Aspies For Freedom

After trying GF and/or CF diets in various combinations for over 25 years in myself and my offspring, I sincerely believe that the evidence points more to a painful gut and/or an allergic skin reaction causing painful distraction than any 'drug-like' action on the brain.

ABA was singularly unsuccessful in altering homosexual behaviour and this suggests very strongly that homosexuality must be inborn. I would suggest the same with autism ie. that a person is born with this condition.

Sonic has been GF for two months at the GPs advice. It has made no difference. He ate two bread rolls today to break the fast - nothing happened!

However, he was GF/CF as a baby as he got terrible eczema with anything containing either.

His 'autistic behaviour' 'improved' once he was old enough to cope with a normal diet.

I have been having a "detox" of dairy product's because recently I have been feeling like sh*t!!

although wasn't so good today!

I ate the last three squares of my big dairy milk bar

and just finished a dinner of "bangers and mash" with the mash being loaded with butter and creme fraiche!!

time to be better with eating my dairy methinks!!

About the person who ate the yogurt and thought they had "regressed"-  They obviously know very little about nutrition and dietary science.
If you stop eating dairy for a long period of time- which could be weeks, months, or years- and then suddenly begin eating dairy again, you WILL have a VERY nasty reaction to it.  The body is not used to handling dairy and it leads to all sorts of nasty allergy-like symptoms, including nausea, headaches, dizzyness, fatigue, etc.  Autistics, when under that kind of stress, also tend to become "more autistic" as a stress response.  So this person's bad reaction was not evidence that the diet had worked; it was just a normal reaction to introducing dairy back into their system after a long time without it.

The GF/CF thing as it relates to autism is utter bull#@$%.  The only help it gives is for people with genuine gut issues or allergies that may not have been identified- which CAN relieve some autism symptoms, because most autistics act "more autistic" when under stress or in pain, and unresolved dietary problems cause a lot of stress and pain.  However, only a small amount of autistics have problems of any kind that can be helped by a GF/CF diet, which is why it helps a few people and not others.

Well put, Luai Lashire. I think too much is being made of this GF/CF diet as a panacea for autism. By all means, it's worth trying, but as you say, it will probably only help a few people. Thus, it will be worth it for them and their families but won't make much difference to the others.

I'd say it would certainly be a factor for some of us.

When someone has been on a special diet for a long time, and then they ingest the thing they were avoiding, then there usually is a fairly strong reaction. People who have not eaten meat for a long time get sick when eating meat again. (Same type of thing as Luai_Lashire mentioned with dairy.)

As for me, while I haven't gone on a GF/CF diet, I wouldn't say that I (or any other I've met) is experiencing an ADDICTION (or other drug-like dependence) to dairy or gluten. I personally have never liked milk, and only ate it when I was forced to (when I was a baby, my parents could NOT get me to drink milk, so I had apple juice instead).

There are certainly autistic people with these kinds of food sensitivities (heck, there are NT people with these sensitivities, so it is natural that autistics also would, at least at the same rate). I tend to think that the stress from the inappropriate diet (for autistics with the sensitivities) would make it harder for an autistic person to process things and not "act out", which is usually taken as part and parcel of raising an autistic child. (As a side note, I have never liked the term "acting out" - I'm not sure why, but it feels uncomfortable for me.)

It's also a frequent retort from the supporters of any (real or potentially) quack treatment that if it doesn't work for you, you must not be doing it right (I believe there is a post about this with the tag of "orthorexia" on http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org).

I say "potentially", of course, because for some it does seem to work, though anyone saying that it works for all autistics doesn't know what they're talking about. They're probably people who tried it (for themselves or their child) and saw it seem to work (whether it did or just looked like it did) and then assume that, therefore it caused autism, and therefore it causes all or most autism, and therefore it should work for all or most autistics.

I do eat some dairy products, but not frequently, and I don't drink milk at all.  I drink soymilk.  For some odd reason, ingesting certain liquids makes me feel sick- orange juice, chocolate milk, and sometimes water fall into this category.  Occasionally regular milk also has this affect- but only part of the time.  Also, I can't stand to drink milk from a plastic carton or milk from an unfamiliar brand- I can taste the subtle differences (people think there's no brand difference, but there is- the cows eat different things, the milk is treated differently, etc, and I can taste it) and they're gross.  So it was a lot easier for me to switch to soymilk than to keep going with milk.  However, I've never had a "Dependance" on any milk product, nor have I ever gotten ill from a dairy product other than milk.  I continue to eat yoghurt, cheese, ice cream, and other dairy products without any adverse affects.

Exactly, it's another one of those things that desperate people try. It might, just might, work in a few cases but I think in general, it's mostly a waste of time.

I'm also pretty bad with search engines, so I can't find one [a source] for you.  Sorry.  I learned it from my mother, and her friend who became virtually lactose intolerant after dropping dairy from her diet for a while, and from my health teacher in our nutrition class.  Tomorrow I'll ask him if he knows a source for that info.