Gluten woes

Casein free is not fun, but gluten free is lots worse. It's easy to substitute soy for cow's milk, but there really is not a substitute for wheat. Wheat is in so many foods! What I am coming to realize is that the foods that contain wheat usually are not that great for you anyway. All the processed junk that we put into our bodies on a daily basis... man oh man. Just wait for the post about the additives in fast food. I actually already knew most of it, but I chose to ignore the facts and settled with ignorance is bliss. You really can not do that with a child who has allergies though.

So the woes basically consisted with Benjamin having withdrawals to gluten. The basic explanation of the whole situation is that there are some autistic children (and obviously some neuro-typical children as well, but they get labeled as having Celiac disease) can not digest casein (cow's milk by product) and gluten (wheat, rye, barley, etc.). These proteins remain in your blood stream and behave as an opiate. GREAT, right?? So basically I've been drugging my child for two years. This is not what causes autism, but rather it exacerbates some of the symtoms such as spinning, banging of the head, and looking "out of it" most of the time. Doctors sometimes suggest that you try this diet to see if any of the symptoms subside. A LOT of Benjamin's symptoms have subsided with the GFCF diet, and we're thrilled with the results. We were not so thrilled with the withdrawals that lasted for about four days, however. He woke up about every 45 minutes at night and was incredibly cranky all day to the point of driving us insane. I'm sure he must have had some sort of headache. We all had a headache at that point. Benjamin has been using more "jargon", which is baby jabber. You know when a child looks at you and has a complete conversation and it's obvious that they aren't speaking English? That's jargon. Benjamin never had that before. It's thought to be the precursor to speaking. Yippee!

Now I'm sure many of you may be wondering why children are not tested for these types of "allergies", and I can not really answer that question. I suppose the same reason why we are not all tested for lots of things. Sometimes, as parents, you must educate yourselves (Warren calls this webmding yourself.) and then ask the doctors for various tests. Is it our crappy healthcare system that ALWAYS revolves around money to the expense of our own health? Maybe so. I do not have the answers, but I do know that Benjamin could have been tested for this earlier. The treatment to eliminate some foods is considered a homeopathic treatment. We all know how most doctors feel about homeopathic treatments. It's very interesting that Western medicine has come this far, but yet falls so short in many ways because most refuse to believe in homeopathic treatments.

Yes, big post with lots of topics. Sorry. The bottom line is Benjamin is doing better and we're stoked!