Christine had been dealing with issues with her oldest son Max for a long time. He was the sweetest baby, but when he was two, he started to get naughty. For years, she thought he would grow out of it, but it never got better. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse.
When he was fourteen, there was nothing she could do to help him. He seemed to get uncontrollably mad every time something didn’t go his way. Sometimes, the simplest thing would set him off. She might ask him to pick up his laundry or clean up after making a snack in the kitchen, and he would get so mad. Max had punched holes in the walls, he had threatened his siblings, and he had even threatened her. Christine was starting to feel unsafe when he was acting angry, and he was too big for her to restrain him.
When Max wasn’t acting out, he was the sweetest kid in the world, and Christine couldn’t figure out how to help him control his anger. She enrolled him in counseling, and that worked a bit. However, there were still problems.
One day, Christine overheard some other moms talking about the effect food had on their children. One of the moms was explaining how depressed her son was until they changed his diet, and the other mom was saying how rageful her son was until she also made dietary changes. Christine was interested so she asked these moms for information. The other moms explained a little bit about what changes they had made to their diets, and they advised her to get extra help from FamilyCompass.com.
Christine had been dealing with things with Max for so long that she was willing to try anything. For years, she had been blaming herself for Max’s behavior, but now, she thought maybe it was the food. She did some research on glutamates, and everything she learned was fascinating.
Glutamates, she learned, are one of the six major amino acids in the brain. They exist there naturally, and they work as neurotransmitters. However, if the levels of glutamates in the brain become too high, a person can experience severe depression.In fact, scientists had recently discovered that suicide victims have very high levels of glutamate in their systems.
Christine had never thought of Max as depressed because he just seemed so mad all the time. However, she looked up the symptoms of teen depression, and it was a perfect match. He was angry, insolent, threatened, and unwilling to complete the simplest task. She realized then that he actually was depressed so she decided to cut glutamate out of his diet.
She completely eliminated MSG (monosodium glutamate) from his diet, and she also eliminated most of the processed foods they had been eating. She had to bake a lot and cook almost everything from scratch. However, by the end of the week, the results were remarkable. He was willing to perform jobs as requested, he wasn’t as angry, he could take a joke, and best of all, he had started bathing again. By the end of three weeks, she was convinced that the dietary changes had saved her son.
Sarah Del Rosario
Sarah Del Rosario is a soon to be mom and a professional writer. She currently contributes to The Family Compass, a site that brings together a vast collection of resources that help families find their bearings.
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