Multiple Chemical Sensitivity:
Diet Treatment Tips

The specific diet treatment tips we found helpful were:

• We kept a food diary to see which foods made him feel better or worse. Trigger foods seemed to be:
  
  

  Hot dogs, bacon, lunch meat anything with nitrites. I also kept from giving him too many foods with naturally occurring nitrites, though based on his diet diary these didn't seem to be a problem. But I didn't want to take any chances. I always buy nitrite free meats at home, but initially I didn't think the limited exposure to nitrites my son got from school lunches and occasional restaurant meals would be significant. Was I ever wrong on that front. Cutting out the cafeteria lunches and nitrite cured food at restaurants made a significant improvement in my son's health. Birthday cake - we think it was the dye in the frostings that made him sick. The preservatives and high levels of sugar probably didn't help either. For some reason chocolate doughnuts really made him worse.

• My son seemed to have the least problems with MCS when his pH was within a normal range.
  
  
• I made most meals from scratch when possible. I bought a rotisserie to cook up organic meat ahead of time for him to take in his lunch to avoid the nitrites in processed lunch meat. I also bought a rice cooker to make up big batches of organic rice.
  
  
• I started making my son's lunch each day, packing it with whole, preservative and dye free foods from home instead of letting him eat at school. It is ironic that school lunches often consists of high fat, high sugar, nutrient poor processed foods laden with preservatives, considering the number of links that have been established between poor diet and behavior problems at school. One of the frequent meals at my son's school is corn dogs, a food loaded with fat, salt and nitrites.
  
  
• We made organic meat a larger part of his diet to help with his cysteine and zinc levels. We usually try to get our nutrients through foods rather than supplements, but in the end we did give my son very small amounts of ground zinc supplements. He doesn't like to eat a lot of meat, so it is hard to get him the RDA of zinc from his regular diet.
  
  
• I bought organic foods as much as possible.
  
  
• We limited sugar and any foods with dyes or preservatives as much as possible. According to Sherry Rogers, a doctor who specializes in environmental illness, people who eat lots of junk foods and sweets invariably have lower levels of vitamins and minerals needed to activate the detoxification enzymes.
  
  
• I found some glazed walnut at the store that my son liked to snack on. Walnuts are high in omega-3 fatty acids , which are supposed to be good for people with MCS
  
  
• We had always limited his soda intake to parties and other special events, but during his MCS recovery we eliminated it completely. Soda contains phosphates which can reduce magnesium levels.
  
  
• I've tried to have him avoid whole grain foods and brown rice. I know it goes against conventional health wisdom, but there are some studies that show the fiber and phytates in whole grains reduce mineral absorption. We seem to be okay with the fiber in beans and produce in my family - it's just seems to be whole grains, like oatmeal and whole wheat bread, that give us problems.
  
  
• I suspect cooked and mashed foods are easier to absorb and get nutrients from. I noticed my son would feel better after eating mashed pinto beans. I've read that pinto beans have high amounts of magnesium. I think the mashing makes the beans easier to digest. I know a lot of people advocate raw food diets these days, but I don't think they are the best types of diet for everyone.
  
  I've tested out different diets with raw foods and cooked foods for my family and cooked foods come out to be the clear winner for us.
  
  I tried to get my son to eat a lot of home cooked soups. I think the long simmering process in soups is good for killing toxins such as bacteria and yeast and also helps make the soups easy to digest. Plus the medley of ingredients provide a wide range of highly absorbable vitamins and minerals.

Next Section => Environmental Tips for people with MCS

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