Re: Consumer Affairs.com: GFCF Diet Not Effective for Autism

[Guest guest]

And I have to confess that we have kept our son on a GFCF diet for more than 3 years largely because our DAN doctors have told us it can help. I must be brutally honest that I do not see that it has helped particularly with either behavior or speech. On the occasions we have lapsed and given him something " we should not have ' we have convinced ourselves that he has had some kind of hyper - type behavior but I am really not sure that these have much to do with his diet.

We have like most families tried different types of therapy and very often we have tried to convince ourselves that these are working - AIT , chelation and most recently HBOT are examples.

My own opinion is that at aged 7 our son who is mostly non verbal has benefitted most from dedicated teachers in school and speech / OT / VB therapists at home.Plus the parents try hard too !

We have kept him on the GFCF diet largely because it is a standard therapy for kids with autism and because we don't see any real downside to it. I feel pretty much the same with most of the biomedics - recommended supplements / B12 shots etc etc.

Our son is improving all the time but at a very slow rate, he still speaks in mostly single words and has shown slow reductions in bad behaviors. Reductions yes but only slow ones. He has shown a lot of gains in receptive skills but again this is I believe due to a lot of therapy.

I guess the only way we will really know is to take him off his diets / shots /chelation / supplements one by one and see if there is any change for better or worse in speech and behaviors. It is a hard choice to make because we want to give him everything that helps and it is always possible that all these things including GFCF diet are helping in a small way.

Anybody else facing similar choices ?

Subject: Re: Consumer Affairs.com: GFCF Diet Not Effective for AutismTo: sList Date: Tuesday, 4 May, 2010, 20:35

, Clara and all,

I'm going to confess something to you all that I've told very few people over the years. Shortly after Noah was diagnosed I went to land for a conference featuring both Drs. Greenspoon and Lovaas. I picked up a lot of great information from both these august gentlemen. There was also a presentation on the gfcf diet (not by either Dr. Lovaas or Greenspoon). I listened to all the reasons why it was supposedly necessary to deprive our kids of both dairy and gluten, and tried to understand the science behind it, but ultimately I walked away thinking, "what a load of crap."

Of course there are folks out there who have real allergic reactions, or sensitivities, to either dairy or gluten, as below. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about wrongfully, imho, assuming that just because a child has autism, he or she should be on this restrictive diet in order to improve.

From: "jandswinch@ comcast.net" <jandswinchcomcast (DOT) net>To: sList@ yahoogroups. comSent: Tue, May 4, 2010 3:04:50 PMSubject: Re: Consumer Affairs.com: GFCF Diet Not Effective for Autism

You are so correct. The diet is not a cure but many people have problems with gluten or casein. One of the girls that works with my son has issues with it, as do other people I know. This person will continue to misinform.

Consumer Affairs.com: GFCF Diet Not Effective for Autism

http://www.consumer affairs.com/ news04/2010/ 05/gluten_ autism.html