FREE WEBINAR: The Effectiveness of 13 Therapeutic Diets for Autism
04/17/2024 - Epidemic Answers - Documenting Hope - Healing Together
What are we to make of people (adults and children) who have lost their autism diagnosis? Those who were diagnosed with severe autism, nonspeaking or not-reliable speakers, self-injurious and then changed their diet and followed a holistic and therapeutic path . . . who no longer have any symptoms of autism?
There are stories of moms who changed the diversity of their child’s microbiome through diet, and their child lost their autism diagnosis.
There are also stories of parents who helped their child in other ways beyond diet including detoxification, reduction of oxidative stress, targeted nutritional therapy, and therapies to help overcome missed developmental milestones (here is a video that tells the stories of four of these families), but diet is always central in these stories, too.
Read on to learn more about how changing your child's diet can improve their symptoms of autism.
So which diet is best, overall? On a scale of 0-4 (0 = no benefit, 4 = great benefit), the answer is a healthy diet, which is defined as “a diet high in the intake of vegetables, fruit, and protein and low in junk food”. This diet had the highest net benefit (2.7) with no adverse effects. The diets with the next-best overall benefits were the Feingold diet (2.6), the food-avoidance (IgG/IgE) diet (2.6), the low-sugar diet (2.4), and the GFCF diet (2.3).
The answer to a lesser extent is: The diet that you can get your child to follow with compliance. “Positive correlations were found between how strictly diets were followed and the Overall Benefit users received from the diet.” Read more about the study here.
Autism and Food Relevant Research
Here are some peer-reviewed medical research studies that highlight the relationship between food, specialty diets and autism.
In this blog post, Beth Lambert writes: "I would contend that the neurological presentation that we call autism, in most (but not all) cases, develops over time from myriad contributing environmental factors from pre-conception onwards. Usually, it is multi-generational and specifically involves influences pre-conception through the first few years of life and is due to a combination of genetics and a cumulative and synergistic load of environmental stressors. For some children (like those with Rett syndrome, fragile X or Down syndrome), a genetic or chromosomal component may feature prominently. For others, environmental factors play a larger role.
For example, there are certain genetics that might make an individual more vulnerable to developing autism, but interestingly, these may also be the same genetics that make one more vulnerable to developing Parkinson’s, depression, cancer, anxiety, or other conditions. This may have more to do with a person’s ability to methylate, detoxify, and process the environmental stressors that are a part of living in the modern world (but were not present in the pre-industrial age)." Read the post here.
FREE WEBINAR: The Effectiveness of 13 Therapeutic Diets for Autism
