Gluten free diet

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jaydog, I hear what you are saying about Glutamine being an essential amino acid, but when released into the bloodstream it can be very toxic. You are right, most people have absolutely no side effect with gluten. There is a theory that people with aspergers or autism have "leaky gut". Basically for some reason or another our guts are pourous and absorb gluten and or casein into the bloodstream. It goes directly to the brain effecting functioning of the frontal lobes. I am not a doctor or a scientist, I just know what I have expererienced. I also know a placebo is not involved because I didn't know as a child what Aspergers was.
The gluten Autism theory doesn't rule out genetics either. Maybe there is a gene that make people have a gut that can't properly digest gluten or casein. Remember our ancestors from thousands of years ago didn't have gluten and certainly not cow's milk in their diets. I too also believe in the gene theory because I believe that my mom, dad, and uncle have Aspergers, but my brother certainly does not, ruling out an environmental or personality thing.

mmaestro, first off theres a big difference between being allergic to peanuts and autism. much difference. also like i said the research says otherwise, also autistic who have food processing issues is all different, like i said when i was a kid gluten didnt make any difference, but cold stuff did. i think we need to really understand what childrens reactions to each food served before making a asumption that all gluten is bad for everyone and taking away there right to food choices.

i have done my research and i do not see anything related to gluten being bad, it may not help some, cause of there food allergies but i do not see it with scientific evidence saying gluten is bad for autistics. if someone can proof how gluten could effect the immune, digestive system i'm all for a discussion, but i'v done my research in this area as of yet. and i eat foods with gluten and i do not see any bad reactions to it.

CentralFLM, i someone agree with what you said, however i will look on the gluten being toxic in the bloodstream, but like i said why not try to improve the glyoxylate cycle first? and see if theres a difference before entirely cutting your childs diet, they are already severely limited already. thats what my parents tryed was improving the glyoxylate cycle, and guess what it worked. i'm not trying to argue with anyone, but just stating my thoughts on this subject. anyway sure it may be toxic, but based on all the media, seems like they think all people with autism/aspergers need a gluten free diet which as someone who has been though this for over 25 yrs, i never needed a gluten free diet.

Well keep in mind too, what drug company is going to fund the research that states gluten and casein will remove most symptoms of autism? There is no profit for them if you don't take their drugs to alleviate the symptoms. That is the way this country is runned.

Is Eliminating Casein and Gluten From a Child's Diet a Viable Treatment for Autism?
These claims did not turn out to be valid for 95% of the children treated with diet (NIH, 1996) and those who were helped tended to have identifiable food allergies. Evidence suggests that ADHD is a neurological condition but it is a complex disorder with little solid information about its cause. We do know that ADHD is unlikely to be caused by food allergies, excessive sugar intake, or other variables that do not affect an individual's neurological make-up view article

alot of doctors were involved in this study i think parents or adults should have a allergy test done before completely removing gluten. There are two tests commonly accepted as valid means of diagnosing food allergy. These are the skin prick and RAST (radioallergosorbent) tests.

Maybe eliminating gluten from autistics diets doesn't work because the damage is already done? The brain has already been substantially altered, and although with time , including perhaps the very best nutritional support eg ; vitamins and fish oils, and seeds , it might to some extent "repair" itself , it will never be quite the same.
Whereas milder cases on the spectrum ( aspergers , ads etc)might be the result of having systems just genetically predisposed to sensitivity/vulnerability to gluten,or were simply never so affected by exposure to gluten, and which can be helped by removing gluten.
Maybe other factors determining whether someone suffers an autistic/aspergers style reaction or not are when baby is weaned from mothers milk ( effect on gut development), when baby is first exposed to gluten, whether suffer from illnesses which contribute to porosity of gut ( candida/yeast in gut profiting from too much refined sugar, or too many anti-biotics stripping protective bacteria etc, severe or untreated diarrhoeas etc),and whether someone eats masses of bread/wheat , all the time. In some families for instance it is the staple food!! ( pasta, pizza, bread, toasties, burgerbuns,cereals,sandwiches.)
I think it is pretty much established that a small but significant minority of the western population have some degree of intolerance/sensitivity to gluten. These are findings based on the people who get so ill from it that they end up seeking help persistently enough to discover the explanation rather than just taking medicines for the rest of their lives. Mental effects figure frequently.
Have any autistics or aspergers been found who never ate gluten at any point in their lives? Does aspergers or autism occur in the same proportions in societies which eat mainly rice or corn or manioc as staple carbohydrate? Does the autistic/aspergers condition distribute equally across the planet, or is it concentrated in the highest-wheat-eating areas?
I would love to know those sort of figures. Do they exist?

Gluten makes people fat too. I dont' care what anyone says, eating a lot in general doesn't make you fat. As a matter of fact according to a lot of research eating several times a day speeds up metabolism. Gluten is just a toxic drug in my opinion. I personally think everyone should remove it from their diets. It is not that it is a carb either. Other coutries consume a lot of carbs like the US. The Japenese will eat several times a day and have a lot of carbs in their diet (especially rice). But we all know rice doesn't have gluten. Japenese in general are thin.
The reason food companies put it in our diets is because it is cheap and addictive.

I don't buy this diet fix. I'm tired of hearing about the diet fads to solve everything take for example the carb craze and how trendy it became but really what is the most important of all is balance. If you move towards just one thing too much it often results with consequences and didn't the doc who mentioned cutting carbs die of malnutrition??

Let them have their bread and just accept and embrace their differences. It may drive you up the wall but I guarantee you that if you try to be a control freak in your attempt to change them, it's going to have dire consequences for you both. Compromise....it's what's for dinner.

Kitsy you are overlooking the fact that "food" is the most powerful and mood altering "drug" you'll ever consume. Food literally when it comes to behavior can become life and death. Don't underestimate the effects food can have on your overall life.

Surely if there's something causing a rise in numbers of autistic and aspergers it would be good to find out what it is.
I'm not sure if I understand your post , Kitsy ; are you saying that "we" are just different, and that there have always been aspergers, autists etc in the world and always will be and what's needed is a change in society ( at all levels ) to accomodate them ? Rather than an effort ( through research and education) to reduce our numbers .
Do you agree that there are more of us than 50 years ago ,or do you think it's just changes in soc which has made us more visible?
If you agree there ARE more of us, is this a good or a bad thing?
If more and more children are being born to grow up autistic , is that a good or bad thing?

I was just reading wiki, and apparently there has been a huge rise in asperger or autistic style behaviours in Japan in the last 15 years. ( Just an observation: The japanese have been converting increasingly to american style diets, based on wheat rather than rice!!)
If there was ANYway to reverse or at least slow this tendency , would you think it was a good thing?
Or is the presence of more and more autistic and aspies something to be celebrated and encouraged?

I'm asking , because I suddenly realised your reply about embracing differences might have meant you saw no reason to attempt to discover if there is a "cause" of asp or aut because you believe that they are actually ,on the whole, positive states. ( which just need to be properly taken into consideration by the other members of society for the life of an autistic to be no more difficult than an NTs.)

I do think aspergers and autism have been around much longer than what people think and with heightened awareness it's going to show that the numbers are increasing because some people who go undiagnosed live a life feeling as though they are from a different planet but never knew that their symptoms tied in with aspergers so if people don't know this then they are label-less hence making the numbers appear to be smaller much like how unreported cases of rape are and if the tree is falling and you aren't there does it make a sound question.

With heightened awaress, more people show their faces. The numbers increase. So yes, I think it's been around for a really long time with nobody there to bother with the psychological analyzations of so called unusual eccentric people. It's much like if someone points out something you didn't quite notice before, suddenly everywhere you look, it's there and then you think....is this some new trend? Why is this thing around everywhere I look now yet it was always there but it took someone to verbally communicate it's existance.

But if it was ALSO found to be possible to massively reduce the numbers and severity of the conditions , ( as sanitation wiped out huge numbers of chronic disease problems after centuries of those deaths being almost taken for granted) would that be good?
If for instance discovered as a result of research ,that since 10,000 BC a small minority of humanity have been suffering from , in a sense, gluten-poisoning ( for example!!),wouldn't that justify a certain amount of expense, and be a good thing to know?
Or have the sufferings of those gluten-sensitive ( if it was that, or folic acid deficiency, or lack of fish oils, etc) been justified by the contributions made to civilisation by these very sufferers? ( or has in fact society lost out tragically, and in some cases been seriously damaged by these very sufferers??!!That's not what I think usually , but just trying on the idea for size.)
And should we carry on "making" them?! If we had the choice? How to feed your baby (or the pregnant mother) dilemmas?! ! Which one would you like : Disturbed and difficult genius or stable plodding contented good-worker person??! !
Cos I get the impression you think it's so cool ( aspergers and autism ) that don't need to know if there's a "cure".Just wondering whether this is huge controversy, eek..