Any Adults try GFCF?

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I've been doing this about a week and think it feels better. A few years ago I went low carb/whole grain (South Beach Diet) for weight loss, but it made me feel so much better I stuck with it (more alert, more energy, fewer bowel problems, cleared up pains in my gut and just general aches that had no apparent cause). A few weeks ago, I started eating whatever the heck I wanted, and my ears were ringing and hurting almost all the time and the tiniest noise ached right down into my neck. Since starting the GFCF, that sensory stuff has cleared right up.

I'm reading books that claim great improvements, especially including anecdotes from parents of ADHD/ASD children. Most of what I've found on WP though, are people claiming it doesn't work or unwilling to try or questioning the science.

I wonder, how many of you have tried it, considered it, or are following it? If you tried it, did you notice anything? Why did you quit? If you won't, why won't you? If you're eating GFCF, I'm interested in how it makes you feel, what your struggles are. I'm looking for any and all experiences and stories from Aspies/Auties themselves.

Thanks! Looking forward to what the WP community has to say.

I did it for a long time (8 years or so) as before I knew about AS (diagnosed 2 years or so ago) I found gluten and dairy made me feel weird and antisocial. I get bad sensory issues when Ive had them and have bad eye contact and feel irritable, and have bad guts too.

Ive now found I can tollerate small amounts of dairy without it makeing me too bad. This is very useful as I like whey protein shakes. However if I have a shake and a yogurt/cheese Im much more antisocial and poor eye contact.

However sometimes I binge on gluten food which makes me stoned out of my head and like a smacked up junkie, and Ive heard of other aspies doing this too I get a terrible hangover the next day so I try not to do that. I think that gives anecdotal evidence for it binding with the opium receptors.

I was on the diet for 2 years........in the end I came to the conclusion that the 'toxicity' was more in my head than in the Gluten. By that I mean I developed an OCD fear that the portals of hell would open up if I had a common sandwich, consequently I stayed on the diet out of fear of change rather than any benefit it offered me.

I challenged the placebo effect which I was running on throughout my 2 year trial and found that for me there was no real change, and that my life was restricting enough as it is.

I wish you well

I am lactose intolerant (apparently), silghtly fructose intolerant (apparently) and suffers from IBS, thus I radically changed my eating habits. I avoid everything that is made of milk (though I do like ice creams and am less sensitive to that) anf found out that eating some cereals made my symptoms worst as well.

My first treatment for my migraines was Claviceps purpurea and made me sick for years, I even started to have severe water retention and became fatter because of that. I cannot eat rye and wheat tend to make me feel sick also.

Thus, my diet is GFCF most of the time, my behaviour has not changed, my personality is the same, my lack of social skills and attention has not improve at all, I am just less ill-at-ease and appear a little more "normal" because I no longer suffers from intestinal cramps

Basically, I'd say GFCF is useful if you suffers from IBS and may make you feel a little more confident since you won't feel so sick. That's all.

(Strangely enough, tea improves my health though people with IBS are supposed to avoid this)

I have been gluten-free for almost three years now, after years of often painfully confused on-off exclusion ( with repeated withdrawal periods too in consequence ), after I discovered that cutting out gluten alleviated and eventually completely cured my manic-depression/mood disorder and increasingly permanent depression, aswell as banishing the frequent bad headaches and bloating that I used to suffer from. I also find that it helps reduce racing thoughts, and anxiety, ( though I have found that sugar/sucrose is the worst for inducing anxiety, and have almost completely stopped eating sugar too since last October ).

I know that it's not a placebo effect because of the number of times I was exposed to gluten without knowing it, ( when I didn't know that hydrolysed vegetable protein was gluten for instance, or that flavoured corn chips and crisps use gluten to stick the spices on ), and had a reaction non-the-less!

I tested/reintroduced gluten for about 9 days in March/April 2009, because I was wondering if I might be able to CBT/MBCT-support myself through the gluten effect, ( talk/think myself through the "downer"/gloom and negative thinking which it seems to induce ), but after a couple of days I found myself sinking back into the blues, however much I told myself that it was just a chemical reaction. Basically I think that most of our thoughts are chemical reactions/manifestations of physical state.

Although it only takes 5-7 days for gluten to leave the gut , it takes up to 26 weeks for it to leave the body completely, ( the liver is last ), and it can take up to 2 years for the levels of gliadin-antibodies ( gliadin is the triggering protein in gluten ), to return to normal levels, and as it is those which do most of the damage, whether to the guts, and consequent absorption capacity, or to the thyroid, pancreas, etc aswell as the glial and/or purkinjie cells in the brain, ( which is one of the ways in which gluten causes the various neuropathologies associated with celiac/non-celiac gluten sensitivity ), you will not see all the possible improvements if keep going back to gluten, ( which I did a lot for years, bingeing, as Lotusblossom says! ).

10-15% of the population have elevated levels of gliadin antibodies.

A recent study also found that the gut can take between 1 and 5 years to recover it's full absorption capacity, after going gf, and as the overwhelming majority of cases of gluten-intolerance ( whether classic celiac, with obvious GI symptoms, or non-celiac, with "only" subclinical damage to intestines, but plenty to other organs ), are not diagnosed for decades, ( often not until the person is in their late 40's ), many people will have experienced and continue to experience chronic vitamin and mineral deficiencies, especially Vit B12, zinc, B6, aswell as fatty acids, all of them essential for healthy neurological functioning, which is another reason why an on-off gf diet will only produce partial improvement of symptoms.

The damage ( clinical or sub-clinical ) to the guts may also be responsible for the addiction to sugar/high carbo diets which so often accompanies gluten-intolerance, because absorption is so compromised that crave the most empty calories because are the most easily/instantly absorbable, ( white sugar/sucrose is absorbable in the mouth for instance).

Chronic aswell as acute immune-system activity/inflammation ( cytokine production, which is triggered by gluten in those with elevated levels of gliadin-antibodies ) has been shown to cause "sickness behaviour" ( withdrawal from social interaction, a retreat from activity, aswell as fatigue and often the most crippling, even suicidal, depression ), and may be responsible for some of the psychological symptoms of gluten-intolerance.

I dither with dairy. It only takes 3-4 weeks for casein to completely leave the body, and I have managed that length of dairy exclusion over and over again, but I don't know about the antibody behaviour. I notice that cutting out dairy aswell as gluten *seems* to enable me to deal more easily with day to day tasks, ie. that what otherwise, ( on dairy, and gluten ), tend to seem like rebarbatively and paralysingly boring/dreary/tedious and trivial/mundane activities seem increasingly doable, ( rather than intolerable and impossible ), even interesting and absorbing.

I think that might have something to do with the food peptide opioids in casein, and particularly gluten, which are what make them both so addictive/"moreish" and ( temporarily ) comforting, and why so many people can not start the day or go for more than a half day without one or the other, preferably both. Apart from mother's milk, ( and in blood, and spinach, of all things! :lol ) no such food opioid peptides existed in nature until after a rare plant mutation at the end of the last ice age produced the glutenous grains ( in 16,000 BC, just a few thousand years before the neolithic revolution ).

The opioids present in wheat, rye, and barley may explain why humans persisted in eating something which right from the start will have had a devastating effect on many people's health, not only because of a small percentage's reactions to the gliadins in gluten but also because of the lectins ( protective plant proteins ), which grains are particularly rich in, and to which most people are sensitive to some degree or other.

A private school in the UK for children with learning difficulties, dyslexia etc, found, completely by accident, that a gf diet had such an amazing effect on children's writing and reading skills that five years later they still serve entirely gf meals to all the children. Food intolerance, especially to gluten, definitely seems to be linked to not only physical but also mental health, both mood and cognitive functioning. This is not exactly the same thing as saying that a gf diet cures ASDs ( so I'm not sure how to vote in your poll! ), but it may, in the 1-10% of those with some degree of gluten ( or casein ) intolerance, and in those particularly susceptible to the effects of opioids in their brain, make a significant difference.
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Purely anecdotal, but I feel far better if I limit the amount of gluten/casein foods I ingest.

I think its BS unless someone has celiac disease.

Studies that have examined it haven't shown any links - if one came out, I might consider it - I don't find anecdotal stories to be very persuasive - it's too easy to ignore other possible variables and bias. Plus, there's only so many foods I can tolerate and limiting my options would be difficult.

Opinion...if you have a sensitivity it will help, if you don't it won't...having nothing to do with AS.

I haven't. Why pursue a cure, if there's nothing that needs to be cured?

I'm gfcf and I find my rashes, celiacs, and dairy allergy are better. I feel better I'm more social. No more diarrhea/constipation/blood in stools and etc. I find my stomach no longer hurts. My sensory issues are worse on gluten and dairy and I'm antisocial(but you would be too after 7 trips to the bathroom)

I was on it from age nine until fourteen. Those were some of the worst years of my life (though probably this was coincidental), and I'm now shorter than I should be because of lack of calcium. After I left the house, I grew two inches--after the age of seventeen, when my growth plates really should have been closed. I think my body was just waiting to make up for nutritional deficiencies suffered at home.

GF/CF has been proven to cause bone density loss in autistic boys, but I guess it's safe to say it happens in girls, too.

The diet has also been shown (in a large-scale, controlled study) to do nothing for autistic symptoms in those who are not gluten- or lactose-intolerant and do not have a wheat or milk allergy. However, if you do have one of those conditions, cutting out the offending substance is the mainstream medical treatment for the condition and should be pursued whether you are autistic or not.

I should also warn you of the euphoria most people feel when they are on a new, restrictive diet. This is a survival mechanism meant to give you enough energy to find food when it is scarce, and probably a driving force for anorexia and orthorexia.