Now is the time to make some healthy changes to your family’s diet.  Start focusing your diet on vegetables and fruit.  Cooking with lots of fruit and vegetables provides you with many protective compounds for your health.  Pretend the meal plate is a canvas that you can color with a rainbow of colors from fruits and vegetables.  Reverse the ratio of meat and carbohydrates to vegetables.  Create two large portions of vegetables to a small portion of carbohydrates and meat.  The meat should not be over 4 ounces.  Just a few changes in your family’s diet can mean healthier, happier lives for all of you.  Please visit my recipe section where I show examples of allergy-free colorful food.

The other day I received a phone call from a friend.  Her daughter just had a baby and went to see a new dentist for a check-up.  He found that she had more decay than was normal and asked if she had GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).  She repeatedly told him no.  She was upset and called her mother and her mother called me.  After hearing the problem I decided to change my vocabulary.  I asked my friend if her daughter had heartburn during her pregnancy.  Her reply was  “Oh terrible heartburn everyday of her pregnancy!” I then asked her what her physician thought of the heartburn.  Her mother told her that the heartburn was normal so the daughter did not tell her physician.

Heartburn/GERD may be normal once a month, but anything over two days a week is abnormal and considered disease.  Pregnancy predisposes heartburn and GERD.  However, careful diet and close observation from the physician will help prevent some of the results of heartburn/GERD.  In this case it was a plethora of decay that was the immediate result.  I suggested that the daughter talk to her physician about her heartburn/GERD.  This would allow the physician to test for possible GERD related diseases.  Examples are: Iron deficiency anemia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Thyroid Disease, and some Pulmonary diseases.