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Heightened Child Anxiety - What To Do??
Hi All,
We are largely doing well, but one of my younger kiddos has NOT been doing so good this autumn. Sunken eyes, low appetite, picky eating (well, nothing compared with two siblings' eating disorders pre-vitamin-A-detox - but still annoying), fatigue ("I never wake up feeling rested!"), constipation (takes a long time and produces very little), tantrums and "feeling stuck," and lots of anxiety ("But I _can't_! But you won't be there! But I can't decide if I want to! But you'll go away! I KNOW I'll be all alone! I won't be able to!" etc. etc. etc.)
This child and one sibling got a virus recently (a week apart, so luckily not at the same time), and symptoms for both included fever...and once that subsided, _non-stop_ whining and crying. It was a little crazy, actually, the severity of the Bad Moods for each of them. The toddler had never behaved like this in his life. The patient would get a little better upon eating, and then the whining and tantrumming would begin again, literally triggered by an invitation to read a book or play a game.
So obviously the virus was extreme, but even now that both are feeling better, behavior of the Child in Question not good. Anxiety is high. Irrationality is driving me crazy (the anxiety in my children tends to be expressed thusly: "Mama, you're going to leave me! I know it!" Whereupon I reassure the child and remind the child that never once in my entire long history of being a mother have I left them without coming back... "But I KNOW you will leave!" etc.....) I am Really Really wishing I could think of some dietary or other health tweak, especially for this one whose baseline isn't high to begin with.
This child's diet: lots of white rice, plenty of meat (beef, pork, chicken), oats, 1-3 eggs per day (started about a month ago, up from 1-3 per week), some iceberg lettuce and cucumbers, lots of mushrooms, minimal amounts of "green" spices like oregano, avocado oil, some fruits like apples and bananas, sourdough wheat bread, small amounts of butter and onion and garlic and maple syrup.
No supplements at the moment, but I had been giving ~200 thiamine over the summer (I originally felt that it wasn't doing anything, but now I wonder if it was. Maybe I will try again).
Any and all ideas welcomed!
Hi Sarabeth. I am so sorry to hear your child is running into issues.
This detox induced some serious anxiety issues for me. I believe these to have been due to zinc, b1, b2, and methyl group deficiencies despite consuming more than the RDA for all of those. I was also careful not to let my b2 foods sit out in the light, tried to minimize heating my b1 foods, etc. I am back doing pretty well again now that I am supplementing b1, b2, and zinc, and eating wheat bran. My anxiety would still be awful if I had stayed married to any notion of the level of nutrients I “should” need.
Could it be that your child has run into nutrient deficiencies, too? I wonder if they are getting enough b1 to keep up with detox demands based on what you have written above. Also, if they just had a virus, do you think they might be low in zinc?
It shocked me how much b2 helped anxiety. It was the type that sounds similar to what your child is going through - irrational thoughts with no basis in reality. Zinc helped this type of thinking, too. B1 helped too, but not as much as B2 or zinc.
I have gotten good success with riboflavin 5 phosphate and zinc picolinate. I didn’t try other b2 or zinc forms. I use benfotiamine as well. Allithiamine made my anxiety worse and had some weird neurological effects. Thiamin hcl did nothing. Elliott Overton says that taking b1 without b2 can induce a b2 deficiency. That appears to have been true in my case so I would watch for that.
Hoping this anecdote can be of some help. All the best.
My thoughts were re B1. I need to supplement this despie getting plenty in my diet. Whenever I start to get deficient there are certain red flags and one of the things my husband looks out for is me saying "I can't" a lot.
I've also noticed that if I supplement B1 alone, after a while it will seem to stop working and I need to take some B2 alongside it.
Having just been ill myself, I also noticed an increase in certain symptoms.
I found that a high beef diet plus restrictions tended to reduce my B1. Pork gives you a bit more B1. Oats, nuts and flax seed are also high B1 sources. Where I get the most B1 is from making sunflower seed 'milk' with some cashews. I use it in coffee and cocoa and as a sauce with chicken. There's choline in sunflower seeds and it helps the absorption of the B1. You get other vitamins and minerals from the foods. The need for high doses of thiamine may diminish as you get replenished with choline. The extra small amounts of B1 may have helped parasympathetic activity and improved digestion.
I am thinking maybe it is better to eat spelt than white rice, because spelt has quite a bit of B1, B2, and other minerals and vitamins. I can tolerate spelt quite well and somehow I feel good from it. White rice is a pretty empty carbohydrate and it will suck the b vitamins out of the body maybe, eventually. Maybe especially if you have some high stress in your life (virus, too much work, etc)
@sarabeth-matilsky I don't know if you have already tried this, but would your child eat beans, cooked plain with a little salt? There is more nutrition in them (especially soluble fiber) than in white rice. Maybe you could try white beans such as navy or Great Northern as a substitute?
Thanks, everybody! This is very helpful. I am re-starting some Walsh-type supplements (b6, zinc, b1 and b2, magnesium and some selenium), and will see how that works to start. (This child absolutely refuses to eat and HATES beans, and while I currently encourage consumption, I have not forced it since I slightly wonder if the fiber or something is just not agreeable to digestion at this point. Maybe that will change? I hope!) And I am going to try to cut down on the white rice...
Much appreciate the brainstorming and lack of panic. 🙂
You are wise not to resort to forcing any foods, no matter how super this one or that one might seem on paper. Perhaps your child could be unknowingly resisting oxalate (or even copper)? Most beans are high in oxalate (with the exception of lentils and chickpeas and black-eyed-peas) and many are high in copper.
Barley is an alternative to beans that is high it thiamine and soluble fiber, but low in oxalates, and barley flour makes delicious muffins! I also use it when baking bread or biscuits or whatever, by substituting part of the wheat flour with barley flour.
As far as the paranoia goes, that was one of the main symptoms I experienced on a high-sweet potato diet, which I attribute to their high beta carotene and oxalate content, along with the high-copper water source I was bathing in at the time (mushrooms are high in copper: probably a stretch, just brainstorming).
Since your child is so young, perhaps it is unlikely he or she is “oxalate-dumping,” but your diet sounds pretty low-oxalate, which reminded me of how I inadvertently triggered oxalate-dumping in year two of low-vitamin A eating, but didn’t realize it at the time.
Another possibility, if he or she is small still, perhaps three eggs per day is just too much? It’s still too much for me, unfortunately, and can provoke unpleasant emotional symptoms. But I do find my brain feels best with added fat intake (though I will have a reaction if I overdo the butter) so I consume coconut oil and olive oil every day, and sometimes make a vegan butter blend with them and sunflower lecithin. For whole fatty acids and extra thiamine, I also have hemp hearts on my porridge, which are low oxalate, too.
Sorry if that’s too many ideas. I really feel for your kid, because I know how awful paranoid ideation feels. My Mom slept in the same room as me when I was dealing with the fallout from the sweet-potato diet, because I was so terrified to be alone. It sounds terribly exhausting to deal with, but no doubt your kid thinks you’re a hero for comforting him or her and will remember your emotional support with gratitude.
Hi @puddleduck, I am so eager to see if our current experiment with wheat sourdough goes well. If it does, I would love to try barley (it didn't go well two years ago, but that was then...and this is now! 🙂 ). Would you share your barley muffin recipe? 🙂