Anyone on a gluten free diet and has it helped?

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Just as the topic suggests. I have had a few friends tell me to try a gluten free diet. Anyone have any luck with this?

Just noticed I screwed up the poll. Shoot!! ! Sorry!

Last edited by katwithhat on 21 Sep 2012, 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A gluten-free diet is for people who are allergic to or sensitive to gluten. It will help those people, including helping them cope with autism better.

However, autistics without this allergy and without celiac disease will not benefit. Potentially, the diet can cause malnutrition (either due to a poorly rebalanced diet or due to taste/texture issues with new foods).

There has been some short term research done that shows no benefit in autistic children without comborbid celiac disease or wheat allergy. One long-term study also shows no benefit, but the sample size was small. In some studies of a gluten-free/casein-free diet, there was an increased risk of bone density loss.

My own experiences with it also show no benefit, and possibly some minor drawbacks, since I grew more slowly than my peers.

I recommend removing gluten from your diet only if you have a gluten allergy or celiac disease. If you do, it will probably prove to be very beneficial, perhaps more so than it would be for a neurotypical with a gluten allergy/celiac disease, because autistic people are often more easily affected by physical discomfort. It is possible for you to have such an allergy and not know it, because sometimes the symptoms are quite generalized and not very dramatic; for examples, low energy and indigestion. Not all cases of celiac disease involve the dramatic weight loss and extreme illness that the severe ones do. It's probably prudent to test for celiac disease if you do have digestive problems without an apparent cause. It's reasonably common and easily treated, so it doesn't do harm to check, just in case.

Last edited by Callista on 21 Sep 2012, 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Unless you are in the small percentage of the population with certain problems, it would be no more than a placebo.

It can be more than a placebo, in some cases, because removing gluten requires you to cook more of your food from scratch, eat less processed food and more fresh food. This can definitely provide health benefits. But these benefits aren't from removing the gluten--just from a generally healthier diet. You can get the same from improving your diet in general.

Right now this is what I am working on. I have problems with managing my food shopping and cooking. If something isn't extremely simple (to the point that "add water and put in microwave" is the limit of complexity) it will just sit on the shelf until it rots. That means that if I buy apples, I won't eat them because I have to either cut them into slices, or wash my hands to get rid of the sticky juice afterward. If I buy a bunch of broccoli, it'll sit there because I have to wash and cut it up and possibly cook it.

So the other day my aide took me to the store and we looked at a few possibilities for fresh foods that are simple enough that I'll be able to grab and eat them on my own. Right now I have a bag of pre-cut carrot and celery sticks sitting next to me and am munching them happily. I also bought some dried fruit and some frozen pre-cooked chicken. Meat is a problem for me, because it has to be cooked, so I just don't bother--I've had problems with protein deficiency before. So I'm working on that, on finding ways to get food that's healthy and easy to grab and eat. I could theoretically cook and eat healthy meals myself, but it would be a full-time job for me, and there are more important things in life.

Yes, when I was 15. I ended up hungry and tired all the time because, surprise surprise, it turns out bread is not poisonous, it's actually nutritious. I couldn't believe it either, apparently people have been eating it for millenia. After about four days I told my parents they could go to hell if they continued trying to get between me and the sandwiches I was fixing to make. My mom started crying and I started ridiculing the notion that bread could harm you if you didn't have celiacs, being sure to include slurs against autistic people such as "arm-flapping spinner", because I new she hated them. I feel bad about mocking her cries in a weird falsetto, but other than that, you don't get between a man and his sammich. I could always tell when she'd been reading those health magazines for imbeciles in the checkout line. Telling me what to eat, why I oughtta...

I tried it last year, but not so long. I realised that I become sad and depressed if I can't eat pancakes and buns. Cornflour is very expensive for me (in Russia). And about casein-free diet - I like milk very much(. I read that it is because casein and gluten like dopes (drugs) for us

Yeah, that's the theory. A totally unproven, illogical theory, but an unfortunately effective one in enticing parents into forcing kids who don't need these diets onto them. Parents are pretty universally scared that their kid is going to end up a druggie. Now some guy in a white coat (who may or may not be a doctor) is telling them that their kid is already a druggie and they need to INTERVENE NOW OR TERRIBLE THINGS WILL HAPPEN... well, some parents fall for it. Mine did. It's even more insidious because it has an explanation for anything that could possibly happen after the diet is started--if the child gets better, it's because the diet is helping them; if the child gets worse, it's because their body is purging toxins or going through withdrawal, and therefore the diet should be continued. That's the hallmark of bad science, right there, when a theory can "explain" all possible outcomes.

Once again: This IS a legit treatment for wheat allergy and celiac disease. It shouldn't be ignored as a solution for those problems.

On this topic, I've been suffering from chronic year-round allergies and chronic fatigue for my entire life. I'm betting that this is diet related, but I'm not exactly sure what I should try eliminating first. Could this be related to a gluten intolerance, or do you think it's more likely something else? Is there a more common food allergy that occurs with autism? Thank you

Katie, it's anybody's guess, really. Autism isn't specifically associated with any kind of allergy. I would suggest you talk to your doctor, see whether allergy testing would be useful for you (it's problematic because it's not too accurate, but it can point you in the right direction).

It's possible to experiment with removing various suspect foods and tracking your allergy symptoms to see whether any of them are problematic. This is time-consuming, naturally. But you should also look into environmental stuff like mold or pollen. Mold in your house can be a real problem if you are allergic to it.

People can also have intolerance that aren't true allergies - this is true for foods as well as things that aren't foods. Some people do have intolerance to gluten that an allergy test won't be able to pick up. These people won't be helped as much by a GFCF diet as someone with a true allergy will be though.

If you can, then allergy testing is the place you'd want to go first, but that only tests for allergies.

Doing a full test for foods would generally be done by, limit your diet drastically for a week or two, until you're feeling better, and then slowly add back in things that might be causing problems, until you start feeling worse again. Take those back out, add more things in. You can note which things are making you feel worse and which things aren't. Do this more than once, and do this with someone else making your food for you so that you can try to avoid the placebo affect from knowing what you're eating. While you're doing all of this track all symptoms, of allergy type symptoms and all autism symptoms. It's time consuming, but it can be informative.

You'll get from that what you need to limit or avoid. For some people that will suggest a GFCF diet. Others it won't. I've generally heard about 25% of autistic people will do a least a little better on a GFCF diet, because we so often have various types of food sensitivities, and celiac is more common for people on the spectrum.

Limiting to GFCF when its not right for you is more likely to cause problems though because so many people already are starting from limited diets.


Personally, I've not tried it, and would be scared of trying it if someone tried to make me. GFCF vegetarian sounds like no fun to try.

Never tried, personally for diets, I feel best adding more fat to the diet, especially at breakfast. I'm not "allergic" to wheat or anything like that, but my favorite carbs are potatoes, and I get better energy from rye bread over wheat. That and some veggies, I'm pretty good to go.

I don't have any of these gut problems or food allergies that parents are always saying that their children have in loads. I don't know which autistic traits can be ascribed to these issues. I have always had plenty of autistic traits without having any of these issues.