Thought I’d add a little more colour. These are some of the pics from Jasmine’s last trip to Grandma’s =]
2 days into the NAET thing and we had a little hiccup. We think Jasmine is still teething as she seems to be gnawing at pretty much everything.
With the NAET treatment we were given a little vial of ‘energy’ that Jasmine has to wear next to her skin for 5 minutes or so of an evening.
I’m guessing you can work out what happened… >.<
Today Jasmine and Mummy went to see our NAET practitioner. We had a rough night sleep with Jasmine getting up about 5 times last night due to being very itchy and her cough at the moment.
What is NAET? Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET). It was discovered in 1983 and used a mixture of kinesiology, acupuncture/acupressure and chiropractice to eliminate allergies and all sorts of issues such as anxiety, emotional problems even to helping autism and dyspraxia. Of course everyone is different when we embark on an alternative treatment we’re never sure if it will work for us.
We were hesitant with NAET due to our previous experience with Kinesiology when Jasmine was 11 months- tested for egg and came out fine and tried egg and she got hives/uticaria and was listless for many hours- a scary experience so our confidence was knocked a bit.
However we went with an open mind, Steph talked to previous clients of this practitioner and she had great reviews and remarkable stories. Steph spoke with Leanne on the phone and felt it was really positive. So Steph went with an open mind and hoped for the best.
It was a 3 hour 1st Consultation and what came out was that Jasmine’s skin issues are very much linked to Steph’s emotional problems. There’s a long history that we’re not going to delve into. What we have noticed is that Jasmine’s flares coincide when Steph is dealing with something, as if her skin and flares are linked and bonded to Steph in some way. Sounds a bit off trail but we noticed this a long time ago. Today it seemed to confirm this. Mother and baby bonds really do exist and can play a part as does the stress endured during pregnancy, the labour and any other stresses occurring in Mum’s life that could impact.
After a long talk about everything that’s going on both Steph and Jasmine were shattered and then went on to be tested for BBF (Brain and Body function)- it’s to make sure that they’re balanced so your Brain is not wired when your body is tired and your body not feeling active when you’re brain is tired – if that makes sense. It could be a contributor to Jasmine’s sleeplessness, being wide awake when she’s shattered and fighting her sleep, also due to the anxiety that she feels perhaps in link to Mum’s problems. This isn’t to say anyone is at ‘fault’. Just that sometimes people are very sensitive and can pick these things up in order to help the other person out… without Jasmine going to NAET, perhaps Steph would never have gotten help for her too…
It’s early days yet and there’s a lot of testing to do… and re-programming. NAET works on telling the body that it’s ‘ok’ to eat ‘X, Y,Z’ – use them for what they’re for… so it reprogrammes the body’s responses to the allergy and to accept it as being safe so the allergy no longer exists.
Jasmine has to hold a vial of the energy source of the substance etc while Leanne (NAET Practitioner) does chiropractice/kinesiology on Steph who is acting as Surrogate for Jasmine as she’s little and would not stay still for long enough…
Leanne wants to test and get the 5 main areas solid before going on to a variety of different allergens and substances- the main groups are Calcium, Vit C, Vit B, Brain/Body Function (Today’s) and I think Egg mix… can’t remember exactly. Leanne mentioned that slowly we will start introducing things into her diet, and for the moment to keep it the same.
Anyways – early days but a very positive experience and a lot of positivity for the future. Appointments now are weekly which is great as previous therapies there’s been a long wait between visits. The cost is high but so far so good, it’s got to be done and if it means our little girl, Steph and our life is changed for the better then all for it.
For more information on NAET please visit: http://www.naet.com
I’ve tried explaining what this is and how it works to colleagues at work but in all honestly I don’t get it. I’m one of those ‘I like tangiable science’ kinda guys so stuff that heavily involves the use of energy etc gets me a little on edge. That being said, despite being just 2 days in, the difference in Jasmine’s emotional behaviour towards Steph is noticeable from my point of view. It is clear that Jasmine is showing much more desire to be close to mummy and is generally much more engaging, where previously I felt a lot of the emotional requests were directed at daddy (ie at night).
Despite not accounting for how it works and for sounding like a tree-hugging hippy when trying to explain to anyone else I feel positive about the process. Clearly we’ll have a better idea the longer the treatment goes on, but I think we’re moving in the right direction.
Jasmine had a great time at Grandma’s (I’ll add some pics later). She reportedly slept pretty well not causing too much trouble for Grandma who was already very tired from looking after Jasmine’s very ill surrogate great Grandma.
Her eczema didn’t really improve whilst she was there, in fact some areas, particularly her hands have gotten considerably worse. This could have been exacerbated by the cats because Jasmine does love to stroke and fuss them and she does come up with hives.
As her condition hadn’t shown and real improvement it suggests the dust caused by our DIY is not a massive contributory factor. I’m still not convinced the dust from sanding back polyfilla does her any good but seeing as that is how we’ve stuck the house back together she’ll just have to lump it until we can cover the place with paint. We’re inching ever closer to getting upstairs sorted, we’re just waiting on the carpet now and then we can start putting out furniture back in.
Last night we decided to forgo using the Aveeno cream and returned to the homeopathic creams prescribed ages ago. We have 2, one for night (containing Graphites 8x Beeswax ointment, Sulphur 6c, Staphylococcinum 6c) and the other for day (the same as the night one but without the beeswax ointment). The night one is considerably more greasy but seems to have worked wonders! She slept the whole night! We heard a couple of very brief moans (possibly bad dream noises), but I didn’t have to go in!!!! I can’t remember the last time when I put her down at 7:30pm and she stayed there without a visit until 7am! …OMG! amazing 
Not only that though, her skin looked markedly better, and though she was still scratching, it didn’t seem as fervent as yesterdays scratching.
We have our NAET appointment tomorrow. It’s a 3 hour marathon 1st consultation but we’re feeling very positive about the potential this will hold for Jasmine’s condition. Might be an idea to bring along a few toys… 
Jasmine is a flarey mess! >.<
We're not really sure what's going on right now. She'd had the patches on her cheeks that had been in stasis for a month or so, but last week things turned for the worse. The patches on her cheeks seemed to enlarge, encroaching on her eyelids and spreading around to her chin. She's obviously becoming more and more itchy, and we know things are in a bad way when she wakes up in the middle of the night, legs akimbo, scratching the crap out of her inner thighs.
Checking back through the changes we think it could have something to do with any of the following: oats back in the diet, bubble bath, flax oil, dust, or some 3rd party thing we had no control over. We've withdrawn oats from her diet (effective 2 days ago) and last night made the decision to withdraw the flax oil aswell. We've found a 'healthy' a bubble bath as we can that actually still makes a reasonable amount of bubbles, so she can at least really enjoy her baths!
She's off to grandma's tonight for a few days so we can get some major DIY out of the way without worrying about the effects of dust/gloss paint etc on her. Hopefully she'll show some signs of improvement having stopped the flax and oats.
Jasmine has a visit from the health visitor yesterday and we’re happy to say she’s still putting on weight and growing! …albeit not a great deal lol
She weighed in at 23lbs 4oz (10.7kg) and is apparently a massive 83cm tall!
So, assuming she doesn’t shrink and based upon the theory that your height on your 2nd birthday will be half your adult height she’ll be bigger than mummy at at least 166cm tall (5.45 feet).
Batch 2 of the long-overdue photos arrives….
![Beautiful smiles =]](http://littlelifetrials.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/p1040919.jpg?w=112&h=150 "P1040919")
We’ve just purposefully used the last of Jasmine’s fish oil supplements as her Omega source and in a bid to see if this is one of the elements that may have caused her stasis pattern we won’t resume it for a while. Instead we’ve opted to introduce Flax seed oil as an alternative for the Omega oils. We’re using a 1000mg capsule and cutting the top off to squirt into her mouth.
I tell you, It’s considerably easier squirting a capsule into her mouth than chasing her around the room with a little 5ml spoon full of liquid! lol
We’ll keep an eye on things and trial this for at least a week. Hopefully they’ll be some improvement as I’d rather not remove oats from Jasmine’s diet if at all possible, which is the next step in operation stasis assuming no great benefit is observed from using the flax over the fish oils.
I just checked back to find that the last image added to the blog was back in mid October! Holy Monkeys! That hardly makes for appealing reading! I mean, I know we’re all probably past the stage where we need a picture book, but hey it’s lots more fun. =]
Anyways, here’s a selection:
![we all pat the dog =]](http://littlelifetrials.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/p1040477.jpg?w=112&h=150 "P1040477")
I’ll add more as time allows
A couple of posts ago I briefly touched upon Jasmine’s apparent birch pollen allergy. Now, this allergy is purely speculative at this stage. We have nothing one way or the other to suspect birch pollen beyond the somewhat shaky claim from our kinesiologist a year or so ago. During ‘muscle testing’ (through Steph) Jasmine apparently showed a negative (meaning bad) response when tested for silver birch pollen. …our skepticism comes from the fact that she tested positive (good) for eggs, where Jasmine is near anaphylactic.
Micki (naturopath) brought the birch pollen to our attention based on an article she has written recently concerning oral allergy syndrome (OAS).
“A true IgE-mediated allergy, OAS is more accurately termed ‘pollen-food syndrome’ by some experts. Simply put, it is a condition where the body becomes sensitised to pollen and then develops an allergy to foods that have a similar protein structure. Basically, the body becomes confused and reacts to what should be healthy foods.”
In her article Micki states that Birch pollen is one of the most common allergies, now if we just run with the potential that the kinesiologist was correct it becomes curiously interesting.
“the most common cross-reaction is between birch pollen and apples. Apple flesh contains a lot of an allergenic protein called Mal d 1, which is structurally very similar to the Bet v 1 protein in birch pollen.”
Jasmine has apples every day. hmm suspicious what else is there? …
Micki lists a number of other food substances that exhibit protein structure similar to that of birch…
apricot – only in a fruit pot, after which we thought there was a reaction
spinach – Jasmine didn’t like
cherry – not really tried yet
plum – only in a fruit pot, after which we thought there was a reaction
prune - not really tried yet
kiwi - avoided as we thought she reacted after eating one
carrot - has this every day
potato - IgE Reaction confirmed via RASP (skin prick test)
pepper - suspected reaction and avoidance after Brazil (fear of nightshade family)
fennel - not tried yet
parsley - not tried yet
nectarine - Jasmine loves
coriander - not tried yet
parsnip - daily as we can’t use potato in her meals, swede and parsnip are used
pear - daily, she loves them
hazelnut - not tried yet
almond - not tried yet
wheat - avoiding as strong candidate for intolerance, nothing confirmed though and no IgE response on prick test
buckwheat - as above
peanut - not tried yet
walnut - not tried yet
peach - Jasmine loves these
celery - avoiding as suspected reaction
It’s an interesting list and in spite of the fact that although we were seeing improving waves here and there, Jasmine has always maintained her condition, suggesting that we were missing something somewhere. This is only a speculative link but it certainly has potential and assuming we push ahead with any NAET program it could provide some interesting results.
As an aside, I felt it’s worth noting that birch pollen is present between March and May. Jasmine was born on the 13th February. Two weeks later the birch pollen arrives. Jasmine’s eczema started appearing when she was 2 weeks old… Now, coincidence? Who knows, but certainly curious.
