Tag Archives: gluten free casein free diet

Standing with Henry, Diets and Where Do You Go to Get Advice?

Posted on October 16, 2012 by | 6 comments

Please read, “like”, share and tweet my latest interview with 13-year-old Henry, published yesterday on Huffington Post.  For all you tweeters, I am trying to get Henry on Katie Couric’s show.  If you’ll click on the link above to read the interview, tweet the piece out and be sure to include @KatieCouric in your tweet.  This is what I’ve tweeted –  “@KatieCouric Henry’s fight for inclusion @arianezurcher http://t.co/vhSs85v2  Katie – Henry’s story would be terrific for your show!”  If enough people tweet her, she may just take notice.  Let’s stand with Henry!

Yesterday’s topic brought forth a wonderful discussion regarding “The Diet” whether it is a gluten-free/casein-free diet or a variation of it.  I realized in reading the comments that my post may have sounded critical of the diet and even critical of those who have tried it with positive results.  This was not my intention and so I want to be clear about that.  I have a lot of feelings about having put Emma through so much trauma as a result of putting her on the (in our case failed) diet. The first time we tried it, when she was still just two years old, did not seem to have the same negative impact that it did just a year ago when I took all her favorite foods away and implemented an even more restrictive diet under the guidance of a well-regarded naturopath.  This is something Emma still talks about, something she is still hyper-worried I might suddenly do again.  I should have placed more emphasis on this.  So to all who have experienced the joy of finding something that helped you or your child, I apologize.  I did not in any way mean to illegitimize what you’ve found to be so very helpful or to suggest the diet is quackery.

What is clear from reading all the links people thoughtfully provided and the many personal stories, a GFCF diet and its various variations, has and does help many children and adults, regardless of their neurology.  An important point, made several times in the terrific comments, was that because of the hyper-sensitivities experienced by so many Autistic people, what might be experienced as a mild intestinal discomfort in a non-Autistic person could be felt intensely and painfully by someone with a different neurology.   Hence a food “intolerance” not even an allergy could cause great distress.

In the post I hypothetically asked, were I able to do it all over again would I have put Emma on the diet?  I wrote, “…I would have sought out a reputable pediatric neurologist who could have given Emma the blood work necessary to tell us whether the diet was something she would benefit from.  I would have looked for scientific evidence giving me reason to put her on such a diet and without that evidence I would not have put her through it.”  Except, I realized last night as I thought more about this, we DID do these things.  We didn’t have a pediatric neurologist, but we did take her to a highly regarded pediatric allergist, did blood work and it showed she was not allergic to anything, but he suggested she may have food intolerances that might be contributing to her constipation issues.  It was this doctor who suggested we try the GFCF diet to see if it might help.

But as one commenter pointed out, in her country there isn’t anyone who will perform such tests.  She wrote, “If I had to do it all over again? I would have done it sooner to alleviate my daughter’s suffering.  For the first few years it was just dairy I removed from the diet.  I thought it too hard to cook gluten-free as well. When I finally adjusted the diet to gluten and dairy free at the age of 4 my daughter ‘s chronic painful distressing diarrhea ceased..”  In fact both her children have responded well to having their diet modified.   Hers is but one example of many who have benefited from implementing such a diet.

To another commenters point, even if they had been able to find such a doctor, their insurance would not cover such tests and they wouldn’t have been able to afford them.   For people like these, who either cannot afford to have such tests run or who cannot find a doctor to even perform these tests, what is the alternative?  What can those people do, other than read and learn all they can while hoping their decision helps themselves or their child.  As any of you know who read the various links to the many articles I posted yesterday on the diet, those articles are NOT all in agreement.  Some state that the diet has shown no positive change, while others suggest that in some cases the diet has helped.  So what is a person to do?

Which brings me to another terrific comment, in which she asked, “…maybe we should really think, do we have proper medical care?  Do we have good doctors? Are we listening to them? Are we skipping the doc and practicing our own medicine? Why are we not trusting our doctors?” By the way this same commenter left another longer and hilarious comment on yesterday’s post that is too long to reprint here, but is really relevant to not just this topic, but ALL topics related to parenting, who do we go to for advise, where do we get our information and why do so many of us no longer trust the medical professionals advising us and instead listen to other parents who are often not doctors or even have any medical training, but have found something that helps or doesn’t help them or their child?

I know it isn’t just me who has come to doubt almost everything I read about Autism.  I know a great many people who feel as I do –  we are almost constantly skeptical. And while some skepticism is a good thing, I don’t know that my past radical approach has proven to be so beneficial in the long run.  These days when I have questions regarding Autism, but particularly related to my daughter, there are a couple of things I do.

1)  I seek advice from a number of Autistics I know, am friends with and trust.  I ask them for both their personal experience and for any research they know of that might help me.

2) If it’s a medical issue related to autism and Emma I run it by my brother who is a bio-chemist and spent years working for a pharmaceutical company developing drug treatments and whose wife, also a bio-chemist who now runs a non-profit trying to make vaccines available to children in third world countries.

3) I get a second opinion either by getting referrals to researchers or people (preferably Autistic) in the field or I reach out to various neurologists I’ve met to get their views.

4) I read whatever I can find, sometimes sending particularly dense articles to my brother and/or my Autistic friends who are involved in whatever field of study it is.

5) Discuss with my husband, foisting said articles on him and try to hash out what we think and what we should do.  If we cannot agree, revisit steps 1, 2, 3 & 4.

I have no answers.

Emma – Summer 2004

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Another Topic of Controversy… No I am NOT Trying to Find Them, They Are Everywhere

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 88 comments

Ever feel compelled to write about something that you’d just as soon not talk about?  I’m feeling that way about today’s post for a whole host of reasons which I’ll discuss.  But before I do, let me just say,  this is another one of those topics people feel strongly about.  I’m going to launch in anyway, because I’m either a glutton for punishment or I just can’t help myself or maybe, just maybe, this will strike a chord for others who may find it helpful, but please do remember I am not pretending to be an expert about any of this.  I am going to relate my story.  If it resonates with anyone else, great and if it doesn’t that’s fine too, but it is one of those topics that needs to be discussed.  So let’s do that.

THE DIET.

The gluten-free, casein-free diet was one of the first things I read about after receiving Emma’s diagnosis.  I have to add that when I read about it I had enormous misgivings that had nothing to do with Autism or my daughter.  You see, from the age of fifteen until my mid-thirties I had an eating disorder.  I compulsively over-ate, I sought comfort and solace in food, but I was also morbidly afraid of gaining weight so I would eat enormous amounts and then taught myself to vomit.  Somewhere along the way I became anorexic too and over the next two plus decades yo-yoed between my all time lowest weight of just under 110 pounds to over 160 pounds.  Food and my weight were nothing short of an obsession.  In truth, I was an addict.  For those of you who recognize the addiction analogy with food I don’t need to say more, but for those of you new to this idea, I’ll just say this, food was as addictive to me as heroin is to a junky, the only difference being I can’t ever just stop eating.  I have to “play in the pool of my addiction” as my fabulous husband likes to say.

I’ve written about all of this ‘here‘ ‘here‘ and again ‘here‘ for those of you interested in all the gritty details.

In my mid-thirties I found help from other food addicts who were no longer active in their addiction.  I was able to form a whole support team who held my hand, talked me off the ledge, who became my allies and eventually I was able to stop the cycle of binging, puking and self-hatred that went along with those behaviors.  By the time I gave birth to Emma I had more than five years of freedom from my food obsessions. (Which at the time seemed like a VERY long time!)  I had my wonderful support group in place and a road map of tools and behaviors to help guide me.  So when I began reading about “the GF/CF diet” and how critical it was to implement should Emma be one of those kids who responded to it, I had a lot of “feelings” about it.  There was no question whether or not I would put her on it, but I also knew I had to be careful because of my history and what it would inevitable kick up for me.  So I called in my supports, made sure I kept honest, made sure my “team” of recovered addicts knew what I was about to embark on and took a deep breath before plunging into that dark water, which I hoped might help my daughter.

I won’t describe in great detail what happened as I’ve written about the diet in detail, ‘here‘, ‘here‘, ‘here‘ and ‘here‘.  You can also go to the right hand side bar on this blog, type “diet” into the search box and you’ll be taken to everything I’ve written on the topic over the years.  The short version of all of this is – we saw little change.  Emma’s constipation was unaffected, there may have been a slight increase in eye contact, but not enough to warrant the trauma the diet was causing Emma, who continued to drop weight at a frightening rate.  I wrote about the trauma of the diet and it’s aftermath ‘here‘.  But I must add that her trauma was a significant and distressing piece to all of this.  It is one thing for an individual to decide they must stop eating something because they know it causes their bodies distress, or allergies that are clearly identifiable and another thing to put a non-speaking child on a highly restrictive diet that they cannot comment on and which is only deemed successful by a parent who is doing their best to watch for measurable changes.

As a new parent who is just embarking on all of this, what do you do?  It was overwhelming for me.  I remember vividly how frightened I was.  There was so much information, often conflicting and I remember feeling the stress and anxiety all that information caused.  I also remember feeling terrified that I was doing everything wrong, that I was harming my daughter, setting her up to have an eating disorder further down the road and since my eating disorder was all consuming and eventually caused me to contemplate suicide, this was no small concern.  I became convinced that there was a right and wrong way, that if it worked it was “right” and if it didn’t it was my fault because I had done it “wrong”.

I don’t feel particularly comfortable giving advice to other parents.  As I wrote in the first paragraph, this is one story and it happens to be mine.  It’s the only one I can tell, but that doesn’t mean it will be yours.  So here’s the only question I can answer – If I had to do it all over again (thankfully I do not!) would I have put Emma on the diet that first time?  The answer is – I would have sought out a reputable pediatric neurologist who could have given Emma the blood work necessary to tell us whether the diet was something she would benefit from.  I would have looked for scientific evidence giving me reason to put her on such a diet and without that evidence I would not have put her through it.  There are enough people, regardless of their neurology, who have benefitted enormously from modifying their diet.  There are too many anecdotal stories of significant change from those who do benefit to ignore it as just another bit of quackery.  BUT, and this a big but, no diet, in my opinion, is capable of changing an Autistic child/person into a non-Autistic child or person.  Or as Karla Fisher gave me permission to quote her said, “… it can and may seem like the autism goes away but it is important to remember that it does not. The EF (executive functioning) and SP (sensory processing) issues get reduced but the context difference will always be there so child will always need support.” *Parentheses are mine.

So let’s discuss and if you disagree, explain why, if you agree, please say so because I really love being agreed with! 🙂  And if you have some other thoughts about all of this go ahead and say what they are, because this topic is one that comes up all the time and it is confusing, complicated and for new parents can be the cause for tremendous anxiety and worry, not to mention the upset and trauma it can cause our children.

Emma – November, 2011 – after five weeks on the diet

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Want to Know About Autism? Ask An Autistic

Posted on August 27, 2012 by | 49 comments

There’s a blog I love, written by E. called The Third Glance.   I found it last winter.  Written by a PHD student, E. describes her life, her passions, her studies, while detailing her thought process while socializing with friends during an afternoon at a café or memories of growing up with abusive parents who didn’t understand her.  E.’s compassion for humans and their neurological differences is striking as one considers the stigma she experienced growing up Autistic.  The Third Glance was one of the first blogs I found in my search for Autistic Adults.  E’s compassion and kindness shines through all her posts no matter the subject.  Her determination to give people the benefit of the doubt was something I was astonished by, particularly during those first few months of my discovering Autistic blogs and reading that so much of what I’d done was not as altruistic as I’d believed.

When Em was diagnosed, the words “Autistic adults” were not uttered.  Ever.  We heard about how imperative it was to immediately implement early intervention, we were shuttled off to get an “independent diagnosis,” we were advised to start investigating ABA therapy, we were inundated with ABA therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, a social worker came to our home once a week, team meetings were held regularly, we were trained to continue Emma’s ABA therapy after the last therapist had gone home.  We were advised to put Em on a gluten free/casein free diet, we were encouraged to read the thousands and thousands of pages of material thrust at us from a wide variety of well-meaning and well intended people.

In that first year of Em’s diagnosis, I was well versed in various theories regarding gut issues, lead levels, mercury levels, toxicity in our food and water, and I could reel off at least six different unpronounceable ingredients in vaccines.  I’d read at least 30 memoirs written by parents of Autistic children as well as books with titles such as A Parent’s Guide to Autism: Answers to the Most Common Questions, The World of the Autistic Child: Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Handbook of autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders and  Biological Treatments for Autism and PDD.  I’d taken Em to cranial sacral therapists, homeopaths, lead specialists, developmental pediatricians, nutritionists, allergists and a DAN (Defeat Autism Now) doctor.  I knew about ABA, VB, RDI, PECS and DIR therapies.  I read and reread Catherine Maurice’s Let Me Hear Your Voice with the same dogged, determination and devotion evangelicals read the bible.  I knew about sorghum flour, rice flour, garbanzo bean and fava bean flour.  I honed my cooking skills on perfecting a gluten-free/casein free birthday cake for Em’s third birthday with platters of tasty GFCF finger foods, which Emma refused to touch, let alone sample.

Autism, seemingly overnight, had become my focus.  I was set on fighting it.  I was engaged in nothing less than a war.  My weapons were my determination, my tenacity, my stubbornness and my love and devotion for my daughter.  Everything else came to a screeching halt.  Everything else fell into line behind my research.  I was on a quest.  To my way of thinking, I was on a mission to save my daughter’s life.

When my husband, understandably alarmed by the fervency with which I threw myself into my research, suggested I was spending too much time searching, I was furious.  I railed at him, enumerating all the things I was doing with the sole intent of saving our daughter.   I was furious that he seemed unable to fully understand the battle I was waging.  It never occurred to me there was another way.  It never dawned on me I was battling windmills.

That Autism was the enemy, something to be vanquished, defeated and destroyed, I did not question.  I didn’t have time to question, I was too busy dealing with the Board of Education, therapists, Doctor’s appointments, tracking down every “cure,” and baking foods my daughter wanted nothing to do with.  Every time I turned around someone was sending me a link to a new “cure” a new treatment, a new therapy, a new “miracle worker.”  Countless people would begin a conversation or email with, “Have you tried…”  “Have you heard of…” and I would grab a pen and begin taking notes.  Doggedly I pursued each and every tip.  Determined not to leave a single stone left unturned, my days and nights were filled.  I was busy.  There was no time for calm contemplation, there was no time to sit and consider the path I suddenly found myself.

The Seven Year War.

And then…  what happened?  What changed?  Everything.  I began to question the “truth” about autism.  I began to question the dogma.  I began to question the “facts.”  It was inevitable, I suppose when you read as much as I do.  But the single biggest change occurred because I found Autistic Adults like E.  I’ve written about this before, ‘here‘ (the post where E. first reached out to me in the comments section) and again ‘here.’  I won’t go on about that process, except to say this – there is something about the immediacy and the interactive quality of a blog that no book can replicate.  In addition, a blog written by someone who is Autistic is far more interesting to me than anything I’ve heard from researchers, specialists, therapists, teachers, doctors because Autistics are talking about their lives, it’s not a theory, there’s no speculation.

Want to know about Autism?  Ask Autistics.

Thank you E. for reaching out to me.  Thank you for generously holding out your hand to me in kindness and friendship.  Should all parents be so fortunate as I have been.

A quick aside, E. was also one of the creators of the Autism Positivity Flash Blog (see badge on right side of this blog) where a group of bloggers reached out to hundreds of us asking that we write a post in answer to the google search words “I wish I didn’t have Aspergers.”  If you haven’t gone to that blog, do.  It’s a veritable who’s who in Autism blogging by Autistics and parents coming together to support someone on the spectrum.

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Emma Riding Beau – 2005

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How I Made a Mistake and Was Given The Opportunity to Say I’m Sorry

Posted on June 5, 2012 by | 59 comments

“You put the toast in the basement.  That made me sad.”  Emma stared at me expectantly.

I drew in a breath.  My chest felt tight.  I knew exactly what she was referring to.  We’ve had similar conversations, but she’s never said it so directly.

This past fall in one last gasp of determined insanity I decided that I hadn’t done the gluten-free/casein free diet “right” when we put her on it a month after she was diagnosed and still two-years old.  So this fall, I took Emma to a naturopath, who’d been recommended to me, and after a number of “tests” he mapped out an even more restrictive diet than the standard GF/CF.   You can click on the links I’ve provided for more about all of this.  On the first day of the diet I cleared the house of all the foods Emma loved, but could no longer eat, according to the new diet.  Except I forgot to remove her favorite bread.

That morning she saw the bread and attacked it with the vigor of a rabid dog.   I whisked it away and hurried down to the basement with it, where I threw it into one of the large garbage bins, while Emma screamed and clawed at the door in an attempt to follow me.  I had it in my mind that it would all be worth it if the diet worked.   Which, to me, meant that she would suddenly begin to speak in beautifully articulated sentences, would be able to concentrate, would be able to comprehend what she read and would eat a wider range of nutritious foods.   Only the diet didn’t “work.”  Just as the GF/CF diet we’d put her on six years before, didn’t work.

Emma after 6 weeks on the diet

In many ways, that diet was a turning point for me.  After a couple of months on it and no change other than a significant weight loss, I reintroduced Emma to all her old foods, the foods she loves, the textures and smells she was familiar with and she was in bliss.  But Emma remembered those seven weeks when I had taken everything away from her.  The trauma she felt as a result of my actions was something I have been aware of.  I have, on several occasions, told her how sorry I am for what I did.  I have spoken at length to her about it, but in all those conversations, Emma has contributed very little until last night.  Now it was clear she needed to express herself.

When I started making decisions about treatments for Emma, many of them Richard did not agree with and he, thankfully, said, “No.  We are not going to chelate.”  Or “No.  We are not going to subject her to B-12 shots.”  Or “No.  We are not going to take her for another hyperbaric chamber treatment.”  There have been a number of things, that in my desperation to be a “great Mom” I would have tried had my wise husband not stopped me.  These are not moments I am proud of.  I have made a lot of mistakes.  This last diet was just one in a long line of bad ideas.  I know I will have more.  I understand it is human nature, but I also will be damned if I’m going to try to gloss over the choices I made that hurt Emma.

I promised myself long ago that when I became aware of a mistake, I would try to make immediate amends.  I don’t mean a quick, “Oops, sorry about that.”  I mean an amends.  Which is different from an apology.  An apology is what you say to someone you bump into by mistake on the subway.  An amends is when you seek to change your behavior so that you might at least have the chance of not repeating that mistake.  I try to do that consistently with both Nic and Emma.  I am sad to say, I have had to make a great many amends over the course of their short lives and some I’ve had to say over and over because I just can’t seem to get it right.  So when Emma said to me, “You put it in the basement.  You made me sad.”  I knew what I had to do.  I knew I had to listen to her.  I knew I had to resist the urge to make it better.  I knew I had to be present, no matter how much it might hurt to hear the things she would say, I owed it to her.  I had to give her that, at least, I needed to give her that.

I put my hand on her arm.  “Tell me, Em.  I promise to listen.”

Emma nodded her head.  “Never, ever.  You put the toast in the basement.  Mommy no!  Ahhhhh.  Mommy please!”  She pretended to grab at the bread and then she made a muffled screaming noise.  She got up off her bed and twirled her string.  She looked over at me.  “You made me so sad.  Emma’s crying.”

I nodded.  “Emma.  I’m so sorry I did that.  I made a terrible mistake.”

Emma looked at me.  She put her hand on her chest and she said the following words that broke my heart.  She said,  “You have to say you’re sorry to Mommy.”

I thought about all those Autists who talk about their awful childhoods and  how they were made to feel broken, not good enough and that it was somehow their fault for the terrible ways they were treated.   I thought of how those feelings about themselves continue to bleed into their lives today.  I thought about how they felt they needed to apologize for who they were and how so many of them believed these lies and some continue to.

“Oh God, Em!  No.  No.  You did nothing.  It was not your fault. I was wrong.”  I put my hand out to her.  “I should never have done that.   I am so, so sorry.”

Emma came over to me and sat down.  She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned her head into me and said in a quiet voice, “Mommy says I’m sorry.  No more bread in the basement.”  She paused and then said, “But next time just one?”

“No Emma.  Not one.  Not any.  I will never do that to you again.”

“Not one.  Zero.”  Emma smiled.

“That’s right.  Zero.”

“Not one, not two, not three…”  Emma counted up to one hundred.   When she got to a hundred, she smiled and made a zero shape with her hand.  “Not one hundred, only zero.”

I smiled.  “Yes, Em.  Only zero.”

Emma nodded and then she said, “Mommy lie with Emma and read stories.”

“Okay,” I said.  As we snuggled under her blankets together I said, “Who’s the most amazing girl in the whole world?”

“I am,” she said with a smile.

 The Depiction of Autism and Why it Matters on Huffington Post

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