about the ingredients used in my basic household cleaners I rejoined Melaleuca and ordered their Home Conversion Kit. For $100. I discarded all the toxic household cleaners and replaced them with wonderful Melaleuca products. They are environmentally friendly, economical and long lasting. Best of all, THEY WORK!

I changed our diet! This was more tricky. Especially on a strict budget it can be a real challenge to come home with enough food for a week, that is healthy, that the kids will actually consume! After all, no matter how healthy it is, if the kids won’t eat it.. then you’ve wasted your money!! I buy organic as much as possible, Costco helps me afford to do this. I clean my fresh fruits and vegetables when I bring them into the house, before they get put in the basket or in the frige. I “shop the walls”. Meaning, the stuff in the store that is best for you is all around the edges of the store.. the meat, the fruit, the vegetables, the milk, the cheese. I avoid processed foods. This means that I have to cook.. although I do try to keep more simple things around like cans of soup and chili. I read the ingredients! LESS IS BEST!! The ingredient list shoudn’t be two miles long. Also, IF YOU CAN’T READ IT, DON’T EAT IT!! Did you know that 4 of the first 5 ingredients in popular “grain” bars are SUGAR?! READ the ingredients!

Dried fruit, nuts, dark chocolate, applesauce, peanut butter, cottage cheese, almond butter, honey, tuna, sardines, corn tortilla chips, yogurt, granola bars (read the label!), fresh fruit, raw veggies, jerky.. are great snacks instead of boxes of cookies and bags of chips. Drink unsweetened or lightly sweetened (w/ cane or organic sugar) black or green tea, 100% juices, V8, whole (preferably organic) milk, vitamin water. Now if you make these changes as I did, when you have THREE teenaged sons in the house, it can be difficult indeed. Money was tight and we lived on things like ramen noodles, saltines and vienna sausage. :-( Oh my! But I put up with the gripes and whines and eventually their addiction to these foods diminished.

Now, nutrition is VERY important to all of us but to the child with learning difficulties, ADD, ADHD, Autism-like symptoms, etc..; nutrition is VITAL. Medicating was not an option for me. Even the few times I even allowed my mind to entertain the notion of medicating, the Lord would put the thoughts to a screeching halt. NO, NO, NO. It just screamed in my spirit. I used to pray Lord FIX my son. The Lord said to me one day, he isn’t broken. He is how I created him to be. Now what we want as parents, especially parents that commit to their children to the extent of teaching them at home, sacrificing “their” life, their free-time to invest in the lives and futures of their children, we want our children to be the best that they can be and we realize that they aren’t perfect. They all have strengths and weaknesses. It is a major thing for a person to be able to recognize their weaknesses, isn’t it? To admit-at least to themselves-that they have some flaws and then to do whatever they can do to strengthen those weak spots. Prayer changes things. God’s word, applied to our lives, is a healing balm. Enough rest, our spine in proper alignment & good nutrition (minimizing processed foods full of chemicals, sugar and dyes)is a fabulous place to begin….

I was having major digestional issues and after much prayer and research I pinpointed my problem. A gluten intolerance. Gluten intolerances are hard to pinpoint without extensive blood tests, which is expensive. Whether you have an intolerance or an allergy to gluten.. the “cure” is the same.. STOP EATING IT!! While I was researching this I was stunned at how many symptoms of Gluten Intolerance my son had as well. From birth.. physical as well as emotional and learning difficulties.. brain “fog”, lack of memory, on and on the list went. We did choose to do a few blood tests with him but the results were borderline.. inconclusive. Without a pretty expensive and uncomfortable GI test and more blood tests, we could not know for sure. Regardless, as I said before, the “cure” was the same. DON’T EAT IT!! So, my son and I decided together to go GLUTEN FREE and just see how we felt. Going gluten free is a difficult feat. You will have to avoid processed foods and every single loaf of bread, cookie and snack, almost every cereal you’ll find at the grocery store. Gluten free bread that’s actually edible is hard to find. I was so grateful that I discovered at my health food store a bakery that makes delicious GF bread that will ship it to me. NO more pizza, which the most difficult thing for my son to loose. Unless you go to Pizza Fusion, they do have a very good GF pizza. No more flour. This was very difficult for me as well until I found www.glutenfreemama.com. This is a regular mom who has been on this journey, couldn’t find a good flour to cook with so she experimented until she found some great blends that she sells on her site. Since our Wal-mart has remodeled, they began to carry several GF products; cake mix, pancake mix, cookies, and prepared meals such as burger helper, pastas, etc.. Now I placed the GF “helper” next to the other helper and the ingredient list was half as long. So, I typically keep a box of it on hand to make if I am pressed for time. Just for kicks I compared a Publix brand organic ketchup ingredient label to a name brand non-organic label. I was amazed at the difference! Not only are organic products made with ingredients that have not had hormones and pesticides applied to them, but they are actually made with less ingredients and BETTER ingredients. For example cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup!

THE RESULTS- No more hours in the bathroom for me. No more cramps and no more tears! Praise the Lord!! I was also amazed that the one night I thought I’d cheat and eat a piece of pizza, my allergies went nuts and I hacked, sneezed and snotted for about 12 hours. There’s obviously some type of wheat allergy going on as well. In my son, he was like a totally different kid. I am not exaggerating, in about 10 days time he was so different; so patient, memory so much better, mannerism totally different. There was a humnanness about him, a gentleness that I had literally never seen in him EVER. There was such an obvious change to the whole family. He hugged me one night on about day 10 GF, told me he loved me and thanked me for putting up with him. I laid there in bed with tears flowing down my face, so grateful the Lord had finally gotten me to this point and also so sad it took me so long.

It is a really hard feat, especially for a teen, to do this. It will take some dedication and cooperation if you have a teenager, but it can be done. Don’t take my word for it.. go to your local library and check out some books on the subject. LEARN AND PRAY ABOUT IT! If you have any questions, I would be glad to attempt to answer them for you, if I don’t know the answer then I’ll say, WOW, I don’t know!? I didn’t have much help/encouragement on my GF journey personally and you can survive without it.. but it is sure nice to have some occasionally!!

BLESSINGS!!!