A little background...
Little Moo has food allergies. Her allergies are the reason I got serious about building up our health through nutrition. She was covered with rashes from about the age of 2 to very recently.
We've been seeing Vivian Kushner, a nutritionist who practices BioSET. We went into it as a last resort after months of Chinese medicine that Little Moo hated, food trials that had confusing and unhelpful results, modified GAPS Diet that only seemed to limit the range of foods she could eat and make her tired of eating nuts and coconut milk kefir, horrified stares from other parents and useless allopathic medical advice. After about a month of BioSET and homeopathic support her rashes are GONE. Occasionally, when she's fighting off a virus she gets itchy again, but the rashes appear to have disappeared for good. For the first time in a while we have a clear picture of exactly what Little Moo's allergies and sensitivities are. For a short while we eliminated grapes, bananas and eggs. Vivian treated her for allergies to vitamin C and, of all things, salt. She's eating them all again comfortably and without a single relapse.
Little Moo loves dairy. She especially likes yogurt, particularly a storebought kind that is made of sheeps' milk that you can buy for an exorbitant price at one of the San Francisco co-ops or for even more from Whole Foods plus the keys to the pied a terre in Paris. (No, we don't have one, if you were wondering.) Since we've started seeing Vivian Kushner there's been more hope that her sensitivity to lactose, casein and whey will be finite, so now she has a plan and it's moving into her pretend games. I love that her answer to "I want that" is "I'll make it myself." Better yet, if it's food, she'll get it directly from the farm, then she'll cook it from scratch.
She's four and a half, which means that about 95% of the time she's only here in body. The rest of her is on flights of fancy that we mere mortals can only vaguely follow. Today's game is taking place on our family dairy farm. (We don't have one of those, either.) Evidently, Snackboy is the master of a flock of sheep and a herd of cows. Little Moo got up at the break of day to milk the sheep and went right away to the task of making her own yogurt. She is, at this moment, hosting a tea party in the living room with sheeps' milk yogurt, and tea, while she talks in detail about all the recipes for things that she can make with the yogurt, including "sticky chocolate tops" for cakes that she baked.
Vivian...if you're reading this, much creativity and chefly imaginings are focused on the promise that she will be able to ingest dairy soon...
2 comments:
I came across your site because someone recommended Vivian to me and I'm trying to figure out if I should go the BioSet route or chinese medicine. Was there a specific Chinese herbalist you went to? Many people recommended Jialing Yu....Wondering just how expensive all of this is as well.....
We went to Stephen Zilber in San Rafael. He's definitely an expert in NAET. I did find, though, that BioSET worked faster and more precisely. Dr. Zilber would pronounce us "clear" for foods and I'd find that we'd still react. It was nerve-wracking. (I have similar allergies to our daughter, but mine have been around for much longer, so getting rid of them has been harder.) With BioSET we've found that when a food is "cleared" that it is really okay to eat. Sometimes it takes more than one session, but Vivian always knows when it's okay to start a food trial. Sometimes the reaction returns after being cleared for a while, but then we go back for another treatment and we're okay again.
The supplements are more pleasant to take, especially for a 4-year-old. That was a big issue for us.
I hear that Jialing Wu is excellent, but kind of brusque. We chose not to go that route. By the time we decided to change tacks, our kid was on strike. She didn't like the poking or the herbs, and her behavior was atrocious in Dr. Zilber's office. I'd be nearly in tears by the time we left which didn't help, either.
It's all expensive. In the long run I found the Chinese medicine to be more expensive. The BioSET supplements are costly, but with BioSET we've been able to cut back sooner. We also find that the work holds longer, so instead of having to go once or twice a week, we only have to go once or twice a month. If a reaction is bad, we'll go once a week.
I hope that helped. Good luck!
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