Family's New Restricted Diet

"AK is a practice within the realm of alternative medicine and is different from "kinesiology," which is the scientific study of human movement. AK has been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds, and characterized as pseudoscience and quackery. In Britain, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence recently ruled that it is unproven and advised against its use in allergy diagnosis."

I didn't make that up, it is a quote from a respected informational website. I know several people who have resorted to seeing people like this. One ended up weighing about 80 lbs after being told almost every food on the planet was causing her "allergic reactions". Guess what, her problems continued.

Please see a urologist.

Allergies to dairy, eggs and corn do not cause urinary tract infections and cannot be diagnosed without allergy testing. I would not limit her intake of fresh fruits or whole grain products containing yeast based upon the info you have. Have you seen a urologist?

Our family has experience with restrictive diets, my husband is gluten free, my daughter used to have food allergies, most kids outgrow them eventually, and for a period of time I needed to be on a sugar free diet, sugar meaning all fructose so no fruit or sweet veggies like tomato or carrots.
I found it very important to focus on what you CAN eat instead of what you can't. It is easy to get caught up in the idea that you need "special" foods but it is not necessarily true. A dinner of roast chicken, broccoli and brown rice. Lunch of hummus with rice crackers and pepper strips. Breakfast of hash brown potatoes cooked with onions and mushrooms.
The only issue with removing fruit is to be sure you replace fruit with veggies, the more colorful a diet the healthier it is. A little planning in the beginning but soon you are completely used yo it as the only way to eat.
Keep your chin up, you are doing the best thong for your family, even if it is not the " average". Good luck. I hope your daughter experiences full health soon.

There's a book called the Body Ecology Diet that probably would be a good read for you but I think the recipes in there may not be kid friendly. There is a yahoo group called GFCF Kids that you may want to join. A lot of the moms on there have children who have multiple allergies and are on yeast-free and low sugar diets. They should be able to answer your questions and make recommendations on what products are best or recipe books that you may want to consider buying.

Please ignore answers like the one from Sue W.

Back to your question...when I was kid, it was thought that added sugar was a contributing factor to my brother's seizure disorder, so we had no sugar in our house for more than 5 years. This was 30 years ago, when finding natural foods was difficult - thank goodness for TJs and WF. I'm sure that we whined and complained in the beginning, but we all got used to it and we were super-healthy and super-skinny during those years. I'm sure it was tough for my mom to initially transition over, but once she figured out a basic menu, she stuck with it and that was that. My mother has recently reduced yeast and sugar (including fruit) in her diet because the inflammation may be exacerbating her fibromyalgia and even though her current diet is more restrictive than the one she had our whole family on years ago, she did say that it has been much easier to find foods and recipes. She gets a lot of recipes from the internet and really just continues to cook from scratch, as she has always done.

Good for you for seeking out some alternative ways to help your daughter. I was on Bactrum for years as a little kid due to recurring UTIs and that probably wasn't the greatest idea, but I don't think that modern medicine has come up with anything newer to prevent recurring UTIs in children other than preventative antibiotics. I hope that the dietary changes work for your daughter!

We're in a similar transition here. It certainly isn't easy! My sons naturopath has put him (so all of us) on a basically a diabetic diet. We were already limiting our sugar intake too so doing even more is a struggle (especially for my husband). There's lots of stuff my son can't have either because his body doesn't like it (such as quinoa, eggs whites or tofu) or because a low glycemic diet doesn't allow it (such as some fruits or white bread, etc.). So that in itself has made it difficult. One thing I did at first was I bought stevia packets to help with the transition somewhat. That stuff can sometimes be TOO sweet, so the kids are happy with it. I've also stopped buying all processed foods, period. I just make what we need as we need it in small batches. The first few days were a mishmash because I still didn't know anything but once I decided on our menu, we went cold turkey. My son did complain but I simply told him that some foods are making his body sad and that we had to eat different stuff to make it happy. I got rid of everything he couldn't have so I wouldn't be tempted to give in.

I did a ton of research online and I've bought several diabetic cookbooks. Reading those books has been very revealing and most of the recipes I've tried have actually been pretty good. Amazon has lots of them; I just typed in children & diabetic in the search terms. Of course your daughter isn't diabetic, but the very nature of these recipes will help you reduce not only sugar as we think of it but in other areas as well such as the fruit you mentioned. You could try the Whole Foods Diabetic Cookbook by Michael Clark, You Can Eat That!: Awesome Food for Kids with Diabetes by Robyn Webb, Healthy Calendar Diabetic Cooking: A Full Year of Simple, Menus and Easy Recipes by Lara Rondinelli and The Diabetic Cookbook by Sarah Banbery.

The last one I mentioned is actually the first one I bought and it was really helpful. There was a good albeit small intro, and the recipes were good. I especially liked that there was a small example of the Glycemic Index (that really got me thinking & digging more). There are only around 38 recipes, but it's a smattering from breakfast to desserts and all are good. It's not a children's cookbook, but the kiddos didn't complain much. But then, my kids eat a lot of stuff that most children won't. When I was first looking at children's diabetic cookbooks, I was amazed at how many bad reviews were on books simply because the reviewer didn't think the child would actually eat the foods. One woman specifically mentioned her beef with a book was because it used tomatoes too much and that in her experience, no child liked tomatoes. Hah! Obviously she's never met my children. They consider tomatoes special treats. :D My father took all the grandchildren to the store a couple of years ago (so 5 kids under 7) and made the mistake of telling them they could get a treat. My nephew runs screeching to the candy aisle while my kiddos run the other way for the produce section. My poor father didn't know which child to follow first! :D He finally caught up to my horde collecting tomatoes & apples; my youngest (she was 3) had even started eating her tomato.

When I was first looking into this too, and was completely in the dark these sites helped somewhat.

http://www.diabetes-blood-sugar-solutions.com/lowglycemic...
http://www.diabetic-lifestyle.com/forkids.htm
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/recipes/
http://www.thelaboroflove.com/house/kitchen/mm/diabetic.html

Oh, and I almost forgot, there was one other book I got, The pH Miracle for Diabetes by Robert Young. This is actually a specific diet plan but that's not why I bought it. The second half is recipes that do look rather tasty although I have no plan on following the program. I thought you may be interested in it because of the first half. It talked about balance in the body, different foods, supplements, etc. It was a lot of good info and while there was a lot of stuff pertaining strictly to diabetes the rest I was able to glean was quite helpful and helped me understand what was going on with my sons system as well as how the supplements his naturopath was recommending actually helped him.

Anyway, I hope this helps or at least gets you on the track you need. Good luck!