Starting Today

I'm the wife of a bipolar and a Mom of 4. Five and a half years ago we started the Feingold Program. It's a diet used to treat ADHD by eliminating artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners and petroleum based additives. In other words, we got rid of many chemicals in our food. It wasn't too much of a change. I had been learning to cook for 10 years, ever since I had gotten married, so I could actually cook from scratch. Basically it was a matter of changing brands. I used to buy "X" brand of potato chips, now I buy "Z" brand.

The Feingold program has two stages. In the first stage you eliminate all of the above along with high salicylate foods. The higher salicylate foods are apparently similar in chemical composition to aspirin and can cause problems for some people. After 4-6 weeks of improvement on the program you add back the higher salicylate foods watching for reactions. We followed the Feingold program for over four years and were never able to add back in the higher salicylate foods without bad reactions. Four years without apples and tomatoes . . . something had to change.

I figured that an intolerance to food probably meant that we had "leaky guts". Our bodies were not digesting food properly, so the undigested portions of the food we ate were causing all sorts of problems within our bodies. Then I found SCD. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet, as written about in Breaking The Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall. As a family we started the SCDiet late last January. Within 4 weeks we were able to add back all of the higher salicylate foods we had removed for four years. But the diet is extremely difficult to follow. We stuck to it for almost 3 months without infractions. Then we were doing so well we decided to eat out. That was the beginning of the end.

So here it is, almost a year after initially starting and I'm looking to start again. I know I need this. I know this will be hard, but I've got to do it. My health depends on it.