Grrrrrr

So Grace has struggled these last few years with this weird brownish/blackish straining that forms on her teeth. It's not a lack of tooth brushing, even the dental hygienist agreed with that one. It appears to be an imbalance in the body. A friend adequately described it as a semi-transparent wood stain for your deck. It comes off with a dental cleaning or with pumice. The hygienist did give me several caps of pumice to use when it got really bad. We also found that a rotating toothbrush helps, but not as much as we'd like.

When I see a symptom I don't try to cover it up, I hunt for the root cause of that symptom. So I have questioned docs off and on but no one ever seemed to know what it was. We have done our best to give her the tools she can use to keep them clean but she is very aware of her brown-film covered teeth. Fortunately she's not self-obsessed so it doesn't keep her from talking to others or having fun, she's just aware of it and embarrassed when she meets new people.

The other day, on a homeschooling board, I learned the name from another mom. It's called Chromogenic bacteria. Sounds wonderful eh? Since I finally had a name, I was able to research it and network with my autism mommies to see what anyone could tell me. Amazingly, although several of the kids with autism have it, no one knows what in the world can be done. Seriously??? Docs covering the US cannot tell a single parent what to do to fix the body chemistry of a child with an imbalance??

Fortunately my friends are well researched (and I did spend some time looking stuff up myself of course) so I have a better understanding of the "theory" behind this problem, but still no solution. When analyzed in a lab, this bacteria shows high levels of iron, other analysis show high levels of calcium and potassium. So her body reacts negatively to the high iron (or calcium/potassium) and that's the result. Another theory is that certain bacteria may produce their own heavy metals in a body. Iron is a heavy metal so if there is a bacteria that thrives on iron, it can produce it's own food (biological transmutation) to survive, but in the meantime causing Grace to have too much iron in her body. Oh that's a fun thought! Even funner is that all this is theory and conjecture b/c it's outside the mainstream medicine mindset so it's controversial... but it's the only thing that anyone can come up with. Mainstream medicine just wants to scrape her teeth clean and pretend there's no problem.

Our Bioveda treatments yesterday covered bacteria. We didn't see Chromogenic pop up but we did get TONS of bacterial hits. He can get very specific once we know names of things so if her treatment from yesterday doesn't clear up the yuckies, we will hit it specifically next week.

But you know what really bugs the snot out of me? That I, a layman mommy, have to do all my own researching, theorizing and implementing. That all the docs I have spoken to, all the docs my mom friends have spoken to, cannot answer this basic question. That most of the docs aren't even interested in finding an answer b/c someones yucky teeth should be the dentist problem; except that it's a body problem that just shows up in the teeth so it's not the dentist domain at all. And all the dentist can do it clean it every 6 months which is about 5 & 3/4 months too long between visits.

Oh and most interesting... every one of the children whose moms reported sharing a similar problem, are on special diets. Now granted, I was talking to my autism mommies and special diets are the norm. But still... they're not the ordinary GFCF diet, but multiple dietary restrictions b/c of food allergies. I cannot tell if that is related but find it suspicious. Even more suspicious is that out of the three kids in this house (all on the same diet), only one has that problem. And she is the most sensitive child here.

I should have paid more attention in school. /bangs head on desk/