Welcome to Adam's LCHAD Home Page! Our son Adam is 13 years old and was diagnosed at 5 months of age with LCHAD a rare inherited disorder of fat metabolism. Everyone's body needs to change what we eat into energy, energy to keep our heart pumping blood, energy to keep us breathing, energy to make our legs go when we walk, energy to move our eyes when we look at things. Different foods provide us with different kinds of energy. Foods like bread and pasta provide us with carbohydrates, which give our bodies, short term energy. This would be the energy we need during the day when we are eating approimately 3 meals and not making our bodies to do a lot of exercise. Carbohydrates break down quickly in our bodies and give us short-term energy. Foods like candy and sweets work this way too. Remember how that candy bar woke you up for a while? But then after a while you felt even more tired than before?

Short lasting energy sources are depleated when we fast, don't eat for over 4 hours or so, when we strenuously exercise ,or when our bodies are under a lot of stress. Stress for our bodies can be anything from getting upset because we didn't get Halo 2 for our birthday to being too cold while outside. Carbohydrates burn up quickly and go away and if we don't eat another carbohydrate meal, our bodies must go to the last source of energy in our bodies ­ the fat. People with LCHAD are deficient in an enzyme that breaks down (metabolizes) fat. Almost all the fat we eat is long chain. If you looked at it through a microscope it would be attached together in long strands of carbon molecules 14 lengths long or longer. When you look at food with a lot of fat in it ­ like ice cream or cheese, it is stringy which shows it is long chain fat. Also, when you drive by McDonald's or Burger King, you can always smell the french fries cooking. That is because the fat molecules are larger. LCHAD deficient people can eat food with Short Chain fat. But do you know what that is? That is rancid (spoiled) bacon! That would probably make your stomach upset.

In Adam's LCHAD Page we will try to tell you in simple terms just what LCHAD is and how Adam lives with it. We will let you read 'Adam's Stories' that we have written so far about him at 2, 5, 8 and 13 years old. We will provide you with Links to other sites that might tell you more about LCHAD. Mostly we will give you the chance to meet our very special son who has a very rare disease. He was not expected to live when first diagnosed . We will provide you with positive information as to how he is getting along and very much alive and thriving with it.