BED

Dr. Compain instructed us to stop a lot of the supplements, as Tula’s nutritional deficiencies were placed on the back burner. She couldn't digest and absorb those minerals and vitamins because she didn’t have the microbiota (good bacteria) to do so. Her immune system was compromised due to her systemic yeast infection. He told Mike and I to start reading up on The Body Ecology Diet (BED) and begin making kefir (a fermented drink traditionally made with milk containing a culture of yeasts and bacteria) for Tula. Since she was off casein and couldn’t drink dairy kefir, it would need to be made out of coconut water. Coconut kefir wasn’t made commercially at that time so we would need to make it at home. This concept was invented by Donna Gates, the woman who started the BED diet. Tula needed good bacteria desperately, and the pill-form probiotics were not powerful enough. The live bacteria in fresh coconut kefir were more effective. Dr. Compain said the freeze-dried pills were really in a dormant state, so only a percentage of the bacteria could actually “come back to life” in the gut.

He did prescribe a magnesium citrate cream to help Tula with her constipation and wanted her on another round of anti-fungals, a different one than in the past. He also explained that stress can deplete healthy flora, and it was evident that Tula was the opposite of a calm and peaceful girl!

I had no idea that this appointment with Dr. Compain would literally change the course of our entire lives. After Mike and Tula's return, it was up to me to research yet another remedy and prod Mike to figure out how to chop coconuts. I ordered The Body Ecology Diet book and found that we not only had to keep her on the GFF/CF diet but also take away everything that was feeding the yeast, meaning sugars—ANY sugars— including honey, maple syrup, most fruit, etc., as well as any high-glycemic carbs. I thought about this and closed the book with a sigh. How can that possibly happen? When you’re gluten free, you kind of depend on rice products to get you through, right? Well I found out that rice was a high glycemic carb! And on top of that, we were supposed to add all of these fermented foods into the mix—cultured vegetables and coconut kefir, supposedly all brimming with good bacteria. It seemed completely overwhelming to me. Meanwhile, Mike began researching how to make the coconut kefir. He was once an awesome beer brewer (he even thought about starting a beer brewing business at one point, which I don’t find coincidental), and intrigued by anything fermented. A couple of months went by and I still had not initiated the new diet. Tula had started a new anti-fungal and I was hoping this would do the trick so we wouldn’t have to implement this lifestyle change. She had a small die-off at the beginning as she usually did, but was still taking the antifungal with nothing really changing. It was time for action. I had always said I wanted to do everything I could to help her, so one day I just decided I would start this new diet. 100%!

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