Hi Madeline & everyone else,
>>I am the one who posted the other day about my battle with bipolar
depression, and how my change in dietary habits was a turning point in my
ability to get off prescription medications. ......I breastfed my first son
heavily for 17 months (until I was pregnant again) and kept him on a fairly
"clean" diet because he had allergies to milk and corn syrup (therefore, no
processed foods or junk foods at all) until he was nearly a teenager. ......
Indeed, he has teeth that could win a toothpaste commercial competition, but
he nevertheless inherited my (and his father's) genetic propensity towards
emotional problems.
I think it's great that you breast fed, carried your baby close to you, and
were so conscientious. I wish more moms were. Its painful to see what
people are feeding and not feeding their children and how they are
suffering. Not only that, but the next generation will suffer more. Dr.
Price's work showed how within one generation of eating the foods of
commerce, children suffered. However, often people who had birthed one
child with deficiencies would, upon returning to a native (nourishing) diet,
produce a vibrantly healthy child.
Francis Pottengers work (Pottenger's Cats---available from the Price
Pottenger Nutrition Foundation in book form,. There is a video which is
also exceptional) showed that with the cats it sometimes took four
generations of proper feeding to reverse the damage done from the deficient
diets. There is so much we can all learn from Price & Pottengers work.
How many people (prospective MOMS & DADS) eat special foods prior to
conception, in addition to an exremely nutritious diet? During pregnancy
and lactation? Many pregnancies just happen.....and special nutrition is
not planned. We modern folks must go out of our way to create the most
nutritious diets. And what we are taught is nutritious, is often sorely
lacking in many essential nutrients required for superior health.
Dr. Weston Price's work so vividly shows, it is not merely the act of
breastfeeding, the mother's milk must also be rich in all of the nutrients
the baby needs. I see that nowadays too..... some women breast feed, but
do not eat enough of the foods they and they growing children eat. Many
don't know what those foods are or don't place a priority on gathering and
preparing them. They are conditioned to eat many foods that lack adequate
nutrition.
What is a clean diet to one may still have been missing in many key
nutrients that may prevent a child from developing a propensity toward
emotional problems. Given your inherent deficiencies, it is likely that you
would have needed far higher amounts of certain things (DHA and EPA for
example, probably zinc too) in order to meet your own needs and then to have
enough to pass on in gestation and in your milk. Research shows that those
with depression and allergies and many related disorders have extremely high
needs for certain nutrients. Probably that applies to most of us, given
that we were the generation(s) following the advent of more and more
processed diets.
I am not saying that you could have prevented the problems with 100%
certainty, only that it is likely that your nutrition at the time of
conception, during pregnancy, and lactation could have contained more
nutrients which may have prevented the problem. Much of what is looked at
as a genetic weakness, may be the result of failure to meet extraordinarily
high needs for certain nutrients. How many women do you know who eat dark
leafy greens 2-3x a day and eat fatty ocean fish or take cod liver oil daily
prior to and during conception, during pregnancy, and lactation, eat a high
protein diet, avoid the displacing foods of commerce, etc......
I am not posting this to blame or anger you, only to point out that breast
feeding is important, but that the milk can only have in it what the mother
eats, or the baby will draw on what reserves the mother may have. To
illustrate, vegetarian women have much lower tissue levels of EPA and DHA
than non-vegetarian women. Women eat eat a lot of oily ocean fish (such as
Japanese women used to....) have higher levels of EPA and DHA.
Our food supply has been weakened so we must go to greater lengths to meet
our core nutritional needs and many of us have very high needs for some
things due to pre and post-natal deficiencies. Further, if children are not
spaced at least 3 years apart, it is unlikely that a mother will restore her
own EPA and DHA stores (among other nutrient stores) for her own needs, much
less the extra for a baby. That could explain also why your second child
had the problems you mentioned.
People often attack jeanclaude for being a purist, but he is trying
desperately to point out how critical the quality of our food supply is to
the health and continuation of our species. Those of you who've not read
Price and Pottenger's works, I urge you to do so. For a short version,
Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine by Ron Schmid is also very good.
Rachel
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