"Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food." Hippocrates
The choice of diet intervention is truly a personal, family choice. Though it is not invasive as far as risks are concerned, it is extremely time consuming. Committing to a diet intervention is one of the hardest things I ever did. There is no way I would have continued it, had we not seen dramatic results. Temple Grandin, a well-known autistic author, explains that every intervention must be weighed with cost versus benefit in mind. However, do not let this be an excuse to "accept" a disability and never push your child to their full potential. Some children never respond to diet intervention. Accept your child as who he/she is is, but remember that ALL children need to be given a chance.
The most common diet is the gluten free, casein free diet (GFCF). Seeing results with this diet is usually what encourages parents to continue down the diet and biomedical road for autism treatment. As I stated earlier, some children never respond to this treatment. However, some parents claim their child never responded to diet change, but never implemented it correctly. GFCF requires a month trial period for milk and a month trial period for gluten. Taking milk away for four days doesn't qualify as diet intervention. Also, if your child is GFCF but consumes nothing but applesauce and corn chips, don't expect miraculous results. Also, I found that GFCF still needed to be organic whole foods. Junk is junk and a child's brain needs fuel--GOOD fuel. Once again, I say that no two families are the same, and one should weigh cost versus benefit. We took a chance on diet intervention, and we are thrilled we did.
To implement the GFCF diet, visit these sites:
http://www.tacanow.org/family-resources/gfcfsf-diet-on-a-budget/
http://www.gfcfdiet.com/
Two diets that have yielded even better results for kids that respond to diet intervention are the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and the GAPS diet. These diets are much more difficult to implement as everything must be homemade from organic sources.
SCD: http://www.pecanbread.com/
GAPS: http://gapsdiet.com/
