After a lengthy list of fails, Ellie's first 'safe' foods were the pit fruits. We gave her apricot, peach, nectarine, cherry, and plum without FPIES reaction. In the same botanical food family happens to be almond, so we trialled almond milk and began giving her that as well. Once we began GAPS with her I eliminated these from her food list, and forgot about them until asked about them a few times recently.
Ellie is no longer eating these fruits -yet. Her sugar intolerance test told us that she has virtually no enzymes to digest sugar or carbohydrates of any kind. Any thing that can not be digested causes irritation, and it would either feed her bad bacteria balance or sit in her intestines undigested to ferment. Fruits also provide very minimal nutrition and can even have anti-nutrients, if she is able to digest them at all. In short, feeding her these fruits now would get in the way of her healing and block proper digestion of the four foods she is currently eating.
The good news is that these fruits did not cause a completed full blown crazy TCell response launched by her immune system, resulting in a typical (or in Ellie's case often atypical) FPIES reaction. Because of that there is great hope that she will eat them in the future without any problems, and does not have a true intolerance to them. I can not wait to use almond flour to bake for her!
How will you know if/when she does have the enzymes to digest fruit? Is that addressed in GAPS?
ReplyDeleteFruit is introduced at later stages in GAPS and dependent on individual healing, just like the earlier stages. It is certainly a puzzle, and there are some who have had to limit fruit forever. I guess we will have to see. I am hopeful! (and will email you :))
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