What looks like candida (responds to simple sugars and starches), smells like candida (on his breath and skin), and acts like candida (hyperactive and emotional behavior), but isn't candida? We were about to find out.
A year ago this month I decided John had candida; now I claim he does not, and never did. I was always uneasy about this diagnosis, even though the candida diet helped enormously. He never had any of the other candida symptoms. His immune system is strong, and he is healthy as a horse. He throws off colds and infections that send the rest of us running for antibiotics. It just didn't make sense. Apparently we've been going down the wrong track for a year, but don't despair, we have, nonetheless, been traveling in the right (carb) direction.
John reacts to carbohydrates, both simple and complex. As I chugged down the candida track (still the best diet for him), I looked to my left and saw another track running parallel to ours. It is called fructose intolerance, wherein the patient, often for genetic reasons, cannot metabolize fructose (fruit sugar). No wonder he reacted so badly to fruit and fruit juices. And table sugar is half fructose, so that would explain a lot. I read everything I could on the subject, and reduced his fructose intake. If this was John's problem, it was very serious. The partial fructose metabolites can inflict permanent liver damage. We needed to confirm or deny this hypothesis quickly.
At the same time, the track to my right also beckoned. Perhaps John simply produced too much insulin in response to sugars. This would drive blood sugar below normal, forcing a state of hypoglycemia. This is known to produce hyperactivity in children. I tried to serve protein and carbohydrates together, in the correct ratio, as described in the book Enter The Zone. Yet the zone diet recommends fructose over glucose, since fructose enters the blood stream slowly and produces less of an insulin response. I couldn't accommodate both theories simultaneously. Yet I had to do something; John was getting worse each week.
In fact his decline was frightening. Putting him on the strict candida diet bought us another two weeks of good behavior, but then that was not working. In an effort to keep blood sugar levels constant I started serving smaller meals more often, with fewer carbohydrates, and just the right balance of protein, and no synthetic additives, and no dairy, and (ideally) not a lot of fructose. Try doing that eight times per day, cooking everything from scratch. It's exhausting! That bought us another week of good behavior, but then it wasn't enough either. Soon we were seeing reactions to small ten-carb meals, with protein, and without much fructose. Something was terribly wrong.
Soon another symptom appeared, adrenaline. Once or twice a day John had a racing heart after a mini-meal. He reported this to me, and I could feel it through his chest. This was correlated with his bad behavior. In fact he was sometimes scared to death (curled up under a blanket), or consumed with rage (hitting and kicking everything and everyone in sight). This fight/flight response, and the racing heart, pointed to adrenaline. When the body is desperate for blood sugar it secretes adrenaline. This is only suppose to happen when the lion is chasing you. "We need blood sugar now, and lots of it, to run away or fight!" Nobody should have to endure a full-scale adrenal response two or three times a day. And of course John didn't know what to do with this hormone. I tried to tell him what was happening inside his body, and that there were no lions in the house, but his emotions trumped my logic.
The adrenaline finally sent us down another track. It wasn't candida, or fructose intolerance - it was an imbalance in his blood sugar regulation, and it was growing worse each week. Perhaps his pancreas was failing, or his liver. I scheduled an appointment with his pediatrician as soon as possible. As you recall, she was somewhat skeptical of the diet connection, and was pushing ritalin and other psychotropics, but she was still an expert in other areas, such as juvenile diabetes, and I needed her help. As we talked on the phone she mentioned a couple possibilities. Like us, she thought fructose intolerance was unlikely. Either the liver was not functioning properly or the pancreas. A glucose tolerance test would confirm this. She also wanted to run a thyroid test, just to make sure. "If the thyroid isn't functioning properly, the patient can't metabolize sugars. We might be able to correct that with one little pill." Over the next couple days those tantalizing words rang in my head. Just imagine, one little pill, and John is all better!
The next night, as I was unable to sleep, it suddenly hit me. Iodine! It's essential for proper thyroid function, and John has ingested almost none during the past year. We even served pure salt, because the iodized version contains corn starch, an additive that some hyperactive children react to. Besides, iodine was a variable that we'd never tracked before, so it was worth considering.
I started him on iodine supplements, and the next two days were much better. But by the third day the racing heart and the associated insanity returned with a vengeance, like something out of Edgar Allen Poe. Another blind alley, another week of precious time lost.