Natural Aversion

[Charlie Arnold]

I have posted this idea on the HFI board but thought I would put it on here to. Natural aversion isn't listed as an FM symptom but as the kids on here seem to have a bit more than FM going on I thought the subject is appropriate to maybe build up a picture.

One of the indicators for HFI is stated as being a natural aversion to sweet tastes, or at least fructose. Fbpase however doesn't have that natural aversion.

I have another theory, which is only a theory as Megs isn't diagnosed fully yet. She doesn't have an aversion to sweet tastes and neither do others on this board that were diagnosed very early. Maybe, by being so quick to pick up the problem these kids haven't been through years of eating the wrong food and reacting, therefore they haven't naturally put 2 and 2 together to come up with ugghh fructose response. Certainly Megs when being weaned wouldn't eat the pureed pear or apple that was second on the list of foods to try, infact she ate baby rice then eventually mashed potato so maybe she was naturally selecting what suited her. However now, give the kid a hot chocolate and she is in heaven.

But when she is on a "reaction" she naturally reverts to gallons of milk and marmite sandwiches and goes off other stuff.

[FMmom]

Our gastro doctor keeps telling me that kids just naturally avoid foods that make them miserable. But I just don't think I can read anything in to Kaelin's past food selections for multiple reasons.

(I'm sure I've mentioned all of these things in other threads, so forgive my repeating myself...)

First, Kaelin simply never knew she was in pain because that pain was all she's ever known. She never, ever breaks the rules and she so rarely complains about anything -- if I gave her something to eat, she ate it. So there is nothing that stands out in my memory of her earlier eating habits.

I remember that she didn't like dessert much -- she'd eat cake, but never the icing. I'd give her a cookie and she never mentioned it bothered her in any way, but I don't think she ate much, if any, of the cookie (her sister would gobble it up so if I wasn't watching, I had no idea that Kaelin wasn't the daughter who was eating all those calories she so desperately needed...)

She liked fruit, so that is why I just can't believe she may have HFI. However, I do know that the fruits she liked are all lower-fructose types of fruits. She very rarely drank juice (and if she did, she'd suffer the consequences).

The pancreatic insufficiency furthers clouds the issue -- I have no idea how much fructose Kaelin was really absorbing before she started to take the enzymes. And by the time she was seven, her eating habits were fairly well established. Her gastro doctor was expecting her weight to jump up substantially, but when that didn't happen, he asked me to switch to "calorie dense" foods. Forget the nutrition, just lots of fat and calories. That's when I started force feeding her candy and ice cream. And I do mean forced -- but she eventually developed a taste for them and now she wants these foods even though they really really really hurt her stomach.

I'm curious about Megs reverting to milk and marmite... Do you mean that she once again chooses a healthy diet, rejecting sugar because of the pain it causes or does milk and marmite actually IMPROVE things for her? I've always believed that protein was an antidote to sugar for Kaelin, like if she started her day with pancakes and syrup, we could give her some eggs and she'd calm down.

That made perfect sense when the nutritionist mentioned that Kaelin was probably hypoglycemic. She was hyper and insane because she was hungry, then the flour and sugar just made her blood sugar spike all the more. Protein gave her the fuel she needed. But it didn't make sense to me when she was diagnosed with FM. If the food is really the culprit, it's in her system and she reacts to it. Eating three eggs won't change what's already there.

This weekend, we attended a couple of events and Kaelin ate cake with frosting both times. No amount of protein stopped the hyperactivity. So maybe I've been seeing signs of hypoglycemia all along. This was clearly a sugar reaction and she was still feeling the effects the next morning. And a protein laden breakfast did not have the magic effects in normally does. Just one more thing that makes the puzzle so very hard to put together...