Posted: December 03 2005 at 10:50am | IP Logged

 I was reading about this GF/CF diet and I would like a little help from you!!!

 In my country there are no translated books or any facts about this diet, and I would like to know more because you say it has efects. So I am willing to try it to my girl but I need to know as much as I can about it!

 Can you please help me and give me as much informations as you can?

 Am very grateful for your great help!

Posted: December 04 2005 at 9:22am | IP Logged

I am not an expert with Gluten Free/Casein Free diets and there are some people on this board who are good at it, so hopefully they will come save me.. Lisa Lewis has a book which outlines why try a diet and then lots of recipes. The book is called Special Diets for Special Kids. You can also get information from google or your search engine. If you google GF/CF diet or glutenfree/casein free  diet...websites show up. There is a group out of California called "taca.org" (i think) and their site is outstanding..tells you how to implement the diet, what are safe foods, how to rotate, recipes and so forth.  Implementation is not easy, especially with older and more resistant children. Usually they recommend removing dairy first..So dairy is anything with milk in it (and I think that this includes milk from other animal as well as cows). Most of the kids switch to almond, rice or soy milk. Remember, this includes..yogurt, icecream and cheese.  Gluten is basically wheat, malt, barley, oats. Rice is o.k. and potatoes are o.k. The scarey thing is that gluten is in so many things..play dough, medicine, sun screen.

I confess that I got a little overwhelmed and finally found a DAN Dr. (defeat autism now) to help run some biological tests to see what exactly is the problems. Some kids have problems with soy and corn too! Some kids have problems with food dyes. I have been told that good indicators are if your child has runny or  extremely soft bowel movements (or even constipation), if your child craves milk or wheat foods, if your child has rashes, black circles under they eyes..that they might do well on the diet.

Not every child reacts to the diet. Mine didn't (I think), but she seems more reactive to the special vitamins I give her. The idea behind the diet is due to leaky gut syndrome.  Hopefully someone will more knowledgable will come along and give you a better answer!

Aloha, Renee