Three months after Shepherd first saw Dr. Kahn, we sought a second opinion from Lisa Imundo, director of pediatric rheumatology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Imundo wanted to more than double the dose of methotrexate. She had treated thousands of kids with a ...
But after five weeks on Walker’s regimen and the initial dose of methotrexate, Shepherd seemed to be getting worse. He was already nauseated and could barely eat for two days after taking his weekly pills. He now spent entire afternoons on my lap. He started using a stroller again, and we w ...
I was nervous about keeping Shepherd on methotrexate, but Darin didn’t share my squeamishness. He has always been more comfortable with pharmaceuticals, more trusting in general. As we talked it over on the way back from Dr. Kahn’s, Darin agreed that if Walker’s treatment worked for her s ...
A week later, we told Dr. Kahn about Shane’s story and floated the possibility of following the same course. He wasn’t familiar with leaky gut but agreed that it wouldn’t be harmful to try Walker’s regimen. He was adamant, though, that we not quit the medication. In fact, he wanted to up ...
Six weeks into the alternative therapy, Shane started feeling better. After three months, his arthritis pain was gone. He’d been in remission for almost two years, Walker told me, much better than anything we were told to expect.
What could have caused the inflammation in Shane’s gut in the first place? Walker suspected an allergy or sensitivity to gluten and dairy (common perpetrators). She also implicated antibiotics, since they can decimate protective, good bacteria along with the bad. A week before he started wa ...
Walker said she believed that her son’s arthritis was caused by something I had never heard of before — leaky-gut syndrome, a concept that has been accepted in alternative circles for years despite a name that asks you not to take it seriously. The idea is that inflammation in the gut caus ...
I grabbed my pen and paper and started taking notes. No gluten. No dairy. No refined sugar. No nightshades, a group of plants that includes potatoes and tomatoes, which are thought by some to be potentially inflammatory, as is sugar. Every day, Shane took a probiotic. Plus two tablespoons of ...