Homemade Laundry Detergent

I wasn't discouraged by my failures at fabric softener, so I decided to make laundry detergent. After reading several recipes (Wellness Mama, Happy Money Saver, and Nature's Nurture), I decided to use this amalgam.

4 cups hot water
1/2 cup grated soap
1 cup washing soda
3/4 cup borax
1/2 cup oxyclean (powdered sodium percarbonate)
1/4 cup baking soda
1/2 cup scented laundry detergent, or many drops of essential oils

Add hot water and grated soap to a large bowl. Stir until well mixed, heating in the microwave if that helps the soap go into solution. Stir in washing soda and borax. Stir in oxyclean and baking soda. If you want scent, mix in a scented laundry detergent or essential oils. Let cool in the bowl for 24 hours. Stir again, and transfer to a lidded bucket that looks to be about twice as large as needed. Place lid on bucket until you're ready to scoop thick goop into your washing machine!

I usually use the drink mixer attachment on my immersion blender to mix this, but anything from a spoon with plenty of elbow grease to a mixer should work. If it's too thick for your chosen mixing approach, add more water to make it tractable - but then you'll need to add more detergent to your laundry. I use a 2 Tbs scoop for my washer.

I found already-grated soap in the laundry section, so that was easy. For the scented laundry detergent, I used Gain, what my mom always used. My laundry "smells like home" although now full-strength Gain just smells too perfumed to me!

My advice on this recipe is to store it in a bucket about twice as big as you expect to need. After it cools for 24 hours, I would expect changes to be done, but this recipe waits a couple days and then really expands. It also gets very thick (I suppose you could use more water, but then you need an even larger storage vessel), so scooping it out from a bucket on this second batch is so much easier than trying to shake it out of the old laundry detergent bottle on that first batch! I don't recall this much expansion from my initial small trial batch made with essential oils instead of Gain, so that may be the difference. So: use a bucket with room for expansion. I didn't expect that much expansion, nor did I expect it to expand a few days after the 24-hour cooling period, so I did have some pressurized laundry soap shooting around my laundry nook. Luckily that was easy to clean in my case (and much of it was contained in the basin that the bottle was sitting in), but I don't want anyone else making this unaware of the delayed expansion. Yay, bucket!

But: does it work? Unfortunately, I can answer that; luckily, to the positive. One of my children had a sudden onset of digestive upset. We changed his clothes in the bathtub, and I shook what bits I could into the toilet. I was pretty sure his clothes were stained, but after rinsing, I put his clothes in the washer. All I had was my homemade laundry detergent, so it was time for the worst-case test. After washing, and again after drying, I could detect no smell and no sight of what had happened. I was very impressed! His clothes were so nasty going in (and I scrubbed the bathroom after cleaning him up), I had already written them off. And, surprise! All clean!

Homemade Fabric Softener (not!)

My dryer has been imparting a lot of static to my clothes, so I started my laundry make-my-own at static. Fair warning: all attempts so far have been failures.

1. Commercial dryer sheets are so scented that I sneeze just getting one out! I tried making my own dryer sheets by soaking a piece of fleece in a solution of 1 part fabric softener to 6 parts water, and that worked but the fabric softener is itself commercial (same goes for using hair conditioner instead of fabric softener). This approach is also still scented, so not what I wanted.
2. I tried using 2 Tbs of white vinegar in my washer's rinse cycle, but my clothes and especially towels smelled too strongly of vinegar for me. Yes, even with essential oils.
3. Adding more baking soda than usual didn't seem to make a difference to static cling either.
4. Since vinegar contains acetic acid, and baking soda is mildly alkaline, I don't think a mixture of vinegar and baking soda will be effective for very long after the first mixing. (I didn't try it, though. Sodium acetate might be great, but it might still have the vinegar smell. I didn't want to use more vinegar, and want to re-wash laundry. Again.)
5. Finally, I tried crumpled aluminum foil in my dryer. It got very smoothly rounded in the dryer, but that's the only change I noticed.

That covers the suggestions at ThiftyFun as well as the extra foil one from lifehacker, but I do have another one to try that I hope will work.

Update: I tried the other idea, epsom salt, but it didn't reduce static for me. Looking at what Wikipedia lists for antistatic agents, I'm not hopeful to reproduce that with home chemistry.

Why GFCF should be GFCFSF

This is long overdue on my part (since Cale is now a year past outgrowing his infant allergies), to collect my thoughts on why GFCF (gluten-free, casein-free) diets generally need to be GFCFSF (add soy-free) in order to be effective. This is crucial because most people replace casein (the main protein in milk) with soy! So why should soy also be eliminated?

Background: Calories come from three sources: fat, carbohydrate (from simple sugars up to complex carbohydrates of whole grains), and protein. Enzymes are specialized proteins that facilitate a chemical reaction, like digestion. Enzymes end with -ase; fat-digesting enzymes are lipases, carbohydrate-digesting enzymes are amylases, and protein-digesting enzymes are proteases. Sugars end with -ose, so the amylase lactase will digest the milk sugar lactose. A peptide is a piece of either a partially- or a fully-digested protein. Most allergies are reactions to proteins, while most reactions to carbohydrates (like lactose intolerance) are intolerances.

Gluten is, very loosely speaking (ref: scroll down to heading titled What is Gluten?), the protein in wheat including spelt, rye, barley, and sometimes oats. Why sometimes oats? Most oats are grown in the same field as wheat and are contaminated with wheat gluten. Note that spelt is a type of wheat; sometimes people confuse "alternative wheat" (meaning not the usual variety) with "alternative to wheat" which spelt is not.

Casein is the predominant protein in milk; the other protein is whey but it is less often allergenic.

Similar:

soy proteins sometimes cross react with antibodies against casein

(from Casein, Gluten, Soy and DPP IV). So if casein causes an allergic reaction via antibodies, soy can often trigger the same antibodies and hence the same allergic reaction. (I replaced milk with rice drink on my cereal.) Apparently the side effects can take up to a year to clear up, too! (Cale cleared up in two-and-a-half days.) Luckily,

there are only trace amounts of [soy] protein in soy lecithin and soybean oil. Therefore, you may want to avoid all other soybean products, but still allow lecithin and oil

(from GF Meals). If you're strict about soy-free, lecithin (which isn't always from soy, but its origins are not always in the ingredients) and oil ("may contain several oils including soybean oil") are the hardest to eliminate from commercial food, so that's a convenient loophole for less-severe reactions.

Caution: One study has shown that self-diagnosed problem foods are often incorrect, so always talk to your doctor! Find a more sympathetic doctor if you need, but always re-test your assumptions so you don't face the the food-free diet. Instead, consider additions (probiotics and enzymes) instead of removals (presumed allergens). A broad palette of added enzymes may not be as healthy as specific enzymes, so start small and assume less. For the whole class of neurodevelopmental disorders, as many as 92% (reference) improved with enzymes targeted for gluten and casein.

Corn: And if that weren't enough fun, corn may also need to be on the GFCFSF list too! Personally, I'm fine as long as the corn I eat is not highly processed.

The dairy-wheat connection

Often a problem with dairy masks an underlying problem with wheat, so any time someone mentions a problem with one of those to me, I suggest monitoring the other as well. Thanks to Wikipedia on lactose intolerance, I've now got a coherent explanation.

Pathological lactose intolerance can be caused by coeliac disease, which damages the villi in the small intestine that produce lactase. This lactose intolerance is temporary. Lactose intolerance associated with coeliac disease ceases after the patient has been on a gluten-free diet long enough for the villi to recover (BMJ Textbook of Gastroenterology, Chapter 11, Celiac Disease, Dr. Jamie Gregor & Dr. Diamond Sherin Alidina).

So a problem digesting wheat (as well as other digestive problems) can damage intestinal villi, and the villi tips are where lactase is produced (or would be, if they weren't damaged).

Too bad I'm now thinking I have a problem with casein not lactose. Food allergies are most often to proteins like casein, and are outnumbered 99-to-1 by food intolerances that are most often to sugars like lactose. Strictly speaking, an allergy is an immune system reaction to what should be a benign substance, and an intolerance covers any other reaction. Your immune system is normally trying to protect you from, for example, an invading virus by making an antibody to the proteins in the virus shell. That's why most immune reactions (allergies) are to proteins -- that's what your immune system is designed to detect and to react against.

Lactose Intolerance

I've always thought I had hereditary lactose intolerance because my aunt the medical doctor who collected the family history said so. She's even more sensitive to small amounts of dairy than I am, but we both get the bloating with painful cramps and borborygmi sound effects before we race to the nearest bathroom. I can usually eat cheese and yogurt, but milk is tough. Now I'm not so sure it's lactose intolerance.

The last three times I ate 1/2 cup of greek yogurt (that I strained myself) as a snack, it was some of the worst doubled-up-with-cramps I've ever had. Either greek yogurt concentrates lactose while draining the beneficial enzymes out with the whey (my first theory), or (since most of my Google results say Greek yogurt is lower lactose with the same enzymes and bacteria) this isn't lactose intolerance.

The rule of thumb is that food intolerance is to sugars (like lactose or fructose), and food allergy to protein (like casein or gluten). The two protein sources in yogurt are whey and casein; greek yogurt is yogurt with most of the whey (and tangy taste) drained off. So it's higher in casein, and now I wonder if I have a casein allergy instead. Guess I'll ask my doctor -- not my aunt, she's already made her diagnosis.

But for now, greek yogurt is off my snack list. It hurts!

Thanks, Chex!

Cale ate all of his Rice Chex, one of the few ready-made cereals that's free of all his allergies, so we put it on the shopping list. At the grocery store this morning, we noticed that all of the Chex flavors, except wheat obviously, are now gluten-free! Hurrah for them! Cale and I agree that corn chex has more flavor, too!

Sidetracked

I was multi-tasking searching the web for two topics, looking for GFCF recipes and looking for possible causes of Karston's abdominal pain.

From the GFCF recipe search, I ran across mention of a low oxalate diet (LOD) helping severe pediatric abdominal pain! Interesting! So I went looking for LOD and quickly got to the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) (with recipes). Those might be worth trying, but it's so hard to get Karston to eat anything that I shudder to think about trying to get him to eat from an approved list. On the other hand, maybe tracking his diet for oxalates and carbs while tracking how he feels ...

I found this doctor, and he's not that far away either. Hmm, a specialist ... wouldn't be the first one, but we haven't gotten anywhere yet either.

I suspect either intestinal allergies (sadly, there's no test for these T-cell-mediated allergies, so you just have to associate symptoms with diet) or colitis. Since Cale was diagnosed with colitis and it can run in the family, I think it needs to be considered for Karston. Unfortunately, it looks like differential diagnosis is a current research topic, explaining why it's tough to get medical traction.

So, flipping through Pediatric Gastroenterology, I read up on Colitis and Short Stature. We already tested for Celiac Disease although he hadn't had any wheat that week (should be able test for any wheat in past six weeks, though). I read Cholecystitis, which is interesting since we were worried about possible bilirubin earlier this month (but we think it was artificial color from lollipops). I read Colic, linked to milk protein allergy, and found the differential diagnosis of soy protein intolerance interesting. However, colic weight gain is typical, which doesn't cover Karston falling off the weight charts at 6 months. I read about Crohn Disease (often considered with colitis) and other Malabsorption Syndromes. Protein Intolerance was interesting: "cow's milk proteins are most frequently implicated as a cause of food intolerance during infancy," "only a few of these [intolerances] have a clear allergic immunoglobulin E (IgE)–mediated pathogenesis" and "in children, GI symptoms are generally most common, with a frequency ranging from 50-80%, followed by cutaneous symptoms (20-40%), and respiratory symptoms (4-25%)." Constitutional Growth Delay mentions falling off the growth charts at 3-6 months of age, then resuming growth on the right slope but below the curve. Where have I seen that??? Silver-Russell Syndrome usually starts with low birthweight, which didn't happen. Oh, and your word of the day is borborygmus: tummy rumbles!; can be caused by "incomplete digestion of carbohydrate-containing foods including milk, gluten, fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, and high-fiber whole grains."

Cheese & Oats

I've spent years reducing the fat in my diet, yet I've knowingly turned a blind eye to cheese. I love cheese, and the only reduced-fat cheese I liked was the Cabot line (not that I tried many, since I left cheese in a favored blind spot). To my surprise, giving up cheese for Cale was EASY! I did it right away.

However, I admit I was pretty happy, especially after a hideous soy cheese attempt (had to throw the whole expensive chunk away even before we knew Cale was allergic to soy because it reeked too badly to eat), to find a cheese substitute that doesn't taste like it should be used as punishment. The answer is vegan-rella tastes somewhat like cheese, and does just fine for melting and flavor on a homemade pizza. And it's rice-based, so it's allergy-friendly.

When I discovered that Cale was very allergic to me eating dairy, milk products were out of my diet in a snap. He was uncomfortable after I had several veggie burgers (lunch and dinner, not all at once) in one day, so soy went out. Uncomfortable after I had a big tasty omelet for dinner, so eggs went out. The organic baby food with barley flour didn't sit well with him, so barley went out. I've been pretty ruthless so far for removing suspect foods. Even beans. If I have a small serving of beans, we're OK, but making a meal of beans doesn't work for Cale so I don't do it anymore.

Which leads me around to oats. Cale was uncomfortable after he had baby food with oat flour last week, and I caught myself rationalizing, saying that it must be the cold that he caught. It could be, but that doesn't mean I'm not also being softer on oats than I was on other food stuffs. With all of the items I've removed from my diet, I have become aware that I really enjoy oats, especially in cookies. A handful of oats in bread gives it an enjoyable chewiness. I like oats. I thought my blind spot was cheese, but it might actually be cheese. Once Cale is well, he's going to have to take another oats challenge. I don't want to drop oats from my diet after having dropped so much else!

A Good Night

Last night was a challenge to get Cale to bed, but I finally set him down in his crib at 9:20 PM. He woke up at 12:20 PM just before Karston started crying (for hours!) and nursed on one side before I encouraged him to roll over and fall asleep. Then, surprise!, he slept until 5:20 AM, nursed for 20 minutes, and rolled over to sleep again! I can deal with 5 hours of sleep at once!

So what went right?

Cale ate his usual baby food, although one was a mix (chicken, peas, corn, and rice) with his vitamin drops and a few crumbs from 2 chocolate drop cookies.

Yesterday I ate my usual cereal (Fiber One Honey Clusters with raisins, and Honey Bunches of Oats with almonds) with rice milk, tres enchiladas de pollo con salsa verde y frijoles y arroz, and a homemade pizza with turkey pepperoni, green pepper, mushroom, crushed tomatoes with roasted garlic, and vegan rella. However, I think it's usually food from the day before. That was cereal with rice milk, a sandwich wrap (and beano since I usually get gas from wraps for some reason) with potato chips, a cranberry-raisin muffin, 2 dinner rolls, and pork-pineapple stir-fry. Just in case it helps, the day before was cereal with rice milk, PT's hamburger with greasy fries and sweet tea, 3 gingerbread cookies, aqcorn squash, cranberry sauce, chicken, 2 rolls, mixed veggies (corn, green beans, and collard greens), and 1/2 chocolate-zucchini cupcake with some extra chocolate chips.

Must repeat this. Cale slept well despite a stuffy nose (and he might have a viral conjuctivitis) and no meds to clear his nose! Is it his vitamins? Me taking beano? We'll see.

Healthy Choice meals for lunch

Argh!!! I've been eating Healthy Choice meals for lunch lately, and I just discovered a problem. I was about to toss the box and decided to read the allergy information after the ingredients. I mean, I don't use milk when I make a copycat fiesta chicken, or veggies, or fruit crisp ... but right there, it said Soy, Wheat, Milk, Eggs. So I just ate three out of the four things Cale can't tolerate. (And that means I will pay the price in sleepless nights.) I think I'm still allowed to eat wheat, although I was wondering since Cale hasn't been sleeping well. Now that I read the label for fiesta chicken, I know the problem: I need to read labels more carefully. Just because I "know" how to make a meal doesn't mean the packaged form is similar. *sigh* So I can eat the Lemon Pepper Fish, and that's it.

Well, I like what I cook better anyway. This was just a time saver. Now I'll look for lunches I can freeze in advance, but that's not a problem.

Protein and Sleep

Ring ring ring! We have a winner!

Now I understand why the doctor (didn't blow me off and) said soy protein sensitivity when I said I thought Cale slept better when I didn't eat soy: because even sleeping problems can be caused by protein sensitivity. Since I also think eggs are in this boat (probably egg white protein, thanks Daniel!) of causing baby sleep problems as well, that leaves me wondering just what protein is safe for me to eat, and soon safe for Cale to eat in baby food form.

One warning! When I was researching GERD, I learned that Similac Alimentum and Enfamil Nutraminagen are both milk-based. Both are broken down to be less likely to cause digestive upset for infants just sensitive to casein, but they are not strictly milk-free.

You Know You're Tired When ...

You know you're tired when you wake up wondering how long your baby has been crying. I'm a very light sleeper, and usually wake up to the least sound, so I was astounded when I woke up Thursday night wondering how long Cale had been crying. Friday night was Allergic Watch for Karston (I was sure he was OK, but not so sure that I wasn't worried).

Saturday night was almost as notable for the depths of sleep deprivation. I woke up at Cale's first cry, tossed the sheet off ... and had no idea who or where I was. More importantly, I had no idea where to go to rescue the crying baby until I remembered that Cale's room is just across the hall. I did at least know I was supposed to soothe the baby.

We don't know why Karston cried so loudly and so often last night, but Cale woke up for that and I had to keep nursing him back to sleep. Hopefully the kids will sleep better soon, before their parents collapse. We don't get naps on weekdays!

Green Poop

Cale hasn't had a green poop since two days after I quit eating dairy. Interesting! That makes allergic colitis sound likely. I had to research green poop, of course. The green poop generally means that the intestines are emptying faster than usual yellow. That could be excessive drool from teething (we've seen that recently) or an intestinal virus (hope not!). Green frothy points to foremilk/hindmilk imbalance, for instance if the baby nurses too frequently. Cale would, given the chance! Green could mean too much iron, which wouldn't be hard with my diet.

Between the mucous and the return to yellow once I was dairy-free, I can agree with allergic colitis. I haven't decided if I'm brave enough to try the other test: does green come back with dairy? It would make the experiment much more valid, but at the expense of a very sad baby. That's a very high cost!