“I have been using Katie Reid’s guidelines from unblindmymind.org for how to remove traces of MSG from my son’s diet for about 6 months now and the results have been AMAZING.”
My son, Sebastian, is 7. He had laryngomalacia and severe acid reflux and severe apneas that appeared a week after birth when I went on antibiotics while breast feeding. Stanford performed a surgery to reduce his floppy tissue and open his airway when he was 2 months old, which seemed miraculous for a few weeks, but the problem came back. After that, I found that only eating quinoa, meat, vegetables, and fruit was all that worked to improve the situation.

He has had night terrors most of his life and I noticed some relationship to food but was never quite sure because they would mysteriously show up when I thought we had eaten “clean” food (no-gluten, no-dairy, organic but still lots of boxed and bottled things).

In 2013, he started to exhibit tics which we thought would go away….then things escalated when later that summer he had either fainting spells or seizures (our pediatrician said they can look like the same thing in young children.) We changed his diet to include only homemade organic meat and veggies in bone broths for a week and the tics and seizures immediately abated, but when we went back to our busy work and school schedules, the tics came back. (Thankfully, he has not had any more faint/seizure spells).  We kept eliminating various foods thinking there was a specific food allergy or intolerance at play, but we could not get the tics to go away. The tics became more and more uncomfortable, to the point where Seb was tongue-thrusting so hard he was hurting his neck and other kids thought he was making fun of them….

Then one day I saw Katie’s presentation, printed the list of specific additives to avoid, and we started being much more controlled about ingredients. We noticed an immediate difference. The game-changer was Katie’s tour of the health food store tour, a place where I had assumed most food was relatively unprocessed…. Ever since then we have been much more vigilant. When we avoid the additives on Katie’s list, Sebastian’s night terrors of 7 years completely disappear, his bedwetting stops, the rash around his mouth stops, and his attention goes up. He still has intolerances and we need to work more with his digestive strength, but the most impactful of all are glutamates. Of course,  when I let him have something that looks innocent and has no list of ingredients or he sneaks a piece of gum or Cheeto at a friend’s house these symptoms reappear.

Sebastian still has mild attention issues at school. Six months ago, a family friend who is a neurosurgeon who has practiced for 30 years suggested we put him on Ritalin because he seems to have ADD. We have decided to hand-make almost all of our food instead of putting him on medication. He is functional, ahead in school for his age, and I can’t help but think how handicapped Sebastian would be by this point if we weren’t avoiding these neuro-toxins.

I sincerely hope there is further investigation of food additives’ effects on children with neurological disorders. If I knew what I know now when this had first started and had the specific instructions and videos Katie uses on Unblind My Mind, the last 7 years would have been much less painful for my entire family. I can’t imagine how painful this is for so many other families whose children have even worse reactions to these additives.”

D. Voisin