glutenfree diet!?

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It is known that people on the autistic spectrum have more auto-immune disorders ( incl. allergies and intolerances of all kinds ) than the general population. Even if the underlying genetically determined condition is not altered by diet, the probability is that many AS ( suffering from the consequences of chronic auto-immune reactions ) , would benefit from various kinds of regime which reduce the load on their immune systems; ranging from exclusion diets, chemical avoidance, to simply better/healthier diet etc.

An important aspect of AS is our sensitivity, ( whether much reduced in the case of cold in some AS for instance, or much increased in the case of noise etc ) , and there is no reason to think that this difference in sensitivity confines itself to the outside of our bodies/external sensory functions. I notice the effects of almost everything I eat. I am as aware of what is happening in my body as I am of "outside" stimuli, if not more. A meal that "does not agree with me" feels like an invasion.

NTs are apparently prone to seeing AS sensitivity as psychosomatic, psychological, etc, and to thinking that if AS would just change their attitudes, receive the right behavioural training, etc they would stop reacting to sounds, smells etc as violently as some of us do. To label relief from gfcf diets placebo is the same attitude, that our reactions are not "real" in some way.

If someone is not intolerant of gluten or casein then it is reasonable to think that a healthier diet is the factor in any improvement, but having read about, and experienced, the effects of unexpected exposure to gluten and casein, ( particularly when my body was still, after years of eating dairy and wheat daily, highly reactive to them ), I know that it is not a placebo effect in someone who does have a gluten or casein intolerance.

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how long did it takes when your consentration whas bether?sinds i can recognise myself in that

I only got better after being on a normal diet, not a wheat free milk free diet.

I understand some people have allergies i have asthma and allergys myself I end up in hospital if I get even a tiny amount of peanut in anything I eat, Maybe it works for you Ouinon so the effect may be real to you but not for everyone, but I was in terrible shape on a wheat free milk free diet. I still think it works for far less people in reality then those who have just a placebo effect. It's certainly not a cure all like some people believe. I find I do best if i eat what I have cravings for so if one week its almost all broccoli next it will be fish and rice or whatever, it tends to be better for me just to be aware of what i feel like I am hungry for and interestingly enough it tends to be healthy foods like certain vegetables and fruits and my favourite food tofu, I have never craved anything I am allergic to ,I have a strong aversion to all of those foods and have had very through allergy tests . Following a specific restrictive diet tends to cause me to feel worse overal. There may be forms of allergys and intolerences that they can't test for , although it did take almost 20 years before the figured out my grandmother had celiac disease after doing a biopsy so sometimes they just don't test even if its available. Also sometimes they will miss something or make a mistake if they are just using non scientific methods for example for years before I had proper tests my mom thought i was allergic to chocolate but after tests it turned out to be peanuts which like 90 % of chocaolte candy comes in contact with, so I can make my own stuff with pure cocoa, but on the surface till we knew it looked like it was chocolate that was the culprit for the allergic reactions. so people should get thorough medical tests if possible before hareing off on some crazy diet, or putting their kids on it.

Tofu is not a particularly healthy food; it is a highly-processed/refined industrialised product, and soya is known to have a thyroid-inhibitor/suppressant effect, as does broccoli interestingly enough.

NB: Soya, from which tofu is made, is also one of the 7 most common food intolerances/allergies in the Western world, and is used as widely as an additive as casein and gluten are.

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The more I think about it the weirder/more significant this seems.

Why do you think that simply not eating dairy and wheat for 8 months had this effect on you? ( if, as you say, you are not intolerant of/sensitive to them)

I think that they may have been withdrawal symptoms, that went on for as long as 8 months because

a) your mother kept making mistakes, ( it happens ) , feeding you foods which did ( unknown to her) contain casein and gluten, which would have kept you destabilised, suffering repeated withdrawal periods.

b) you have a severe intolerance to these foods, and adaptation to them has involved so many body systems that excluding them disturbs a lot of areas of functioning.

c) there can be a loss of affect/intensity/clarity, ( lasting for a few weeks or several months, which can be disconcerting, and discouraging ) , as the body really relaxes from its previous overwrought/hyper-reactive state, and you feel some of the exhaustion/burn out which it caused.

I am also struck by two of your favourite foods being broccoli and tofu, because they are both thyroid suppressant, and many thyroid disorders/dysfunctions are auto-immune related. It may be that you love two of the most concentrated thyroid suppressant foods because they help to compensate for the effects of a permanently excited/over-stimulated auto-immune system on your thyroid.

People who go travelling in deepest Africa for 6 months and don't eat any wheat or dairy in that time do not, normally, ( unless intolerance-adaptively-addicted to these foods) , suffer seizures, hallucinations, weight loss, or other such severe reactions.

I know that eating healthily makes a difference, but I question your conclusion that seizures etc during an exclusion diet mean that you are not sensitive to gluten and casein.

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I have been thoroughly tested for allergys, I am more or less fine right now other then ocasionally having les then 70$ american dollars to spend a week on food, we tend to eat a traditional or very close to traditional Mexican diet with homemade corn tortillas and a lot of beans for protein almost everything flavoured with either tomato or peppers an chilies and of course mole sauce and yes even cheese, alternating with traditional Japanese diet which includes a lot of soy. I also rarely get sick. I have pretty much perfect concentration barring not getting enough sleep from our excessively loud neighbours . The Chinese have been eating soy for centuries without any problem most of my neighbours except the ones right next door are Asian and eat a lot of soy they seem to all be fine and in rather good health compared to most Americans I have learned many good and interesting recipies from them. Except for high pollution days my asthma is fine unless I let my cat sleep with me I am even on less meds for it then last year. I feel generally very healthy and energetic and I have also been tested for celiac disease(some members of my maternal family have it). Despite having a lot of trouble caused by being rather poor I am upbeat and healthy and rarely feel worried being generally optimistic, my siezure medicines have been reduced, my weight is good my thyroid is normal by testing (they tested it because on one anti seizure med I put on a lot of weight, most of which I have lost in the last six months, after changing to just keppra it was the med not anything else). My seizures are because of a brain injury and can be affected by sudden weight loss or exhaustion or stress if it is overwhelming, the only nutritional problem I tend to have is low iron. I really can't see much I would change in my life that would make it greatly better except to become suddenly wealthy. Yes I still stim (pacing and rocking or hand flapping hardly interfere with my normal life) I don't talk much but I have always been like that and managed my life fairly well around that, I doubt changing my diet would suddenly make me talkative, or inclined to chat on the phone and able to read people's body english or expressions feel like going out to social events or any of that. My kids are happy doing well one in school one homeschooled , I do my freelance work. Why would I even take a chance at such a disruption, it would be idiotic. I'm a great deal more functional then I ever was while living with my mom and all of her crazy ideas of how to help a person with nutrition, or even her psychotherapists and behavioral therapists. I will maybe agree that my mom's idea of a diet which was also very strictly vegen and mostly included a lot of raw foods nuts and stuff like that mixed with a bunch of homeopathic rubbish, probably wasn't anything near healthy, but I still am highly doubtful foods cultures have eaten for centuries such as bread and cheese could be all that bad, since most health problems manifested excessively recently such as obesity and seem more related to processed foods and a lot of added chemicals, there is a big difference between homemade breads and wonder bread.

My advice is to give the diet a try, do it for a couple of months strictly and then see how you feel at the end of it. If you feel good, keep it up! If there's no difference and you are miserable not being able to eat certain things, go back to normal eating. Nobody here can really answer because each person will respond differently to the diet!

That sounds delicious. And it sounds as if it agrees with you, which is great. So long as your asthma, an allergic reaction which might be alleviated by avoiding dairy, doesn't bother you much, and you are rarely sick as you say, then I understand why you see no reason to change your diet. But this is not the case for everyone. For many people the anxiety and depression, aswell as other symptoms, connected with gluten intolerance, are too unpleasant and disabling to ignore/cope with, and a gfcf diet is worth the effort and inconvenience.

The soya foods eaten by the chinese for centuries bear little relation to what is sold in the west, which is, I discovered only relatively recently, a highly refined, practically industrial product, which studies are increasingly finding is not such a healthy food as the mega-health-food industries would have us think.

I agree with you. I don't think that gfcf or other exclusion diets eliminate autism, ( I did wonder whether there was some relationship for a while because when I first began exclusion dieting I actually became more obviously aspergers, whereas previously had lived in a rather hyper/over-excitable way seeking stimulation including lots of unhealthy eating and alcohol!) , but I do think that some/many of the often associated difficulties ( mental and physical ) experienced by AS/autistics may be the result of the auto-immune dysfunctions often seen in the AS population, and therefore exclusion-diets may be of use even if they do not remove the underlying condition.

My 9 year old AS/PDD son homeschools too.

Again I agree with you; if your life is ok it would be/is. But for many it is a lifesaver, transforming their lives, ( for instance no longer feeling permanently suicidal, chronic and debilitating sleep problems, etc ), and is more than worth the upheaval.

Bread and cheese were not actually such staples as is generally believed. Most people, until the industrial age, ate far more vegetables, and beans/pulses, aswell as meat, than anything else. Until the late middle ages wheat flour, and dairy produce, were still almost luxuries, because agricultural methods were still so rudimentary.

But most significantly, until industrialisation changed the face of parenting most infants were breastfed, and did not eat much, if any, cow's milk or bread. More and more studies show that bottle feeding is one of the most significant factors in obesity and poorly established immune systems.

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Last edited by ouinon on 12 Sep 2008, 5:44 am, edited 4 times in total.

Absolutely.

But be aware that the first few months, after an initial improvement, you may experience what feels like a relapse/flatness/loss of "something", and it is important to remember that this may be part of the recovery process. Drug addicts quitting have to deal with this too, almost like a change of personality, in which thought processes/ways of being which they have come to identify with evaporate, so that may almost miss the "highs" which had, at good times, on the old diet.

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I wanted to add to this that I know that people ate grains/cereal food, obviously, but that their consumption of wheat was a lot less than nowadays. Until the late 1700s in the USA almost no wheat was eaten at all, but lots of corn, and in Europe oats, barley, and rye were more common, prepared as porridges, soups, and sourdoughs.

It was also prepared very differently, with various methods of cooking which often helped to reduce or eliminate the most allergenic molecular bonds forming in the glutenous mass, or that even avoided forming them in the first place, ( gluten is only formed when squash/knead the flour and water paste).

And most importantly it was only the rich that ate white bread, in which the fibre/bran has been removed and the gluten content is much higher in proportion.

Wheat strains used not to contain so much gluten anyway, but the high-glutenous strains became more and more prized for making the chewy sticky breads so many "loved"/craved ( ?) , because soooo "moreish"... ... and were increasingly selected for over the centuries/millenia by farmers.

The romans were so addicted to wheat that they created an ecological disaster in Northern Africa; what had been forest and fertile plain became desert under the pressure of intensive farming of wheat for Rome and its colonial outposts, ( and we all know what the romans were like! ) .

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so strange i acctualy figured out that after eating food with gluten i completely lose consentration and sight gets a little dazed now i know why that always happens
i feel myself getting stupid after eating it no wonder im abd at school

About half a year ago I read an article about the effect gluten and laktose may have on autism/AS and depressed personalities. And I decided to stop eating bread, white meal and milk to see if there was any difference, and there has been almost 8 months, and only 3-4 severe meltdowns and times of depression, to what used to be about 5-6 meltdowns a month. Don't know for sure if it is because of the changes in my diet, or if it is some kind of placeboreaction. Anyway. My body feels much lighter without the dough in my system, I am less gassy than I used to be, my breath is a lot fresher and my acne can hardly be seen.

I am on gluten free and have many allergies. Have been to the hospital and have a list of problem things like various foods, trees, housedust, animals etc etc.

Found gluten-free biscuits in a supermarket near me, what a relief, I can actually eat something that seems like a luxury

About a year ago I visited a gastroenterologist and it changed my life. Here's what he said:

Gluten sensitivity refers to those who have celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease where the lining of the small intestines (known as villi) flatten after eating gluten, resulting in malabsorption of nutrients, and gastrointestinal symptoms to name a few. This condition is very serious if not treted and not as common as a wheat intolerance.

Wheat intolerance is more common, however less serious and often due to a sugar intolerance known as fructose malabsorption, which is often the underlying cause of IBS. Foods containing fructose include many fruits and vegetables (apples, pears, onions, garlic are main offenders). However fructose is ALSO in wheat which means that bread and pasta are out. So if you are sensitive to wheat, then you could have fructose malabsorption.

This means that you can still have a wheat intolerance WITHOUT the actual gluten sensitivity as celiacs do.

The doc sent me for a test known as Hydrogen Breath testing which tests you for fructose and lactose malabsorption. Australia was the first country to come up with this test and as far as I know it is the only scientific way of finding out if you have an intolerance. The test was far easier than trying to eliminate foods one by one, as this is a very subjective (and expensive) way of finding out if you are intolerant.

After having this test I found out I had fructose malabsorption and saw a dietitian who advised me what to eat and not to eat.

Not sure if this helps, but I know it changed my life and certainly cleared up the issue of intolerances for me.

Coeliac disease is the result of a deficiency in the digestive enzyme system, in which the body's digestive-enzymes bind too tightly to the gluten protein ( the biggest protein molecule that humans ever eat ), and provoke an auto-immune reaction which destroys the body's own intestinal tissue, leading, in the most extreme cases, to life-threatening diarrheoa, and inability to absorb nutrients.

Gluten sensitivity, or intolerance, is non-life-threatening coeliac disease, something which scientists are recognising may be far more common than was thought. In addition to its food-opioid effect on the brain, gluten's presence keeps the auto-immune system on constant exhausting alert, in an increasingly "irritated" state in which antibodies begin to attack members/organs of its own body.


Gluten sensitivity can mean reaction to anything containing gluten-like molecules, and that includes onions and garlic, and monosodium glutamate, (amongst other things) .

I think a fructose intolerance is likely to be a lot rarer, considering our nutritional history as a species, than a sensitivity to gluten/cereals. Gluten didn't exist until 15,000-16,000 years ago, which is nothing compared to the millenia in which we ate fruit.


It needn't be expensive at all. I don't know why this keeps cropping up, unless it is because of the tendency people have of labelling difficult things expensive to give themselves an excuse, and then really believe it.

Most doctors are still very reluctant to recommend serious allergy testing, esp if symptoms are mainly psychological/mental. And, as I also already said, even many allergy clinics are only interested in, or prepared to recognise, allergies which fall into the classic Ig models, rather than more diffuse, subjective, intolerances.

Also it is very important to bear in mind that intolerances/sensitivities are not "all or nothing" things. I think that in fact we can be "sensitive" to all foods, aware of their effects on us, but that whereas some effects are slight, or ( healthily, not addictively) agreeable, or only a little disagreeable, other effects are intolerable, in which case you can decide to exclude.

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I actually think that a lot of modern degenerative disease problems may be the result of losing/having lost ( as a species/society) our sensitivity to foods, by eating vast quantities of known painkillers like sugar, and alcohol, and covering over symptoms with well known "cold cure" ingredients like coffee.

I think that if people were to recover their natural ( when not demolished/stunted by bottle-feeding in infancy ) sensitivity to food's effects on them, ( by cutting out daily stimulants and anaesthetics ), huge numbers of people would change their diets for the better. At the moment most ill-effects are hidden by hair-of-the-dog behaviour, ( eating toast and butter and marmelade in the morning to get over yesterday's dose ) and constant use of sugar and coffee/tea.

I think that the reason why people so often say it is the "healthier diet" which makes the difference rather than the "exclusion diet", is because "becoming" sensitive to the effects of food on them they see the bigger picture. But I think that uncovering, and eliminating, or controlling, food addictions/allergies is essential to that process.

And the issue of food intolerance/sensitivities has particular relevance to the AS population because auto-immune disorders, and unusual sensitivities, are frequent amongst us.

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