Gluten free diet blog

Has anyone used Depakote SPR medicine with their child? I wouldappreciate any experience you could share. We are having a VERY hardtime with violent tantrums and aggression with my 8 year old withAspergers. We have a lot of things in place that are helping but seemto be in a very bad cycle with the physical outburst and have decidedto use medication to try and break the aggression cycle. The doctoralso gave us Ativan to give to him when a crisis comes up.

For those of you who have these problems, what else have you used?Did it help?

Please no lectures about medications, things are pretty desperate andgetting worse right now or we wouldn’t consider it. It has been a badfew months and a very very bad week.

Does anyone know how many cfu’s of probiotic you have to give a child to beeffective at killing off bad bacteria and encouraging good.

I’m wondering if anyone has heard of the natural substance “larcharabinogalactin”. It is one of the ingredients in somenatural “Child Life” brand immune support supplements my son takeswhen he is sick. Because I have feared putting him on antibioticsdue to the damage they have done to his digestive tract, I decidedto treat him naturally with these supplements. These wererecommended to me by my son’s nutritionist.

Unfortunately, I noticed over the course of the four days my son wason the supplement that he displayed some of the worst autisticbehaviors my husband and I have seen in months. The only thing wecould figure was that he was either reacting to his illness, or tothe the supplement itself.

I looked over all of the ingredients in the supplements, and the onewith the most suspicious name is “larch arabinogalactin”. It soundssimilar in name to other foods not acceptable on teh GFCF diet(galatose, lactate, lactoglobulin, etc).

We did the GFCF diet for 4 months. During this time we also were soyfree for about a month-we didn’t notice any difference so were-introduced the soy. DS’s diet is not heavy in soy- only soy milk 2xday and trace amounts in other foods.

During those 4 months we didn’t see any dramatic change. DS was doingvery well with the ABA program and continued to do so. So August 1, Ire-introduced gluten in the form of bread. His other foods remainedgluten froo for the most part. We were still casein free. I did noticesome loose stools for a week or so but that’s resolved. No behaviorchanges.

September was DS’s best month since his diagnosis. Great eye contact,referenceing,language explosion. Early September, I reintroducedcasein by allowing foods with butter into his diet- croissants,crackers, cookies etc. He did not get any dairy milk, cheese or yogurt.

At the end of October we started seeing a regression. IT’s still goingon. No eye contact, constant stimming, needs prompting for language.

HE also started a new preschool at the end of August.

So- anyone want to help me analyze this….?

1. It’s the preschool. But he did so well the first month there, sowhy the regression now?2. It’s the gluten- but then why did he do so well in September. Couldit take 6 weeks to the show the effects?3. It’s the casein.4. None of the above. Our kids just have regressions sometimes.

My son is PDD-NOS. He is on Concerta forattention, as well as a bunch of vitamin supplements. Long storyshort, I took him to a homeopathic doctor for some testing, as Isuspected gut problems might be there, even though he had no GIsymptoms, other than autistic-like behaviors and learningdisabiities. He did take forever to potty train (almost 4), but hadconsistent ear infections and was on every antibiotic known to man,for almost a year at one point. The homeopathic DR. came back andsaid he had candida as well as some vitamin and mineraldeficiencies. He did not specifically recommend the gfcf diet; thatis to say he didn’t tell me to do it, but to look into it. I’mwondering here, is there anyone else out there who had mild symptomslike I have mentioned but still found improvement on the diet? Or domost of you do it because of irritable bowels and obvious reactionsto gluten and casein? I’m finding it pretty overwhelming, but willdo what I have to for him. But, like everybody else, if I don’t haveto……well, you know.

These are what I have in my medicine cabinet right now. Are any ofthem GFCF? The only thing I know of that’s GFCF is Motrin Bananaflvour, but he’s got a real snuffly nose and coughing all throughoutthe night.If none of these are, could somebody please let me know which are.

~Dimetapp Oral Infant Cold Drops~Triaminic Cold & Night Time Cough~Equate Childrens Cough & Cold Syrup DM

I posted last week (Friday) about how panicked I was about beginningthis diet and how I couldn’t even imagine…I was drawn to finding outinformation about the diet after my son’s teacher told me that he hadhead banged on Friday…that had never happened before. We have seensome recent changes in him after a recent ear infection that requiredtwo antibiotics (Omnicef) and then Biaxin (to which we ended earlybecause of an apparent allergic reaction - hives).

I started by simply eliminating milk, cheese, yogurt etc. on Saturdaymorning - cold turkey. We have allowed soy milk (just to see) andtoday I saw it’s effects.

When greeted when I picked my soon to be 3 yr. old ASD son up at hisMothers Day Out Program I walked in the door and he excitedlysaid “Mommy!!” He went to the coat rack and grabbed his jacket andsaid “Bye” to his teachers as I helped him with his coat. Then hegrabbed my hand to show me the Felt Turkey’s they had played with - soI asked him what the Turkey says…usually I end up answering it forhim (as with all other animal sounds) and he said “GOBBLE GOBBLE!”

I left with his hand in mine crying…his teacher cried too…

I can’t believe it…

Its been almost a week on the diet and its been hard. I’ve pretty muchmade seperate meals for my son and I’d say he only touches about half.He will not touch the rice milk unless I put cocoa in it so I’m afraidhe is not getting enough to eat. (I nervious about giving him too muchsoy because he has had pretty bad reactions to beans) Today my husbandtook him to McD’s and gave him chic. nuggets not realizing they werenot on the diet and he ate several (usually he only eats one or two).H wouldn’t eat his breakfast som I’m sure he was hungry. Anyway,I’mwondering if we’re putting him through this for a good reason. I knowits early but maybe some of you can give me some feedback as to howlong it might be before I’ll see some results.

I am trying to start my son on a milk free diet for four days. Thenmaybe the wheat free milk free one. I have a ton of questions. I havelooked on the back of boxes of cereal and they don’t list any milkproducts so are they ok? Are there any gfcf products that are alreadyout there like regular items you would buy now or do you have to buylitterally everything special made? What about drinks and so forth?How do you afford to buy everything special? And what about calcium?Where do they get that from now. My son will not take vitamins orpills or anything like that. Help.

My duaghter is 6 and has autism. I hope it is not too late for us tostart the GFCF diet. I had tried briefly in the past (maybe 2 yearsago) and it went horrible. I was very anxious and the food tastedterrible. She stopped eating all together on the diet except for GFpretzels (day and night that’s it!) She is the most pickiest eaterEVER! For a while she would live on grilled cheese and chickennuggets. Her diet now includes that as well as french toast, waffles,pancakes and many snacks but far from nutritious (animal crackers,gold fish, chees-it’s, pretzels, chocolate chip cookies.) I sneak incashew butter in between the french toast but she catches on andstops eating. We try to give her only pear juice that is watered down(for yeast issues) but she likes all juices. She hates milk and hasnot had a sip of milk since age 2.5 which I think will help. Theonly “milk” product is the american cheese–I need a good substitutethat melts well and tastes good. Her lab tests say she is sensativeto wheat and gluten but not to casein. Her DAN! doctor wants toeliminate both gluten and casein however.

I feel very nervous about this diet because she does not try newfoods no matter how I try she wont eat anything that is unfamiliar toher. I would love to get chicken that is not breaded in her or beef(even a hamberger without the bun!) She’ll tantrum and pull away.THis is such a hard thing for us.