Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Salicylates Challenge = FAIL

Over this long weekend we did our sals challenge. And we failed :(




According to the challenge guidelines, for a sals challenge you must consume at least 6 serves of salicylate rich foods per day for 7-10 days or until you see a reaction. Each serve is the equivilent of 1 cup of sal-only fruits and vegies (so no tomatoes, spinach, grapes, etc that contain aminies and glutimates as well), 150 mL unpreserved apple juice, 1 tbsp honey or curry powder, 1 cup strong tea.

The girls were very excited to do the challenge and actually get to eat fruit again, so on Saturday our food diary looked like this:

10am: 1 cup watermelon each, 150mL nudie apple juice each
11am: (girls only) 1/2 royal gala apple, 1/6 granny smith apple
12.45pm: (Em and I, Z took one bite and didn't like it!)Homemade cream corn on toast (2 cups corn cooked, 1/2 tub philly cream for cooking - blitzed in the food proccessor then toasted in a sandwhich press - pepper on mine)
1pm: (girls) 1 cup watermelon
5pm: Failsafe dinner (leftover chicken alfredo)
6.30pm: (girls) 1/2 royal gala apple, 1/6 granny smith apple
7.30pm: (girls) 1 cup each coles organic sweet and salty popcorn
9pm: (Me only) English breakfast tea

So over the course of the day Z and I had 6 serves and Em had 7.

Besides one tanty at the shops by Z that was diffused in about 5 minutes, Saturday was a really good day. The girls were listening, playing nicely and overally being nice to be around. That night I was awake until 3am. Not sure if it was the sals or caffiene in the tea, or just the fact that I was still doing things until that time.

Things were looking promising - I even started looking at my cook books to see what recipes I could add once we had finished the challenges . . .

Then came Sunday.

Shan had been fishing the previous night and got home about 9am. Before this time the girls had been playing nicely, even walking out of their bedroom in the morning hand in hand. Then things went downhill. We had had 1 cup of watermelon and 150mL coles cloudy apple juice before Shan had gotten home.

Shan has a tendency to stir the girls to get a reaction. Well he got one. Crying, yelling, running around like kids gone crazy, jumping on the lounge, hitting each other and Z bit Emily. Em's cheeks became very hot and red too. Out came the caltrate.

At this stage there was no reaction with Abby or I, so I kept going and had a big serve of apple juice (400 mls, so nearly 3 serves) and some salad vegies at lunch (butter lettuce, carrot, cucumber). I had a couple of episodes of tinnitis, which I had only had one since starting falsafe but it was after Abby did a poo that I knew it was time for me to stop too. Her bottom was raw and bleeding. Game over.

We've since gone back to straight failsafe eating and it will be interesting to see how the next few days pan out. Over Monday and today, I have already had several more tinnitis episodes, the big girls are very teary, fighting a lot and not going to bed. We were terribly late for school today because Em would not get dressed and at the time that her classmates were going into class, she was sill in her pjs and hadn't had breakfast - and we still had to walk to school. I was very tempted to keep her home but I don't think I could have handled her today. Thankfully one of my friends was also running late and drove past when we were trying to finally get out the door and was able to drive Em while I walked Z to kindy.

Abby is now covered all over her tummy and legs with ezcema. Her bottom is healing with the help of a lot of nappy free time and liberal amounts of calendula cream. When I showed Shan her bottom his response was "It's because she isn't used to those foods" well der!!!!! That is the whole point!!! We have also discovered that Abby reacts to synthetic fibres, so have to be careful with what she wears and lays on - we can't pop her straight on our carpet without her rashing up.

Shan still doesn't think that the diet is working, and thinks that maybe the icecream that they had last night before one of their beating-each-other-up bouts was the cause of the fight. *sigh*

Hoping to get back to baseline now in time for the June school holidays which are just under 2 weeks away so that we can do the amine challenge when they don't have to go to school.

Six week catch up (slacker I know!)

Six weeks today since we started this failsafe journey!

The sickness I mentioned in the previous post turned out to be the flu - with all of us wiped out for nearly 2 weeks. While we were all hit, Em was by far the worst afftected. She was still sick on her birthday and didn't even want to get out of bed to open her birthday pressies! Finding her crashed on the floor like this was a common event. Thankfully she recovered in time for her first ever "friends" birthday party :D




I am very pleased to be able to say that there were no complaints about the food (by anyone but my husband that is - "You can't use beetroot juice to colour the icing!!") and the party went off without a hitch! We served marshmallow crackles, fairy bread, fun sized milky bars, werthers original cream candies, red rock plain chips and parkers pretzels, magic cordial, water and, of course, cake! As an alternative to party bags, each guest took ome a giant bubble stick. What kid doesn't like bubbles, right?




I am getting a bit frustrated at the lack of support from Em's school. On the first day back at school after neary 2 weeks off, we arrive and it is 'Bear Hunt Day' where all the prep classes get together and do 'bear' related activities to finish up their work on the story "Going on a Bear Hunt" We had brought in a plate of marshmallow crackles for Em to share with her class as her birthday treat since she wasn't there on the day itself.I saw that one of the activities was making honey sandwiches. I specifically tell Em's teacher "Please don't allow Emily to have any of the honey sandwiches as we cannot have honey. There are sandwiches in her bag that she can eat at the same time" Get told that this is not a problem at all so off I go (walking home because my car is still not back - but that is a different gripe!) That afternoon Em tells me that she didn't eat the honey sandwiches, but she had 3 honey joys (ingredients: homebrand canola spread (antioxidant 320), honey and cornflakes (both sals!))So frustrating!!! I spoke with her teacher the next day and was told that Emily said that she was allowed to have them, so she gave them to her!!! Apparently ME telling her that morning that we cannot have honey is over-ridden by a five year old. Awesome. Not only that, but the marshmallow crackles (that Em could have eaten in place of the honey joys) were put out for all of the 114 prep kids, not just Em's class of 22 and Em didn't get one. Poor Em :(

If anyone has any suggestions on how to get a school to take an elimination diet seriously, I'd LOVE to hear from you!