Arabinose....

HUH? What?

I'll get to arabinose in a second...

I am writing this blog as much for myself as for anyone else who may care to listen. (I need to remember what I saw this week.) There are two foods that, when given in great quantity and combined with additional stressors, drive my son over the edge. He can have them in VERY small quantities... but not every day for a week. They are apples and grapes. I got a shipment of grapes in our door2door and they mysteriously disappeared. He also had them many days at camp this week. Today we are reaping the fruits of that mistake. Andrew has, in the past, had major (ripping the doors off) meltdowns. Some of this was behavioral. But it has come to my attention (this week) that there are things that trigger his brain into full meltdown mode. I actually think it is a combination of events that are contributing. When we began RDI we moved to a behavioral model to help curb the tantrums. But we also slowed everything else down. And it was fall / winter and there wasn't much in the way of fruit..especially grapes.

So..why grapes and apples. The answer is arabinose. You can read an very long and technical article HERE. It has to do with both yeast and Krebs cycle. You can also google arabinose and autism and come up with quite a bit.

I had actually planned on writing a very long blog explaining it myself but why do that when others have already done it. Just making you aware. Today has been so stressful. We did camp and Andrew chipped his tooth. It was 3 PM on a Friday afternoon. My dentist's on call dentist did come in. And the prayers helped because Andrew didn't even yell. But the whole thing really did bring me back to remembering why we do what we do. I kind of lost it at the camp because it was all deja-vu. But that will be another post. Just wanted to make some folks aware of the grapes / apples connection. I don't think you can just not eat ANYTHING...and I think every kid is different. But too many grapes this week.....