Brain Injury

My 4 year old has brain injury and there's time that I swear that I have it too!.. She's having a hard time with transition and gets frustrated easily, I've been told that this is common for 4 years old. But I'm not convinced, our daughter use to have the longest attention span known to her age and she used to ask from help if it was required. Now, sometime, I have to intervene if I see a storm coming.. Sometimes, I just let it happen so she can learn to control these things. I'm sure that there's all these kinds of support group but that would mean that either I take more time off (that I can afford) or do it later at night ( I already don't spend enough time with the kids).

There's a lot of causes from brain injury and lots of different areas that can be affected. My daughter's injury is on the brain stem which means that it can affect everything. But the hardest part for me is that she gets so easily upset and it takes a good five minutes to calm her down. She can also be easily set off once she's had one of these outburst.. This also happens three to four times a night because she's stuck in the blanket, thirst or just work up. My days are busy and my nights are interrupted but this is my life.

So here I am trying to see how I can help her get better. I've started the whole family as a mean of support on a gluten free lifestyle. This as help her to remain focus and a drop down her outburst but if we derive from this lifestyle (ie. we visit someone, go out and are not prepared, or birthday parties), it can take up to three days for her to get back to her normal self.

When she first was sick, I research what kind of food would be beneficial for her the only recommendation, I found where the following:

1) Eliminate all alcohol and wine.
2) Eliminate all sugar and sugar substitutes, instead eat fruit with low sugar content.
3) Eat lots and lots of protein
4) Eat lots of vegetables
5) Drink plenty of water

Well the first one doesn't apply but the other one is just part of a sensible diet.. So I was not very impressed. A year later, I found myself a Naturopath and she recommend that we eliminated dairy which was already being done since I had just discovered that my son was dairy intolerant. She explained to me that since most dairy product are pasteurized a lot of the digestive enzymes are eliminated. Making it hard for people to digest hence compromising our immune system. And since, our daughter acquired this conditions from Influenza B. It would be certain that I would give this a try.

The second recommendation was to go gluten free. Celiac disease is on the rise and if we can eliminated the over consumption of this product at a young age, we can help their health in their adult life. Also this type of diet is recommended for the following: those suffering with joint pain, brain fog, loss of balance but I would check with a naturopath or a family doctor before making any change in my diet.

Since we started the kids on this lifestyle in march, there as been no cold and fewer stressful moments.

This is just things to ponder.

Take care for now,

MommaBear