Posted By Dan Swearingen on January 2, 2010

We have been Gluten-Free Casein-Free (GF-CF) around our house for over ten years. For us it was a no-brainer. After only a few days of trial a few benefits were immediately apparent:

• improved energy which improved mood.
• clearer sinuses, better sleep.
• improved ability to withstand sensory input.

Over the next few months more benefits became apparent:

• For our son, we found his ability to attend to his schoolwork improved such that he made new rapid and impressive progress on speech and reading.
• Additionally, our son had needed medication for years to sleep through the night (Ambien and Valium) but we now found that he could go medication-free and we have been for all the years since.
• For our son’s Aspie dad (that would be me): huge welcome weight loss. Sixty-five pounds shed seemingly effortlessly — and still gone a decade later.

Looking back over the years we can see other benefits:

• Improved health. As a family we almost never get sick. Maybe one cold or flu a year.
• Our son knows that right food makes him feel good, bad food makes him feel bad and he acts on this independently. This is an important truth that most adults do not understand.

On countless occasions parents ask us about “doing the diet” and relate that they were not able to do the diet themselves because “it was too hard.”

I’m going to say something really bluntly:

Having an ASD child is HARD.

Planning your diet so it does not have wheat guten or dairy protein is TRIVIAL by comparison.

I do not think the GF-CF diet works for everybody or is needed by everybody. However, if you or your child need a GF-CF diet the benefits are such that it is simply negligent to never even seriously try it just because it feels like too much effort.

Additionally there is a growing body of research showing the serious health problems you risk if you or your children need a gluten free diet but do not get one.

Dr. Mark Hyman MD writes regularly at the Huffington Post and today posted a very good article with several great data points about the dangers of gluten if someone’s body is sensitive to it.

Mark Hyman, Huffington Post “Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You”

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This entry was posted by Dan Swearingen on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Commentary, Diet & Exercise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.