*What if it Was NTs that Needed Curing Instead?*

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ouinon wrote:

"I tried cutting out wheat and dairy and sugar , because of a book I read ... ... ... and "turned into" an aspie!"


OK, so the GFCF diet is suppose transform aspies into NTs, but it also makes NTs into aspies? I don't get it. It sounds like BS to me.

I have this week realised/accepted after six months of gfcf diet that it doesn't stop me being aspie. Its main benefit in my case appears to be eliminating depression and hypo-manic tendencies.

I did think, when I first found out about AS, that the gfcf diet reduced or prevented or eliminated AS, maybe, but after six months of a gfcf diet myself, and seeing other people's accounts, I now think that what it often does, in those susceptible to gluten and casein, is reduce other problems, and that this greatly helps many people. Like going from being an ill aspie to a well aspie.

In the light of that new understanding I am now thinking about the transformation I experienced years ago the first time I went on a gfcf and sugar free diet. It was almost exactly as if I "became" aspie in the space of a few days/couple of weeks. As if I had come down from an enormously long trip, produced by wheat, dairy and sugar.

I think, that AS traits appearing since early childhood (at least it was so in my case). And what can you say about your NT skills such as
* Empathy/understanding another people
* Intuitive smalltalk
* Non-verbal communication, read between lines
* "Multi-tasking"
By the way, have you measured your current AQ (Autistic Quotient)?

P.S. In my case, I had rather expressed AS traits (but there was no AS diagnosis in USSR) in childhood, now they are much more milder (without diets) and I have an opporunity to be social.

Did you read the rest of the thread? In one of my opening/explanatory posts I said that after excluding wheat, dairy and sugar and emerging rather extremely aspie like, I also gradually remembered being like that in my childhood. My parents have some good examples of my aspie/ASness as child too!


I am good at understanding other's emotional etc state if I don't talk or try to understand the words they are saying etc. It's a myth that AS people can not understand /capture non-verbal communication. Some can often do it very well if not required to use/manipulate/process language, ( esp in speech form ), at the same time.

When I was playing in the wheat, dairy, and sugar MMORPG I was super at the cinema of "empathy, intuitive understanding", etc. Did what it took. Had it increasingly off pat. Felt nothing. No, that's not true, I thought I felt something, because somehow acting the stuff that means something in stories/films elicited a sort of "sympathetic reaction" in me!


Hopeless now. Can't remember what I used to be like while hopped up on wheat, dairy and sugar, in that virtual world. I have a feeling I was better at it, but could be wrong.


A few times in the last year, why? Do you mean "You are almost certainly an aspie" etc , those ones?

Last edited by ouinon on 15 Apr 2008, 2:39 am, edited 3 times in total.

NB: I thought that I'd just post a link to the page of the thread, ( "Society Turns Difference into Disability"), where this thread really started. Maybe it will make more sense with different background.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postxf62657-0-30.html

I would not have been/in fact was not at all sympathetic to "no smoking areas" , "quiet rooms", or any other form of consideration for anyone ( unless they represented a "quest character" for me ) , when I was out of it on wheat, dairy and sugar.

These tests are good too (BTW, what is your scoring in them?). But AQ is another, much more simple test made of 50 questions http://aq.server8.org/. It is taken from scientific journal and was "calibrated" on diagnosed AS/HFA cases and if shows more than 28 in the case of autistic traits.
Tests are just tests, may be it is better to go to the specialist, if it bothers you.


I know, that it is a myth; but such kind of understanding requires more attention and more learing than in the case of NT person.


And what was at school? Was it easy to be in touch with your classmates?

Being not too social may be a variant of NT too, e.g. introversion and/or schizoid personality. AS is not only being "not social" (this is no reason but consequence), but just another style of mind, it is hard to imagine that simple diet may run or wipe out AS traits.

Sorry, I was being ... um, ... heavily ironic ... which has inevitably backfired on me! I have taken at least 4 different reputable tests for AS in the last year, two of them twice. One was exactly the one you describe/link. I get medium-high aspie scores.
It doesn't bother me; it interests me.


I did, like quite a few people, imagine that gfcf diet might "wipe out AS". Believed it fervently for a few months , but as time passed it became clear that I stayed aspie , just a calmer less depressed etc etc etc aspie, and that this is actually perfectly alright. It was the depressed aspieness that was difficult to live with.

So now what interests me is how my fundamental aspieness reemerged for the first time ( after at least 10 years of highly "NT" style behaviour and participation, if only in appearance!), when I first ever went on an exclusion diet, 16 years ago. It was a surprise to me. And to my friends. And for a long time it confused me terribly.

I used to feel as if I was having to choose between two different ways of being, the excited adventurous buzzy sociable one , who I described as "my bacon cheeseburger and pizza, coffee and chocolate person", and the other "rice and vegetable " one who was so quiet and serious and slow etc etc etc, as already described in detail.

I can not believe that I am the only person to experience this, in fact I know I'm not because several books that I've read about food intolerance and exclusion dieting describe often radical personality/behaviour change in people depending on whether they are eating foods they are susceptible to or not.

Last edited by ouinon on 15 Apr 2008, 5:37 am, edited 2 times in total.

I already replied to this in above post but realise I want to reply to it again in its widest sense:

I think that a lot of people, most people in fact, have trouble imagining that food could possibly have a massive effect on their personality/behaviour.

Until I was 29 years old I didn't know either. Most people live the whole of their lives without realising.

Many thousands struggle, not only with chronic and incomprehensible multi-symptom physical health problems, but also with depression, anxiety, confusion, foggy brain feeling, paranoia, irritability, aggressivity, mood-swings, mood-disorder, feelings of alienation/distance/unreality, even violence, suicidal impulses, and uncontrollable crying, as a result of food they eat every day or chemicals that they are exposed to in "normal" environments.

And may never find out what is the matter, just get sent from one doctor to another trying one medication after another, if they think of it as a problem, or simply live with it because look around and it seems to be normal to be like that.

I can see that it must be "hard to imagine" that ostensibly NT behaviour might be the result of chemical sensitivities in some/certain cases if do not accept that diet in general has a profound effect on many people's personalities.

Maybe it is one of those things where you have to see it, either in someone close to you, or in yourself, in order to believe it. A week's exclusion diet is like turning over a stone; you don't know what it might reveal.