Wheat/Dairy

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I came across this artical;

http://autism.about.com/od/causesofauti ... tcause.htm

I'm skeptical, but over the last 2 years I have noticed some problems with Wheat in my diet, I've not been able to give up milk for long enough to know if that has a negative effect. Anyway, when I eat allot of wheat, I get very bad eczema, if I dont eat any for a week, it vanishes, I was really quite astonished to find this happened, after 20+ years of unsucesful attempts by various dermatologists and gps to treat it!

On top of that I spends days drousy and unable to concentrate, after a 'wheat binge', no joke I find it very difficult to resist Lincolnshire Sausage rolls while walking around tescos, despite my moral viewpoint on 'cheap meat', its like Wheat based products are calling out to me to eat as many as possible RIGHT NOW! tescos sausage rolls have allllllot of pastery lol

The opiatelike idea sounds interesting to me, I can see the association a little, esp with my appernt cravings for Wheat (I eat plenty of Carbs from other foods like Rice), so this seems like a fairly good reason to stop eating both for a while and see what happens!

I am highly skeptical that it will have any effect on my 'asd/adhd features', but as I had found this artical, and had been considering the wheat free diety anyway, because I'm positive my concentration is much better without it, I thought I'd let you know how it gets on...more in a few weeks.

There is a caution about Wheat Free/Dairy Free diets, you should probly speak to your doctor if you consider trying this aswel, I have several times shes extremly skeptical, although rather baffled by my sudden ability to make eczema vanish ...at least till those damn sausage rolls catch my eye again...

I had successfully avoided wheat for a while, until the holidays. Then, being asked to thanksgiving dinner, and to one Christmas party, I found myself having to accept things with both gluten and dairy. Amazing. Short term memory problems, easily distracted, sensory overload heightened, and overall irritability off the charts. The list seems endless. Glad the holidays are over, now I can wean off again. Phew!

Autism and wheat... autism and dairy... no connection. It's a myth. Plenty of studies have disproved the idea... of course, now they are cautioning doctors to watch out for nutritional deficiency diseases in autistic children on restrictive diets; so even a "harmless" dietary change like eliminating milk and wheat can be dangerous.

Not to say that autistic people don't get food allergies and digestive issues like anyone else might; of course, we do; and not to say that we don't benefit from resolving these problems; of course, we do, and to a greater degree than typical folks simply because we are more sensitive. However, there is nothing about autism that makes food intolerance or allergy more likely.

The "opiate" theory is a huge myth. They have not even proposed a mechanism, much less traced that mechanism in either human or animal. By now, you'd think there'd be some evidence; but it's not--just theory with no backup. They haven't shown it happening in an animal model; they haven't shown it in a petri dish. There's just no evidence. I hold it to be about as credible as the theory that the Moon landing was faked.

miszt, you may have a mild wheat allergy; have you spoken to your GP about the possibility of getting tested? It would make sense to know for sure whether it's wheat or something else.

I just eat whatever the f**k I want. I have some extra baggage, but I'm losing weight on my everything-I-want diet. I think I look great. (Though sometimes I have mood swings and when |I get depressed I think I feel awful... or is it the other way around?)

Who knows? Depression definitely has physical symptoms, so it might be like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first.

I refrain from dairy and have done so for months now with outstanding results.

My mother said as an infant I was in the hospital for like a month and she insisted that I was having issues with whatever it was they were giving me. She tried to get them to switch me to soy milk and they told her I did not have an allergy to milk. Anyway, after like 20+ days in the hospital, losing weight and being sickly she managed to take over my feeding. After feeding me soy milk, I started gaining weight and recovering from being sickly.

I am now looking into other foods as well, including gluten.

I'm pretty confident on refined sugars and have strong suspicions on other things.

Related to AS? I don't know; there doesn't seem to be much more than anecdotal evidence for support--although some of it is really convincing.

Personally? Everyone ought investigate their diet and strive to eat the foods that are best suited for them.

You just have to be careful that you don't change your diet and create deficiencies or malnutrition. Trying to find the "perfect diet" can develop into an eating disorder if you're not careful. It happens all the time--people get obsessed with health and the perfection of their diet; they start to restrict more and more, spend more and more time thinking about their diets; they develop the delusion that all life's problems would be solved if only they ate exactly the right things--and eventually it takes over their lives. That happens to parents, too, who put their kids on restrictive diets... I know, it happened to me as a kid, and it did not do me any favors. It got to the point that my mom was refusing to let me eat the vast majority of the contents of the grocery store--probably 99% of what was sold was off limits. And I don't have any food intolerances at all, nor any allergies. That kind of obsession can ruin a child's life, or an adult's.

I agree with having an unnecessary obsession. My issue is primarily related to how I feel and having noticed there appears to be a correlation to items I eat and how I feel later. Dairy is the only thing I currently have removed 100% and that's because I spent 5 years with severe heartburn, indigestion and a few other things with no help from the doctor (other than loads of pills and wrong diagnosis). Other items, I am slowly taking my time so as to make an accurate assessment (especially since it's difficult to remove some of those items--like gluten).

I think were people often go wrong is not so much their obsession, but more often somewhat of an a priori bias in their approach and not taking the time to censor certain articles, books and such. Not all books on diet are worthy and it certainly is well worth the time to invest in doing A LOT of reading. It's rare I read material and follow it immediately--even from trusted sources.

Lately, I've been reading quite a bit from Dr Weil and find him to be highly objective and lacking much of the sensational, alarmism that I've found in other material.

yep agree, read up, speak to a nutritionist first if you can, a wheat free and dairy free diet is very difficult to keep up with, unless you love cooking, or are willing to learn, or have plenty of money to spend of processed foods.

I agree, I may have an allergy, infact I am almost certain that Wheat is very bad for my body no matter what label is applied to the situation.

I think it would be extremly unwise to dismiss the idea that Wheat & Dairy could cause effects as 'severe' as ASD traits in a person, there is no reason why it couldnt. I already know for sure that it affects my mood, concentration, digestion & skin....and as a fair few people have pointed out, it effects them to....so, there is plenty of evidence to suggest it may work.

Now of course it may be that people who 'improve' with a wheat free diet are not Autistic, or it may be that Autism can be triggered by Wheat, or perhaps one of the major factors in the development of it, there are lots of possible reasons for anecdotal evidence that is about, and there is only one way people can no for sure.

Speak to a nutritionist and try it out, Malnutrition is not a major issue at all, as long as you eat a balanced diet and keep in touch with a good nutritionist, it is not some kind of mythical entity that only a special few can achieve lol ...we figured out a good diet for ourselves before we figured out howto talk

What I would say is, Humans did not evolve to eat the diet we have today, and it would not suprise me at all if we discovered thousands of conditions/diseases/syndromes/etc which are directly related to our new diets. We should eat a varied diet, instead we eat mostly processed Wheat, in virtualy everything, and processed Dairy in virtualy everything, both of which HAVE been shown to be difficult to digest for a LARGE number of people, and both of which have extremly high incidence of Allergy/Sensitivity/Intolerance amongst humans

...except for the utter lack of well-designed, double-blind, controlled studies to support this idea. Testimonials don't mean anything until they're tested, and the only studies that have come up with "this may work" are also truly horribly designed... the ones that were well-designed come up with "no connection". Nobody has yet tried a double-blind study of the GF/CF diet, probably because it's really hard to disguise how nasty some of that stuff tastes.

The thing is, digestive issues are ridiculously common in the general population, including wheat and milk allergies. They occur in autistic people at the same rate as they do in anyone else. They don't cause autistic symptoms any more than an autistic person with a cold can blame his autism on the cold. It is very, very easy to say, "Hey, this helped me, it must be related to autism!," just because you happen to have autism, when really it would help anybody to eliminate something they couldn't digest or had an allergic reaction to. The automatic assumption that because you have autism and you are helped by eliminating wheat/milk, therefore it must be connected to your autism, is not really logical.

you seem adimant that you are right, despite the fact that there is evidence FOR a wheat free diet, and not against one regardless of wether its anicdotal or not, anicdotal evidence far outwieghs NO evidence

I've just had some wheat crackers, and they perked me right up.

I could be true. My body doesn't respond well to dairy product. But there is a large part of man kind how can say that, as dairy products are not normal to man kind. The theory could be true, but the problem is that we only know little about the human brain, and even less about the brain of Aspies. There could be a link, and eve if there is not if you feel better not eating these products you should adjust your diet. Though it can be difficult, as for milk, you can find it in the most unlikely products e.g. meat!

P.S. If there are studies on this subject can someone post a summary?

edit:

having read the news article, I find the Cause Autism idea rubbish there are a lot of links in the cause of autism. Though it could be an extra factor that enhances the our 'traits'.

I am super, super duper sensitive to wheat but not dairy. I never related this to my Asperger's, but it is definitely a biochemical reaction of some sort. Wheat just zones me out, and not in a good way.

L2K

Oh yeah . . . of course it's not dairy and wheat that causes autism; it's VACCINES!! !

As often as this topic comes up, it is strange how many people are still content to be contemptuous of other people's experiences with it. Someone will talk about it with a lot of interest and insight and someone else who neither knows nor cares about the topic will dismiss that knowledge. It is strange to me.

Also, a wheatfree/dairyfree diet does not cause any nutritional deficiencies. If anything a standard diet (high in junkfoods, processed foods, sugar and salt) causes malnutrition. Many health and nutrition experts have noticed that the large parts of the western population (and increasingly in other parts of the world) are overfed and undernourished.

If you eat no animal products at all ever then yes you might lack B12, but most people who are vegans are aware of that.

The reason people think wheatfree/dairyfree tastes bad and is expensive is because they focus on substitute foods such as glutenfree toast and so on, I don't even know because I never buy them. What happens if you do it gradually rather than overnight is that you become aware of wholefoods, and simplicity. And when you start to read ingredients, you naturally gravitate away from standard supermarket foods, and gradually you wean yourself off your addictions such as wheat and dairy and sugar. That's what happened to me and countless others.

It's not related to autism except that autistics are more prone than others to depression, anxiety, allergy and food sensitivity, all of which are addressed by a change in diet.

But by all means, don't make any drastic changes. I certainly didn't want to stop eating chocolate ice cream in my early twenties, I had to eat a pint of it several times a week. I didn't force myself to stop, with time and attention and patience it just happened.