Several things have come to my attention lately.
One is that I may be killing my son by giving him Singulair, or at least making him want to kill himself. He has taken this since he was about 4 years old for his chronic, severe asthma. It is so scary. The worst part about this report is that they have known of these side effects for a long time, but they never included it because the side effects didn't manifest during their clinical trials. It is under FDA review. The drug is reported to bring in something like $3 billion dollars in sales a year - so of course it hasn't been pulled from shelves. I can't in good conscience keep giving it to my son. But I will say that we have run out and been unable to fill it for a few days and notice a dramatic change in his breathing. It is pretty scary to think about taking him off of it.
Then I read about the flu vaccine which he also takes every year because no matter how mild the illness, he always has strong respiratory reactions. Even though the vaccine admittedly only covers about 40% of the potential strains it has seemed a prudent decision. This new information will cause me to think again. (Google it - there is lots of info. out there.)
And yesterday at co-op, Kullen's chemistry class was making soda. They were using raw corn, and soaking it, to produce corn syrup and I learned through a discussion with the teachers how corn syrup is made. It is coaxing the starch out of the corn using sulfuric acid (I can't find any internet sources to directly back this up - but it is in Kullen's science book) and then adding a couple of enzymes. A friend explained to me recently that this is a mainstay of the American diet, rearing its ugly head in the majority of the processed foods that appear on our grocery shelves, pantries, and restaurants, and is a major contributor to the diabetes epidemic. We have made some major steps towards removing it from our diet - but it still rears its ugly head in ice cream, ketchup, even in salad dressings. It is everywhere.
Could someone please beam me back to 1900??
(On second thought - nevermind. I think there were risks to living back then too!)
I don't want to go back to the 90's.
ReplyDeleteI spent that entire decade either pregnant or nursing. And definitely NOT sleeping.
I understand your concerns. I have one daughter with Whooping Cough (even though she was immunized) and she shares a room with my other dd who has asthma.
If my other dd gets Whooping Cough, it will be a scary thing!
I do my best not to buy things with high fructose corn syrup in them.
ReplyDeleteI buy natural and organic as much as possible.
The next thing I need to do is bake bread because bread has HFCS in it among other things and I can't afford organic bread because we go trough to much.
I just keep learning and keep changing.
I wanted to mention Oil of Oregano to you also for breathing. You can also buy the capsules and just swallow them because the oil is pretty foul, I put a few drops in orange juice to take it.
It needs to be wild mediterranean though,
Oreganol by North American herb and spice is awesome, you can google it :)
When I stopped taking drugs I took this everyday, I don't take anything now unless I get sick and of course it goes to my chest.
You can try this while he is on meds, I'm not advocating you stop the meds(just wanted to make that clear) but I do believe in natural remedies and steroids everyday are not good. I found that I still couldn't breathe even while on the meds, I used my nebulizer way too much.