So after getting all of my son’s evaluations and schooling all settled, it was time to get down to business and start learning all I could about Autism and what can and can’t be done to treat it. My wife followed Jenny McCarthy’s website (www.generationrescue.com) and read her book “Mother Warriors” and in the book it sited a must read book...”Children with Starving Brains” by Jaquelyn McCandless MD. I bought it, read it front to back, and was blown away with the amount of information. Some of which, to be honest, was WAY more than I needed to know. There were things like antibiotics, antifungals, chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen treatments that were mentioned....really the whole kitchen sink approach was described in this book. And at the time was a lot more than I was ready to deal with. Instead of throwing all these medications and supplements at my son we decided to try the GLUTEN FREE CASEIN FREE (GFCF) diet, and see how he responded to it. I must warn you...it takes a huge amount of work initially to start the diet, but once you figure out what products to buy it gets a lot easier.

    The GFCF is a no WHEAT products and a no MILK products diet. Gluten is a substance in wheat. Casein is a protein in Milk. The theory is that Autistic children don’t break down Gluten and Casein like normal children do. They supposedly get turned into or act like opiates in an autistic child so they act strange and drugged out. Long story short we tried the diet out and LO AND BEHOLD he had more eye contact and was more present, less spaced out...more in our world. The difference for our son was dramatic. And to this day, he remains on a strict GFCF diet. In fact, he is so sensitive to gluten that anytime he gets anything with wheat in it....he acts super hyper and laughs strangely out of no where like he is on drugs.

    We went on to do a whole spectrum of food sensitivities and allergy tests and found that he was sensitive to a whole bunch of things like eggs, peanuts, soy, corn etc etc etc. We tried to do a super super strict diet that was free of every thing he was sensitive to for 6 months. It was an unbelievable amount of work and stress and work and stress learning to cook things that only he can eat. Whole Foods became our home away from home, because they were the only ones that carried these special ingredients. Long story short....we stopped the ludicrous diet. We both agreed that we saw no difference in his development or behavior to warrant such a time/money consuming diet. We decided to revert back to the strict GFCF diet and it has been so much easier on us, and he has not shown any regression. In fact I think he’s better now that he can eat a greater variety of foods.