WHY the Drastic Change In the Family Diet???

In October 2011, just after his 5th birthday, my son Jack was diagnosed with Vitiligo - an autoimmune disease where the body's immune system starts attacking itself. Sounds pretty scary but, in this case, thank God, it attacks the pigment of the skin. So it can be unsightly, but it's not harmful to the physical health of it's victims.

BUT - it can be VERY harmful to the emotional well-being of it's victims so it's infuriating to hear the pat line about it not being a health risk and discovering that treatments are very rarely covered by insurance because it's "cosmetic". This condition is not very well known until you mention "it's the skin condition Michael Jackson had" and then you get the spark of recognition from folks. We are actually very lucky - Jack has a very small amount of de-pigmented skin on his back - only one spot is large enough to be noticeable and the few others are so small that only a mother (namely me) could spot them. He's also very fair skinned (except in the summer when he turns nut-brown and that damn spot really sticks out. In darker skinned people it can be so much more apparent and it often occurs in highly visible areas on the face, hands, neck...the areas that are highly visible to one and all.

In our case, Jack had a noticeable patch of really, REALLY white skin on his back that I first noticed when he was 2 1/2 to 3 years old, I assumed it was a birthmark and didn't worry about it. Over the course of that year I noticed that it seemed to get larger, I just figured it was stretching with his skin as he grew. My mom (whose even more of a worrier than me) was pretty concerned about though and that got me worrying as well so I made up my mind to mention it to my pediatrician at his 5-year check up. Long story short - we found out that it was Vitiligo. I actually figured it out through tons of research before-hand, thank goodness because the dermatologist/specialist we saw was NOT forthcoming at all. I honestly don't think he was going to tell us what it was at all but I kept throwing out information and questions based on my own research and he didn't seem very happy about it but couldn't deny any of it and reluctantly admitted that it was Vitiligo. I could write a whole post about that visit to the dermatologist and his utter lack of concern. And, the stupid/dangerous treatment he prescribed - thank God I researched that too before administering it on my son. Anyway, I digress...
I couldn't STAND the thought of my beautiful boy being disfigured and struggling with self-esteem and the awful treatment other kids (and even adults) so often dish out. I still can't. But I do know that Jack is in God's hands and no matter what may ever happen with this condition, he IS beautiful and will ALWAYS BE beautiful. I gave it to God and, while I do give him a thorough once-over on a frequent basis, I've not been horribly focused on it - not at all.

There is NO CURE and there is no way of knowing if it will ever "take off" and spread rapidly, spread slowly, go away, or just stay as it is. He could go years with nothing and then suddenly have a rapid growth. Just no way of knowing. It took me weeks to process this and, in the beginning, I haunted several "vitiligo community" sites and informative sites and tortured myself with the possibilities. What I discovered is that there are a lot of "cures" and "treatments" out there that are usually pretty expensive - and pretty useless. I'm not going to subject my boy to that.

I've been doing a LOT of research lately though that shows taking a NUTRITIONAL approach and drastically changing our crappy eating habits can have quite an impact. Been changing our habits over the last several weeks and TOTALLY shocked and pleased to see that the main spot on his back is filling in with freckles! Coincidence? Don't care - all the research supports a nutritional change to plant-based, whole, non-processed foods being of HUGE benefit. I'm going to start taking pictures each week to track any progress, did the first one last night so you can see where we are:

My first find on the impact NUTRITION can play was from Vitiligo research - GREAT information: http://vitiligo.50webs.com/#introduction

Followed by documentaries and follow up research online from "Forks Over Knives," "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead," "Food Inc." one on the Gerson cure and many more.
SOOOOOOOOOO, all the above is basically to provide an introduction to the fact that I've finally launched on a mission to put us on a highly plant-based diet with minimal amounts of free range/naturally raised meat, go Gluten-Free as much as possible and cut way down on dairy. Allowing for "bad" food that's been a staple for us several times a week to help ease us into it because I'm definitely paying the price for being so lackadaisical about nutrition all their lives. UGH.

I'll be posting about my progress and uploading videos about it on YouTube so - this is just to give you the background.

First video about this effort is up on YouTube on my ColorMeKooky channel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xlDTdHzcIc

Wish me luck!