First of all, a big pat on the back to my friend Jen who has put her daughter on a CF diet. You can read about her reasons and the beginning of her journey here and here. I was quite amazed at the difference in her when I saw them a couple of days ago... even after she accidently had some milk the day before at the breakfast table!
Our journey into GFCFSF-land has been progressing. What's GFCFSF? Gluten-Free, Casein-Free and Soy-Free. Abby has been CF since forever, and happily drank soy milk as a substitute. We've dabbled in the GF, and are finally feeling confident and certain enough about ourselves to fully do it for her. I've elected to go SF too because of the growing controversy about the safety of soy consumption. There's also a growing body of documentation that suggests that the similarity between the gluten protein, the casein protein and the soy protein causes cross-reactivity in sensitive people.
Some really good articles about the implementation of the GFCF (and SF) diet can be found here and here.
I suspect Abby is one of these aforementioned gluten-casein-soy people: we already have trialed (and challenged) the casein part of the diet, and we do see a difference in her ability to sit, concentrate and focus. We also know that she is sensitive to the gluten protein, as she has demonstrated that she can't eat wheat pasta, and hasn't had any for a long time (she wakes up screaming with a stomach ache in the middle of the night when she has durum wheat, which is a high-protein variety of wheat).
She loves anything dairy and pastas and bread. The dairy we were using soy-based products, but have recently switched her to Vance's DariFree, which I can't say enough good things about (DariFree is available in Canada through Medallion Milk). We've moved her to rice pasta, and she enjoys it and does well with it. Bread is another matter.
Who knew children with Autism are creatures of habit? She eats two slices of toast at 10:30 a.m. for snack. Every. Single. Day. And you know what? GF toast is... different... from "regular" toast.
We're not a fan of it, yet. We'll work on that.
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