One of my good friends (who also happens to be my neighbor) told me I needed to talk a little more about autism recovery because some people that visit my blog may not really believe we could actually have recovered Matthew. Sometimes I feel like I’ve talked autism recovery to death. I tell tons of people when I can, but some of my methods may be very overwhelming and foreign to people, and I’m fearful it will turn them off to the whole process. For that reason it does become a process. A journey that may take years to get to where we are.
I have loved the gluten free casein free diet and NO MATTER what else you do to recovery your child from autism, you absolutely MUST do the diet. By that I mean you actually have to actively DO the diet. Make sure everything your child eats for at least the next 2 years is gluten and casein free (GFCF). It is imperative to your child’s recovery and overall health. You may need to (most of us do) even change his or her shampoo and body wash, be wary of stickers and stamps as many contain gluten in their glue which can be absorbed through the skin. Watch out for school supplies, especially with younger kids that may eat them. Play Doh is a big NO Noh! (like my joke?) as it is made with wheat and gets under fingernails which means it can be easily ingested. The reason I say for the next 2 years, and not for the rest of his life, is that at a point you may heal the gut enough that your child can have a bit of milk here or gluten there. My son has healed so profoundly that he can eat ice cream and birthday cake at parties he is invited to, but on a normal day to day basis we are still GFCF.
But you can’t stop there. You really want to clean up your child’s diet to optimize their health. Why? Because a healthy body functions well, and a healthy brain functions optimally. If you don’t put good stuff in, you can’t get good stuff out. Now imagine that your child’s body is struggling to process the food that you put in it, and instead of giving it healthy foods you are giving it processed crap. What do you think that body will do with that junk? It is going to give you an even less healthy child. Rinse and repeat, and you have yourself a perfect storm of crappy health in a body that is already compromised.
Instead eat real food. Stuff you actually have to cook! Raw veggies and fruits make the perfect snack. Keep it simple. We eat a ton of grilled or broiled meats, simply prepared veggies and drink water at every meal. NO JUICE BOXES! NO SODA! Just make up your mind and do it. This is your child’s life and what if you can change all the crazy chemistry in his body by simply changing his diet? I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping if you are reading this you are pretty much like me, I would do just about ANYTHING to recover my kid. And I did.
This is getting long, so I’ll save the next part for another post. But know that autism does not have to be a permanent condition. I have friends that are recovering their children as I type this. It is possible.
Before I go, I do want to define RECOVERY for you. To me it is to completely lose the autism diagnosis. By that I mean not qualifying under the DSM-IV as autistic. There may be other issues such as OCD or ADHD, but no longer Autism. (pss, don’t tell anyone, but I think all those things can be recovered too!)
