A Little Bit of Background

Last September I was in my local shopping centre when I bumped into an old friend who I hadn’t seen for a while. He asked how I was. Now if I’d been having a good day, I probably would have said “I’m grand thanks” and exchanged pleasantries and left and that would have been that. But I happened to be having a really bad day and I told him so. I told him how my youngest child had been diagnosed with autism a year ago and how he had been particularly difficult this morning. So my marvelous friend took me to a chair and we had a long chat about it. “I have this book”, he said “about a diet that treats autism, and it impressed me so much, I went to meet the author. You HAVE to read it!”

So, a few weeks later I read my friend’s copy of “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” by Natasha Campbell McBride. The book describes a natural treatment for autism, and other conditions. It explains in detail the connection between the functions of the digestive system and the brain. It describes how gut dysfunction can affect brain function and makes the point that most children with autism also have digestive problems. And most importantly, it outlines a diet to treat these issues, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. This diet was devised in 1951 (so it’s not a new fad!) to treat Celiac disease and other digestive disorders. It began to be used to treat autism in the early 2000s.

After that I read “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” by Elaine Gottschall which gives even more detail about the diet. Elaine Gottschall used the diet to treat her daughter who suffered with severe ulcerative colitis and neurological problems. After her daughter was completely recovered, Elaine went back to college to study diet and nutrition in detail. She wrote her book in 1987. In a reprint of the book in 2003, she added a Chapter on Autism. Her book contains many testimonies from parents of autistic children on the benefits of the diet.

So, I felt in my bones, that we had to try this diet. Whether it worked or not, once I knew it was out there, I just felt we had to give it a go. So we decided that as a family, we would all do it together. And the kids managed to convince me to wait until after Christmas!! So we started our new diet adventure on the 4^th of January.