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Writer's pictureHollyL

Scent of a die-off

Updated: Oct 6, 2023

When we started the Body Ecology Diet (BED), we first eliminated the sugars in Tula’s diet, which was tough. She was accustomed to eating GF/CF waffles, muffins, and treats, and all of this had to go away. I hadn’t realized how much sugar was in these products, as I never looked at the nutrition facts label. Her plate was now filled with a protein, for example - a piece of organic grass fed chicken, with lots of different vegetables. She, of course, refused. She was already so thin; how could we let her get any thinner? We stuck to the plan and only put the BED approved foods in front of her. Stevia was accepted, a plant derived sweetener, so I found myself putting it on all of her vegetables to entice her. Some time went by with her screaming and refusing and then...she was so hungry she had to eat! She started eating broccoli, and eggs, then the green beans, quinoa and deli meat roll ups. What we were doing felt radical, oddly. Looking back it’s strange that we felt so uneasy about changing her diet to a more healthy one.

There was one day that I noticed in Tula’s poop a white, mucous like substance. I called the doctor to see if he knew what it was. He thought it was the anti-fungal chipping away at the biofilm, something that protects the yeast.


After being off of the anti-fungal, Mike bought the BED kefir starter, followed the instructions on how to make coconut kefir and was chopping coconuts! After using many different tools, his favorite was this Winco cleaver. The kefir was sour and quite bubbly so he added some stevia drops and let out some of the gases so it wasn’t so fizzy and effervescent. Now the next issue: How much do we give her? We had some GF/CF cookies that I had saved so we used those to bribe her with a syringe full of kefir. One syringe full, a bite of cookie. Both Mike and I assumed that because the kefir is a food, it couldn’t possibly be as powerful as a medication or supplement, so it probably didn’t matter how much we gave her. We started out with half of a cup.

After a few days of doing this something terrifying happened. Her behaviors grew so bad it was like having a demon in the house-much worse than the anti-fungal die-off! She couldn’t wear any clothes because her sensory issues had gotten so reactive. She ran around screaming, trying to pull things off shelves and break them. I frantically called Dr. Compain assuming we had to stop what we were doing. When he called me back, Tula was having a naked full-on tantrum, and I panicked when the phone rang because I knew it would be a difficult call with Tula in the background. I couldn’t hear anything he was saying so I went into the bathroom with the phone, locked the door, plugged one ear with my index finger and tried desperately to listen. I retained about 75% of what he said, since Tula was now not only still yelling but banging on the door. I was sweating and had tears rolling down my cheeks by the time I hung up.

We were directed to decrease the kefir drastically and slowly increase it every few days. Tula could not have continued like that—nor could we. How could a food cause a die-off like that?? We decreased it to just ¼ teaspoon per day, and increased it by another ¼ teaspoon every few days. If her die-offs seemed too hard to handle, we only increased the dose after her symptoms calmed down and became more manageable.

Speaking of die-offs, Tula actually gave off a scent during one. I thought it was a coincidence at first, but other people began noticing too. She was sitting on my mother’s lap when she asked me what that scent was. It was almost like a mixture of urine and bread dough—yeasty smelling!


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