Our Backyard Homestead

Cause and effect

After watching our daughter's health decline last fall, we once again sought to find the root cause of her many complaints.  We followed up with the gastroenterologist right after Christmas and received the diagnosis of glucoamylase deficiency.  Extended family were still in town and that night we had a fun family dinner before saying farewell.  Just a few hours earlier we learned that our daughter lacked the enzymes to properly digest starchy foods like potatoes, but she had been eating them her entire life so why not allow one more evening before setting to work on a starch free diet.  Literally within 15 minutes of eating a VERY small portion of potatoes, she was crying with severe knee pain.  As terrible as I felt witnessing my child suffer, it was helpful to see such a startling cause and effect scenario play out as we began a yet another massive dietary overhaul for our family.  Even more shocking was attempting to comprehend that a potato could be the cause of the knee pain she has battled since before she turned two!

As we approach our one year anniversary of a glucoamalyse deficiency diagnosis and a year of a very low starch diet, it seems that glucoamalyse deficiency may be a red herring.  This weekend we had fresh tomatoes and the younger two children managed to polish off an impressive amount of tomatoes in one sitting.  That night, they both woke in the middle of the night with knee pain.  What?!  We didn't have any starch.  And why is my son now waking with knee pain? ? I thought we had gotten to the root cause and the entire family has been on a very low starch diet.

The next morning we discussed why they were both up in the middle of the night and what on earth could have caused them both to suffer at the same time.  My daughter asked if possibly the tomatoes could have caused it.  The second she asked, a major light bulb went off in my brain.  We know potatoes are a huge trigger for her pain.  Of course it could be the tomatoes!

Other than similar sounding names, did you know that tomatoes and potatoes are related?  They are in the same family of plants known as nightshades.  Also related are peppers, eggplant, goji berries, paprika and tobacco.  I can't find any quality scientific studies to link to so I will leave it to the powers of google if you are interested in learning more about the link between nightshades and joint pain, but it seems there is definitely a link for some people.

In hindsight, the reaction to the potato is making so much more sense.  Not only is it high in starch, but it is also a nightshade...a double whammy!  While it is a big discouraging to eliminate yet more foods, it a bit encouraging to considering the possibility that some of the previously tolerated starches might be added back.

How to Test for Starch in your Food

When we abruptly went on a no starch diet at the beginning of this year, it seemed so daunting.   Starch is in everything...or at least it seemed.  I was frustrated when I started searching the internet because the diagnosis we got from the GI was "glucoamylase deficiency" but when you google glucoamylase deficiency, there isn't much information to be had that isn't highly technical.  I am attempting to get some resources together and provide a little better information on my blog for those that may find themselves in a similar place.

I still have lots of unanswered questions and honestly do not know if there is even anyone out there that can answer them.  Questions such as, will my child always have trouble with starch?  Are there digestive enzymes that could help?  So far, it appears that all of the digestive enzymes come in a capsule...that contains starch.

Well, one thing I discovered very early on is that there is a simple way to test for starch.  A $2 bottle of iodine is all it takes.  Please note, the colorless version sold at Walmart will not work. I found my bottle at CVS.

I carry a bottle in my purse (in a baggie just in case it leaks!) and we have one at home.  We don't eat out all that often, but it has saved us by being able to easily check when we eat in new places.

The process is simple.  Take a small piece of the food in question and separate from the rest of the meal as the iodine will contaminate the food.  Put a drop of iodine on the food.  If it turns black, the food contains starch.  If it remains the same yellow/orange color, than the food is starch free.

Here is a plate with two starches and a non-reactive drop as a reference for the color change.  We thought that we had found a great new snack in fried plantain chips.  It completely slipped my mind that they may contain starch.  After all, bananas contain starch and of this I am well aware, so I really was not thinking.  Sure enough the iodine very immediately turned black.  Also pictured is a tums tablet which turned black.  It pains me to think of all of the Tums my sweet girl has taken in hopes of finding relief from the reflux and heartburn that has plagued her most of her life.  The very "help" we were giving her was actually making her worse!

 

Our Gluten Free Anniversary

One year ago this week, we abruptly embarked upon our gluten free journey.  I had just returned home from a wonderful weekend conference on mothering and my kids and hubby had planned a pancake feast.  Mind you, this was with freshly ground whole grains from the many pails of wheat berries stored in my son's closet, boys don't need closet space, right?  Immediately following dinner, both my daughter and I had miserable stomach aches.  We had eaten this meal probably hundreds of times and never felt like this.  It turns out that the ever so seemingly healthy buttermilk that my husband had purchased contained corn starch...in buttermilk?!  A year later, with a glucoamylase deficiency for our daughter under our belt, it all makes sense.

In light of the fact that my child lacks the enzyme to properly digest starches, it pains me to know that we spent most of the year "gluten free" which is code for starch, starch and more starch.  Now despite the fact that most gluten free prepared foods and recipes you make yourself are filled with a variety of starches, she did improve immensely by eliminating wheat, as did I.  However, there were still symptoms that were not fully resolved which caused much second guessing and questioning over if we were doing the right thing.  By fall, we were getting gluten 2-3 times a week, still minor, but her health began to plummet and my pain returned.

One year later, I have a new level of confidence and am working to change our vocabulary.  We are not on a "diet."  This is a lifestyle and we will remain wheat free as a family.  Why?  Well, 3 our of 5 of us seem to have issues with starch.  While the other two of us will not be undergoing invasive testing to be certain, it is likely that we have the deficiency, though maybe not as severe.  And secondly, 5 out of 5 of us feel better, have more energy and don't need to snack all of the time when we don't eat wheat.

In my frenzy of trying to figure out what eating starch free looks like, I came across a book that has cleared up so many of my lingering questions from the previous year of wheat elimination.  If I could stand on my head and sing in order to convince everyone to read this book, I would!!  Actually, I recommend the audio version.  I am not sure my ADD self would have made it through some of the more technical parts.  The book is called Wheat Belly and is written by a cardiologist, William Davis, MD.  He discusses how wheat today has been hybridized so intensely, that it genetically looks nothing like the wheat that our parents or grandparents were eating prior to the 1970s.  The research he ties together gave me all of the courage I needed to walk by the bakery at the grocery store and scoff.  We read his book after we had been gluten free for nearly a year and 100% grain free for 6 weeks.  Much of what he discusses in the book is exactly what we had personally witnessed in our family!

Check out Dr. Davis' blog and get a glimpse at what he has to say in the book by listening to this podcast.  Thanks to Dr. Davis, it looks like my son will be getting his closet back.  Prior to reading his book, I hoped that we might be able to tolerate soaked or fermented wheat.  However, now that I fully understand why our wheat elimination a year ago brought so much success so quickly, the future of freshly baked bread is looking grim.

One month of starch free living

Today marks our one month anniversary of living life without starch.  I won't lie, it has not been all roses and sunshine as we have adjusted to living entirely grain and starch free, but we have survived.  My girl turned 10 yesterday and we celebrated with a SunCup rather than a birthday cake.  Actually, we will celebrate on Thursday and I will be attempting a cheesecake for that event.

It does seem that glucoamylase deficiency has been the root cause of her issues for her entire lifetime.  Since cutting starches out, she has had very few complaints.  Compared to the month of December when she was being forced to eat gluten and experiencing knee pain nearly every day, this is amazing!  Her health seems to be returning slowly and hopefully as her gut continues to heal, her vitamin deficiencies will resolve and she will begin to experience life on full power.

I am convinced that if you truly want to feel great and loose weight, grain free is the way to go.  I am shocked by how much healthy fat I have eaten this past month, yet how pounds continue to fall off.  I had my cholesterol checked at the beginning of the month and will have it rechecked soon.  As a product of the "low-fat" generation, I continue to have difficulty wrapping my brain around eating the way we are.  A book that helping to address this radical shift in nutrional thought that I am currently reading is  Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan, MD.   I was blown away with the chapters on fats and sugars and look forward to finishing the book.  Another book on my to read list is called Wheat Belly by William Davis, MD.  His blog and the especially the comments from people that have given up wheat/gluten are quite impressive and mirror the experience of my daughter and myself.

The end February marks our one year anniversary of going gluten free and I only wish I had done so much sooner.  Deep down in my mommy instincts, I knew that I needed to attempt an extreme elimination diet for the sake of my child, but it always seemed too hard, too big, too inconvenient.   This has been a life changing year for both of us and it haunts me to know the answer was so simple and so within our power, yet the power of mighty addictive carbs and the all too easy box of cereal kept us in bondage and in pain for so long.  It is truly liberating to be free and feel amazing.

A new year, a new focus ~ glucoamylase deficiency

I didn't intend to ignore the blog for so long, but somehow the hottest summer in Texas history not only zapped the life out of my garden but left me without much inspiration for blogging.  I just read that January is the time to get your onions in the ground in North Texas and after the mild weather we have had, I might actually consider pulling a few weeds and attempt to get my onions in on time for once.

It is likely that the focus of my blogging efforts may shift more towards diet as I attempt to keep a personal record of the major transitions going on in our family in hopes that it might help someone else.  Our middle child will turn ten soon and for her entire lifetime she has suffered from reflux symptoms and other odd complaints.  She began complaining of knee pain before she was two years old.  She has had scopes, bloodwork and xrays.  Always she remains just healthy enough to fly under the doctor's radar and make me seem like the crazy, over the top mother.  Yet I am the one up in the middle of the night when she is crying in pain.  I am the one cleaning up vomit after she accidentally drinks her sister's milk.  In recent years, she has begun to experience auto-immune type symptoms and has been chronically tired.

We remained relatively strict on our gluten, dairy, soy and egg free diet until about October when the cheating became a little more common.  The benefits of the gluten free lifestyle were worth the effort.  The middle child's symtoms improved immensely, but did not completely go away.  The benefits for me were amazing as I discovered what life is like when you wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and don't live life in constant pain.  The Tornado's behavior was vastly improved.  Yes, every ounce of effort was worth it....and yet the lingering issues for my daughter remained.  Less frequent, but flared occasionally, at least until this fall.

We decided that it was time to visit the pediatric GI again and discuss the possibility of celiac.  In order for the scope and bloodwork to reveal celiac, it was necessary that she eat gluten every day, not just the few times a week she had been getting it this fall.  The more she ate, the worse she felt.  Her knee pain was back with a vengence and complaints of headache and complete exhaustion were frequent.  She begged to have her scope sooner so that she didn't have to eat gluten any more.  When a nine year old is begging to severely limit her diet, you know that every ounce of change was worth it.

Her scope was the Monday before Christmas and did not reveal any celiac damage.  Four biopsies were sent to the Mayo Clinic for analysis of how her body handles sugars.  We met with the GI the week after Christmas to discuss the results and it turns out that one of her biopsies send to Mayo revealed that she has glucoamylase defiency.  Never heard of it?  Most have heard of lactose intolerance.  A person with lactose intolerance lacks the enzymes to break down the sugars in milk.  My child has starch intolerance, she lacks the enzymes to break down complex carbohydrates.  Thus our new journey has begun.

I am so thankful that God answered our prayers for an answer.  It has been two weeks and I still have many unanswered questions about what our future diet will look like, but for now we continue to take baby steps and are so grateful to see her health begin to return.