Any dietary changes or supplements that have worked?

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Who's water do you drain? I am intrigued...

We are planning to up his Omega 3. We had one that he really liked (I think it is from Ireland) and it was orange flavored but I can't find it anymore. In fact, all the kids like it. We are testing new ones. We make sure the kids eat salmon 2 times a week which they actually like (they prefer fish to meat in general).

One thing that has really helped my son (all his siblings) was exercise! He has low muscle tone and some coordination issues so we go to the park (or jungle gym at home) and we encourage him to do everything. His tummy got smaller and now looks completely normal (he is skinny but his abs we so soft, it made his tummy look distended).

Kefir soda is made with water kefir "grains". The grains are small about 1/4 inch diameter usually, kind of squishy like a curd from cottage cheese, and clear. The grain is really a construct created by one of the variety of good bacteria that makes up the colony and provides the rest of the strains a place to live and breed. I kind of make a joke and call the grain colonies my little pets and say that I have to feed my pets and so on.

So you add the grains, 1/4 cup sugar, a bit of baking soda, and about a tablespoon of molasses to a quart or half gallon of distilled water to feed them. You don't have to give them the baking soda and molasses every time, that is to provide them with more minerals to create new homes or repair their old ones. After a day, you drain the water mixture you had fed them the previous day and re-feed them. That is the water that you drain. The water that the kefir grains had sat in for a day. Then you don't want to drink that by itself because the taste alone is not great. But if you add it to juice, usually a strong flavored juice, and often one that you wouldn't want to drink by itself such as blueberry, pomegranate, cranberry, then the two combine to make a really very nice drink.

My HFA kid however took one look at it and said, "So what you're doing is asking me to drink the pee of bacteria? No thanks!" Even trying to point out that we use bacteria and yeast in many of our foods, (sauerkraut, buttermilk, yogurt, bread, beer, etc) couldn't convince him to try this one. My other two kids, however, were begging me to let them drink the whole gallon jug of soda in one sitting.

There is also a milk kefir grain. It is for fermenting milk, and the product has it's own name, which I can't remember. I am lactose intolerant, and generally hate the taste of milk, so never paid much attention to this version. If you buy grains, be sure which kind you are getting.

I bought mine as live cultures from a company on Amazon (sorry don't remember which). You can also buy them dehydrated. It is supposed to take about 3 weeks to get them hydrated and working from a dehydrated state. However, it took almost a week for mine to arrive in the mail, and when we opened the pouch they were slimy and RANK. If you go too long between feedings, they set off a starvation cycle and produce very disgusting odors. We had to go through a week of repair feedings which were mostly molasses and much more baking soda than we would normally use.

I don't know if this is a common occurrence, bad luck with the postal service (we have on-going issues with ours delivering things incorrectly and being slow), or just generally bad luck. They did all clean up and most of them survived the ordeal (If the individual grain colony floats or looks busted or stringy it is dead). They also multiplied like crazy. I have almost a pint of them now. I really need to learn how to dehydrate some of them, because they are taking up too much room in my jar! You can also put them in the fridge when you feed them and it slows them down to only needing to be fed 1-2 times per week, if you are busy or going out of town. Also, never use honey to feed them. It is actively antimicrobial and will attack the kefir colonies. If you Google kefir soda it should bring up many sites talking recipes, grains, everything. This is how I learned to do the repair feeding cycles.

If you've ever dealt with sour dough starter or that Amish friendship bread starter, this is pretty similar in the amount of care it requires and the idea of needing to feed your "pets" regularly.

This is fascinating stuff.

I remember how my sensory issues and social problems spiked my first semester in college. God, the sensory issues were overwhelming, so I couldn't even go to class or even the dining hall, and at 6'2, I dropped to 140 pounds.

Guess what it might have been? My mother had me on tons of antibiotics for a bogus diagnosis of Lyme's Disease for a doctor who later had her license revoked for diagnosing everyone with it. I wonder if that could have even caused lasting damage. My parents note that a few of my reactions to sensory issues (like hunched shoulders when entering a crowded, noisy environment) appeared then and never got completely better. Thoughts? Could something like this cause permanent damage?

I remember going around to different colleges and making lots of new friends and relating to people ok. Then, after a summer of taking antibiotics, I made 0 friends my first semester and suddenly had a mad compulsion to talk about my special interest, something I'd actually outgrown by the age of 17 and which came back my first semester in college.

I had always attributed these changes/regression in symptoms to stress. But I wonder if antibiotics could have had something to do with it.