Can a good diet really ease your symtoms?

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I have read all kinds of references to how a better diet might ease various of my symtoms. Does anyone know how proven this is and what sorts of changes I might want to make? I have already found that eating more healthy generally seems to calm my mood swings so I can believe that it might help.

Ther eis a lot of speculation and some clinical evidenc ethat things liek preservatives, flavor enchancers (MSG, autolyzed/hydrolyzed protiens and extracts), and artificial sweetener can have a wide range of negative effects that seem worse for an autistic's more senstive systems.

Also, a diet poor in healthy fiber, fats and carbs, and high is refined carbs and unhealthy fats (saturated and trans fats) is not just bad for the waist line and the arteries, but also for your metabolism, elimination processes (cardiovascular system, liver, kidneys) and overall brain health - hence why the connection to mood and neurological conditions like autism.

Also, many autistics have allergies that may aggraviate symptoms, or cause symptoms that are confused with autism. If you're not sure if you have a food allergy, you can have yourself tested by an allergist.

Overall, poor health that is caused by a poor diet will affect your cognitive abilities, certainly. That is clinically proven. If you have a neurological disorder to begin with, a poor diet will only compound that problem. It's simple math.

I don't think autistics need a trend diet anymore than the rest of the population. The main thing is to avoid any allergy-causing foods, if you have allergies, and after that, you should start by eating a standard healthy diet: low in processed foods, low in refined carbs, saturated and trans fats, and salt, high in a wided variety of veggies and fruits, as well as whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, low fat dairy and lean proteins. Fiber intake is very important too - veggies is a good source, as is whole fruit. If you eat the recommended 6-8 serving of veggies and whole fruit, plus 2-3 servings of legumes and/or whole grain a day, you're likely to get enough fiber. Nuts, seeds and kefir (a yogurt-like drink) are good sources of fiber too.

Once you've done that for awhile, you should start becoming more aware of what your body really needs nutritionally. For example, I personally find I need a lot of leafy green veggies, raw and cooked, and whole fruit, but I shouldn't eat too much whole grain. Instead, I eat legumes and nuts for most of my starches - my body seems to prefer that. I also need my daily kefir and some sort of ebrry fruit fairly regularly. But that's what my body needs. Your needs might be a little different, but you need to get on a healthy diet to figure that out. Bad diets tend to trigger "false" cravings, for salt, refined sugar and bad fats - it's like your body's gone haywired and it knows it's not getting what it needs, but it's not sure exactly what that is.

Hear, Hear! to AspieMartians post; lots of sensible serious useful and essential points.
It was as a result of following a truly healthy diet over a couple of months in 1992 that i began to realise that it wasn't enough. I read around, tried a few different diets and discovered i had allergies, food intolerances, which are apparently common to lots of people with AS,( though i didn't know that, no more than i knew i was AS at that point!).

I've found that excluding gluten ( in wheat, rye and oats ) and casein ( in dairy) has good effects. A few of us are supporting ourselves in this with a "diary" for accountability on a thread in Members Only. The jury is still out, except on significantly reduced sensory issues and greater calm for most. But there are several links thru' the thread to useful articles and sites.

Good luck !

will just get the link to the thread...........;

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt45945.html

I did see that thread you posted. I would totally give it a go but the problem is that two of the main healthy things I eat are wholewheat pasta and brown bread sandwiches. Which would seem to be outlawed on a gluten free diet? About how long would I have to give it to see if it had any good effects? Because if it was only a short time I could try it out on holiday, or when I didn't have any essays due, and I had the time to learn to cook lots of new things.

I think I really must be more careful about my E numbers! I remember the first time I was given a can of coke when I was about 6 or 7... now I know that stuff makes all kids a bit hyper, but I was off the wall! I did not stop giggling like a maniac for hours afterwards. I always wondered why these things seemed to affect me more.

Thankyou for the advice!

As someone who has been gluten free for a couple of years, let me address your two main concerns: pasta and sandwiches.

Brown rice pasta. Whole grain, good for you, won't get all mushy when cooked like regular rice pasta, comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I can't tell you where to find it since I don't know what area you live in, but where I live there's a chain of stores called Henry's that carries two brands of brown rice pasta. I know there are at least two more brands available in the US, so variety is available if the first brand is unsatisfactory.

Corn tortillas. I know it may seem a little strange to eat a ham and cheese tortillawich, but if you toast the tortilla on the stovetop and let the cheese get a bit melty on the hot tortilla, mmmm... Corn tortillas are usually made from ground whole corn, so you get the whole grain goodness there too, just like the pasta above. I have tried every type of sandwich on a corn tortilla and have yet to find something that tasted bad.

Gluten free bread mixes. Bob's Red Mill makes ground, well, everything. Grain flours, nut flours, all sorts of things. They make a GF all purpose flour, and a GF bread mix (complete with yeast packet). If you can run a blender and turn on the oven, you can make this stuff, and it's not half bad. I used the all purpose flour in all my Thanksgiving baking and didn't have a single complaint.

These days I can even find gluten free pizza dough mix, both leavened and unleavened. Even my husband will eat the GF products available now, and that's saying a lot. I wouldn't have even considered trying to go gluten free until a couple of years ago, the offerings were so few and so ... gross.

Good hunting!

In working with many children on the spectrum, I have seen many of them become far less irritable on the GFCF diet. I myself find that staying away from milk products and overtly wheat things like wheat bread, wheat crackers, etc, make me much less irritable. I tend to get very grouchy when my tummy and digestive system are grouchy. This would tend to point to a natural food allergy to these substances.

I find lots of veggies (not necessarily salads, though) and berry type of fruits make me feel better. I have to be careful of citrus fruits, they tend to make my system grouchy. I self med on caffeine. I have found that as I pay more attention to the foods that tend to cause a grouchy reaction, the more refined I can make what I do eat.

I do tend to crave sweet things, but my body doesn't seem to care if it's sugar or fruit. Occasionally, when coming out of a particularly nasty melt down I will crave chocolate, but I know that's the need for the seratonin.

I think there is some merit to it. There's merit in figuring out what works for you and paying attention to it definitely.

I tried the GFCF diet for about 3 months. After the first couple of weeks when the dairy had flushed out of my system I felt great, had far more motivation and concentration. The gluten takes a lot longer to flush out though, and when you remove these things from the diet for a long time your body just becomes more sensitive to them, so the smallest amounts can have a far stronger effect (like the wheatgerm in shampoo, or flour dusting in dried fruit). In the end I had to give up because it costs far to much buying GFCF food (never mind it being a problem for someone who's not good at shopping), and eating out or at other people's houses means annoying everyone by insisting on seeing the ingredients, or risking a relapse.

At the moment I won't knowingly touch artificial sweeteners besides sacharrin (partly because they kill my concentration, and because I've seen the documentary Sweet Misery). I tried to cut out MSG, but it's hidden in the labeling as dozens of other things, and reading every label as you go round a store gets tedious, never mind the fact that once you've found a 'safe' brand the manufacturers have a habit of 'improving' things by adding sweeteners or MSG. These things are only in food because it's cheaper for the manufacturers to produce something in a vat than grow and harvest the natural alternative. Living on a budget means you're stuck with MSG.

At the moment I rely on herbal remedies to help with the anxiety/motivation/concentration problems, and don't buy any crisps/sweets/biscuits/cakes. I buy a lot of fruit instead, and I've got a big plastic tub that at the moment is full of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cashew nuts, almonds, raisins, dried apricots and crystalized ginger, and I change things around when I top it up. It costs about £10 to fill the box, it lasts for ages, is really healthy, and is a lot cheaper than other snack food.


I've a friend whose ex gives the kids junk food when they go to see him, and they're unbearable when they come back.

buckwheat doesnt contain gluten. however ive never come across it, so i dont know how suitable it would be as a cooking substitute.

I've found that eating healthily has had improved my mood, and how I feel. Exactly what constitutes a healthy diet varies a bit from person to person, if you can pin point it. There is a lot of talk on low GI and not eating red meat, etc. I think that is fine if you are able to keep that up. My friend did that for a nearly year but got bored with it. I'm not sure the results are actually that impressive for everyone. I have found that eating a balanced diet and doing a bit of exercise each week makes more of a difference than just eating a specific diet. There are 'brain foods' like nuts and oily fist that you can supplement into your diet.

I've heard of very few cases of people 'curing' things like clinical depression just by diet alone. It does help with mood, but it won't especially help with things like set behaviours, specific anxiety disorders, and sensory issues. There are other things you can do for them.

Why? Isnt it generally cheaper to buy raw ingredients rather than processed? The main exception that comes to mind is tomatoes, which cost far more in their natural form vs jars of sauce.

then youve got auxigro (MSG based growth stimulator) being sprayed on crops in the field, but i think i read in the states it can now be applied on officially 'organic' crops anyway, so paying the organic premium doesnt guarantee avoiding it (unless you can find a trusted source)

Buckwheat, quinoa and amaranth are three 'grains' that generally do not bother people with gluten problems. Actually, none of them are grains, they are all seeds, but none come from grasses, so none are grain. But they can be used like grains.

But buckwheat noodles often contain wheat flower as buckwheat flour is not so cohesively gooey and gummy. Most people that cook buckwheat do so as groats - ie, the seeds are in a cracked form, and boiled.

By the way, this is what the NAS has to say on the subject, I found this quite useful. http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly. ... 368&d=1385

I feel a bit more confident now that maybe I COULD try GFCF and make it fit into my life. I can see now that it is possible to buy gluten free pasta, which I would need to, the only trouble is that its about three times the price of the economy stuff I used to eat when I lived independently... and I do want to move out again some time! But then, if I quit the vodka I'd have like a million times more money. haha. so I'd be able to do it.

I feel worried that I would still inadvertantly eat things that had a little bit of gluten... would cutting down help me at all even if I didn't totally give it up?

Confucious say: The secret to cheap rice noodles can found in Asian food store.

NOODLES!! ! Thats what I have to eat!! Am I allowed to do a stir fry because that would be amaaaazing??

Tomatoes are one of the greatest cons, in the supermarkets. A lot of tomatoes aren't even grown in soil but a cotton bed, they are pumped full of water to make them larger and more symmetrical, and they use Ethylene gas to force ripen them to get higher and higher yields. Sometimes there is so much water in the tomato that it is structurally unstable in its normal form, so what you get is a mushy membrane.

Good tomatoes aren’t necessarily symmetrical or large and are grown in nitrate/phosphate rich soil (horse s**t/manure). They can be a bit nobly, and can be any variation of red, yellow, green.

If you want good fruit and veg you have to go to places like tooting bec in south London and visit some of those Indian grocers. They have stuff you have never seen in you life, plus the basics cheep. You can get ginger the size of you arm, for better value than the dried up stringy pieces you get in supermarkets. If you never tried cooking with things like cassava, yams, many different tubers and gauds, hundred of pulses, herbs and spices, etc then given them a go.

Supermarket aren’t always good value, they exploit consumer ignorance on any produce they can get away with (essentially price fixing with each other), and put a load of pointless packaging on, that does little more than get it off the self.

When living on a budget with special dietary needs/constrictions, always ALWAYS shop at the ethnic grocers first! You are absolutely right. Cheaper produce, wider selection, more interesting options. Plus, you don't really have to learn how to cook new things. Just substitute new things in for old things and roll with it.