This is a post from our Facebook brought by Carina S. Hoff, who teaches biochemistry in her native country of Norway 🇳🇴

FOR THOSE ON THE FENCE

I want to reach out to you mamas and papas out there that are still on the fence about doing the TNI and have yet to start on any of the supplements, wondering and worrying about the right decision. I hope you can read my very long post on this, as I think that maybe it can help some of you in your decision about what to do.

You have this beautiful little person that has some extra challenges due to her or his extra chromosome. You have already been through so much with this little child. That precious child that wasn’t that child you thought you would get. Your angel that sent you through an amazingly hard journey. A journey where you have learned so much, most of all about unconditional love and who you are as a person. You love your little angel and you see that your biggest teacher in life is him or her.
Yet you also see all the options around you, all the stuff you have to be thinking about, learning about and make choices about, that parents of typical kids are not dealing with. It seems unfair and overwhelming and you constantly feel that those beautiful children should come with extra super parent power for us. Just so we can be able to do right by them.

Someone told you about this group and you wanted to learn more so you joined in, hoping that the right answer would be clear and simple. Here, however, you see all these mamas, understanding so much and being so confident in their choices. You see all the research posted and it seems like a whole different language than what you have learned to understand. The overwhelming factor of it all kicks up a notch or ten. How come everyone understands so much and seems to be giving their children a ton of supplements you don’t understand anything about?

Maybe even the language is an issue as you may come from another country like Germany, Spain, France or Norway (like myself).

In this group it seems so natural to be using supplements and everyone knows about them. But in your world, nobody knows about this and maybe tell you that this stuff is just some extreme thing you should not pay any attention to. Maybe even you doctor said that. And here you are, just a mama with a precious angel you want to do right by. How are you suppose to know what is right, or who is telling the truth. The doctor or those people here on this group?

You end up not trusting yourself, but not trusting anyone else either. You mean to get a grip on this research and spend time reading it all, but it just ends up being more confusing or you don’t understand. The feeling of getting it, getting why the rest of us is onboard is not there for you, yet. You are still looking for that push, the information that finally gets to you and that sinks in and you just get it too. You may not even know what TNI stands for. You keep being told to look it up in the files, but that doesn’t help you.

Can I try to help you understand my way?
Because I think that you don’t have to understand all that much to begin with, you just need to trust someone. There is a difference, and that is what we do everyday of our lives. We can’t understand everything, so we end up trusting the people around us that knows. We trust carpenters and plumbers working on our house, we trust the teacher that work with our children. We trust our husbands and wives, our family and all the professionals out there doing what they know, that we just can’t understand. We know just enough and our gut instincts usually have to tell us the rest, and that guides us through our lives.

Maybe for you that is the way to start TNI? Many parents have gone that journey, they don’t get all the research but they have got enough information to trust that others know this and that trying can’t hurt. So they go ahead and start the Daily Antioxidant. They start slowly on a low dose and use a couple of weeks to get up to full dose. After getting that in, seeing how that went with their child, they can just keep doing that for a few weeks or months.
When they see the benefits, because several of us (but not all) also see the rather immediate benefits, they get motivated to learn more about the rest of TNI. So they go after supplement number two to start on. That is usually Resveratrol. Every step of the way they get help here on this page. From how to order, how to get their child to take the Nutrivene D etc. Then half a year down the line, maybe some parents are just still using only a daily antioxidant and others are on a more complete regimen.

So, start with the Daily Antioxidant Formula and try it. Just take the jump, figure out how to order it and try it. It is just a supplement, meaning it is not a medicine. And that is a very big difference. I usually tell people to be aware of the fact that you can just stop using it, if for some reason you don’t want to continue.
Most of you mamas that are still scared of trying, will agree that it is very very unlikely that giving a multi vitamin to your child will have the potential to cause irreversible damage.
So why not think this way, try it for 3 months. THEN you see how that went and from this experience then make a decision about whether or not this is something you want to give your child on a long term basis or not (Yes they need it for life).
Why 3 months? Because then you have time to both see benefits in your child and get giving it into a daily routine that you just do. You will have a chance to actually take qualified decision about whether or not this is something you feel right about using for your child. If you then feel this is not good for you child, quit and think well at least I gave it a try!

What we are afraid of or negative towards, is usually something we know very little about. That sadly includes doctors that we trust. Doctors that gives us answers we don’t know have no hold in science or knowledge about T21. Sadly that is the case for most of us, no matter where we live in this world. The first big step would be for doctors to actually admit that they don’t know..
How can you tell if your doctor knows what he is talking about? If your doctor can’t name even three of the genes that our children with DS have extra (on their chromosome 21), then they just can’t give you a good answer. Encourage your doctor to do more research into the unique dietary requirements of children with DS.

The same goes actually for what is not in there as well, as our angels can’t tolerate well a typical multivitamin. That means that a good multivitamin that your doctor might recommend, might be a good one for a typical child, but he doesn’t know that truly is not the case for your child with DS.
Targeted Nutrition does not just consist of a multi vitamin for children with DS either, it is an education on how nutrition actually affect those extra genes in a way that will help our children. Because having an extra chromosome doesn’t just make our children how they are now. Having those extra genes is constantly affecting our children in a way that actually makes it right to call it a disease. Trying to help their bodies the best we can, from this constant attack of the extra genes, is not us not loving our children enough. It is not us wanting to change them into typical children. It is us wanting to help them to heal more and reach a fulfilling life and stop as much of the damaging as we can. As we would do with any other children.

And remember, Targeted Nutritional Intervention is not a new. Infants, children and adults with DS have been using this method for over two decades now. That doesn’t seem like your world, because where you live, maybe no one have even heard about it. But, you are part of this great international world and thanks to internet and facebook we get to learn about these things and make a choice for ourselves, regardless of were we live or what our doctors know or think about it.

The supplements I suggest are made of extremely high quality vitamins and minerals, making a big profit on the product would have made it way too expensive for most of us to buy. The price of the Daily Antioxidant has not increased with inflation.

Chosing on behalf of your child is a big responsibility, but it is the biggest job we do when it comes to being parents, regardless of whether we have typical children or a child with DS. The hardest part though, in my mind ,is when we don’t get that choice. When someone else takes that choice for us, or we never get to know what is actually out there. A more simplified world oh yes, but a more narrow world with a whole lot less opportunities.

You get a choice now, because someone have added you to this group. You get to be in this “family” as well. And we are hundreds of parents that willingly spend time to answer your questions about nutrition and a whole lot of other questions. Why do we do it? Just because we want you to be able to help your child have a better chance at thriving and getting to his or hers potential, both now and also for the long run.

I hope it helps and remember to let go of alot of the guilt and worry. None of us are perfect parents and all of us have screwed up more times than we like to think about. Just, please, really consider targeted nutrition for your child. Because that is one of those major things that can really make a huge difference in your childs life, and hence yours.

I hope this will help some of you mamas and papas out there. I feel with you! Hope you have a great day!

THE UNITED STATES FDA PROHIBITS THE MAKING OF MEDICAL CLAIMS FOR DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS. MENTION OF ANY PRODUCT IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, IN MY CAPACITY AS A TEACHER OF BIOCHEMISTRY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS MEDICAL ADVICE.