Do you eat gluten-free casein-free diet?

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I am gluten-free, but that is because I have celiac disease. Going GF helped my gastrointestinal ills, but had no effect on my spectrum symptoms. My Girlfriend is GFCF, but it is also due to food intolerances (she may also be on the spectrum).

I admit that I get annoyed when people on the spectrum dismiss the gf/cf diet before giving it an honest chance, especially with the "i need more scientific data" excuse. There is enough scientific data to show that you wont lose a limb for trying it for 6 months, so what have you got to lose?! I also found that alot of people who claim they tried it did not thouroughly check all the foods they ate, especially when dining out.
I am 29 and have been diagnosed with aspergers 2 years ago. I was diagnosed with adhd as a child but all the ritalin and adderal in the world didn;t help.
Like most people on the spectrum, I am very passionate about one or two subjects and for me it happens to be excersise and nutrition. Before learning about the gf/cf diet and its benefits, I began doing the "paleo diet" which automatically dismisses gluten dairy soy corn and peanuts. Within 3 months on this diet I developed the comfort to look people square in the eye while talking, an increased desire to socialize and mingle with others, and a very sharp wit and sense of humor that I never before had! I didn't put 2 and 2 together until I read about people on the spectrum going gf/cf. Maybe my dramatic improvement indicates that its other foods that may be part of the problem too. I added certain foods back into my diet and found that I was fine untill i ate dairy, gluten, corn, white potatos, and peanuts. Other grains caused some temporary discomfort ('leaky gut' syndrome) but did not have long-term effect on my mood/ behavior.
As a result of the turn around this diet has made for me, I have a 4 month relationship with a beautiful woman who loves me and admires me as much as I do her (I would never have been able to conduct myself on a date with her before these changes occurred) , I have developed a larger social circle with very genuine friendships, and have succeeded in building a stable client base of clients (being a personal trainer requires people skills and being able to make others feel comfortable). I think feel and function the way I always wished I could and its all because I had the discipline to stick to a lifestyle that made this possible.

I tried some gluten free "Amy's" Enchiladas and they were pretty good.

I could never go on any sort of diet, especially GFCF since I love bread and desserts and milk and cheese so much. Anyway, Wikipedia says there is not sufficient evidence to prove it works, and I trust Wiki more than I probably should.

Ha, I used to eat pure wheat gluten ("seitan") all the time as a vegetarian meat alternative!
Until the doctor said I was anemic and a lot of the other problems I mentioned (fatigue, diarrhea, low appetite, brain fog, etc) could actually all be related. Been on the GF diet about 9 months and it really does help (though it's not a cure-all).

I am responding in particular to the claim that "the diet is too expensive." It can be very expensive if you shop in the gluten-free aisle at the health-food store, true. Prepared GF bread, pizza, waffles, etc. are rather pricey.

However if you transition from eating prepared food to cooking from scratch (which is a good idea for a whole lot of reasons) then you can actually save a ton of money. My staple foods are stir-fries and curries over rice, very delicious and inexpensive! (Just watch out if you are extremely sensitive, because a lot of soy sauce and other Asian condiments can have gluten; you want "tamari" and not "shoyu.")

No. But I have thought about it just to see if it makes any difference but it's too much work.

I was on a nearly food-free diet because of food intolerances, until I found a treatment that removes the inappropriate immune system responses.

What I could eat safely before:

- Organic red meat
- Brown rice (only certain brands - others are contaminated with corn)
- A few vegetables like carrots, only if organic.
- Water I filtered myself (tap water has additives)

That's not much to base a proper diet on.

Now I can eat anything again, as long as it's real food and not chemical-laden "food science" crap. Yay for so-called "alternative" medicine. And Australians.

If you are truly lactose-intolerant, that's the inability of your body to produce an enzyme to digest lactose. You can't fix that because you're just not set up genetically to produce the enzyme. Oh well. But if you insist on eating dairy there are things that make it at least possible.

If you're reactive to *some component* in dairy, which may not even be lactose or casein so don't assume that's the problem, that can be fixed, as long as you're not already anaphylactic. But eating lactose-free dairy foods will not be safe.

There is nothing inherently evil in any class of food that human populations have eaten for a long time. When someone tells you to "remove all gluten from your diet" what they're really saying is "I've found a hammer and now all problems have just become nails."

I never had a problem with gluten. It doesn't mean I didn't turn up some allergies to a few other things in wheat though. "Gluten allergy/intolerance" is at best a terribly incomplete inaccurate description for "something in wheat bothers me."

Good point, jor: If it's a food category that's fairly easy to remove from your diet, like wheat/gluten and dairy, noticeable changes usually show up in 2 weeks. If you don't notice a change, it doesn't mean you aren't wheat/gluten or dairy reactive. All it means is there might be something else bigger than those 2 common problems.

What's 2 weeks of your life to see if it works? And really, for those 2 weeks...just cook your own food from real ingredients. It's so much work to quiz the wait staff on what's in the food if you're not used to it. Well, it's work even if you are used to it.

If there's a reason that some people with aspies improve on such a GFCF diet, it's not because there's something inherently evil about gluten or casein. It's more that gluten/wheat and dairy intolerances are the most prevalent in this society, so those are the most obvious things to start with.

However, it isn't just aspies and autism that *may* improve. The doc who treated me for the food intolerances had one patient who was schizophrenic before treatments and then lost those symptoms after. Um, no one was expecting her "mental" symptoms to be affected. Her parents were just trying to get her to the point where she could safely eat something. Go figure.

Which, I would strongly caution (!) does not mean that food intolerances or allergies of any sort are all that underlies conditions like this! Sometimes there's a relationship. Sometimes not.

Checking for food intolerances and removing chemicals from the diet is worth a try though. There are no guarantees that it will be a cure for any particular individual.



You don't necessarily have to keep that discipline any more. It's taken me more treatments...far more...than average, but I've removed the reactivity. It's still cheaper than having to deal with special diets. Since I have to drive to a neighboring state, I've gone about every 2 months for a treatment, and it's been hm about 3 years? Still, that's nothing compared to remaining permanently in a chair and shut in and dying young, eh? I gather most other people with food intolerances don't have anywhere near as long a list? Usually 2-8 treatments is max, so the stats say.

Plus, I found out a host of other substances I was reactive to that were in my environment, from cleaning solutions to building materials, and got rid of the reactivity to that too. I had NO idea what I was up against.

No wonder I always felt sick before. The best I could manage was to remain shut in the house at all times and control everything little thing that came in.

Oh, for the person with the daughter with the soy allergy, maybe you already know this, but consider all candles to contain soy unless you contact the manufacturer and confirm they do not. Plan on companies lying to you unless you tactfully indicate someone might die so they don't fess up because they fear lawsuits. Email is best, because then they can't deny what they told you.

Pier 1 has soy free candles but that's the only reliable source I know of.

Asthma/allergies/eczema is a genetically inherited spectrum. The individual triggers and the way you react (asthma, hives, stuffy nose, etc) are not inherited, but the tendency to those conditions is inherited. My Mom, brother and myself all have allergy-related issues. (Incidentally, my Dad is the one I inherited autism from.)

Intolerance is different from allergy, though. Allergies are an immune reaction to the thing, while intolerance is inability to digest the thing. (My Mom is lactose intolerant.) Celiac disease is an intolerance, not an allergy.



I've read that it's recommended to put an infant on solids early if they seem really hungry.



I'm not planning on trying the GFCF diet for the following reasons:

* eating is hard enough without eliminating any foods, because I'm a picky eater, have executive function issues that make preparing meals and remembering to eat regularly more difficult, and have a tendency to hypoglycemia which exarcerbates both of the other two issues
* my executive function issues would also make it very difficult to follow any kind of special diet
* I don't want to change anything about myself badly enough to go to the trouble of changing my diet
* it does not have good scientific data behind it (not an 'excuse', a fact), and I'm not desperate enough to use myself as an experimental subject, unless I get a research grant to do so

+1

Wheat and milk add calories in my diet and I certainly need a lot of them.
I eat healthy and my digestion is becoming better. I should eat wholemeal instead of white, but I don't, ha.

That's the diet I am on too. I don't plan on going on a GFCF diet for my autism issues because I like my autism issues. But I understand others who want to try it for issues. We each have to do our own thing.