You may think that you have to give up delicious foods…say, “Waffles” for breakfast if you or your child may be on the Gluten Free and or Casein Free Diet.  Well…YOU DON’T…Yay!!!

I made some of the most delicious Gluten/Casein Free Waffles and the good tasting Casein Free butter ever…The Results came in FAST with many ”Yums!!!”… this delicious breakfast for my two boys, age 8 and age 11 was a smash hit…and they gobbled it up.    I added fresh fruit compote, made with fresh peaches, blueberries, and strawberries.  It was a very, Very yummy breakfast indeed.

I just wanted to pass this little food hint along to any that may be struggling with…”How do I feed my children…?”  The GFCF diet can be quite a challenge oftentimes…

All you need is:

1. Van’s Gluten Free Waffles in the Frozen Foods, (Health Food Store and or Publix)

2. Earth Balance Original natural buttery spread, Casein Free, (Health Food Store or Publix)

3. Fresh Fruit, Sweetened to Taste…

Easy and Tasty…Enjoy!!!  Your children will actually be echoing the famous commercial…”Leggo My Eggo!!!”

It’s time for the holidays again along with one of our biggest challenges of all time, if we are the designated chef.  How to cook a Gluten – Free Holiday Meal that is not only safe but delicious too. 

Many of us have tried and failed many times when faced with this cooking project and ended up looking at our child spit out in disgust the food that we worked so very hard on.  Discouraged…a few tears…and perhaps this cooking project ends up indignantly in the garbage can!

Well, my Gluten-Free Friends, cooking gluten-free has come a long way and the food we can buy in the store and the recipes have become much easier to prepare, along with being more palatable as well.

I wanted to pass along this site from the Washington Post that is just chock full of Thanksgiving and Holiday Gluten-Free Recipes.  I hope these recipes come in handy for you as we face the “Great Gluten-Free Quest”.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all-we-can-eat/post/gluten-free-recipes-for-thanksgiving/2011/11/21/gIQA3kzjiN_blog.html

Avoiding allergies and immune reactions such as IgG food sensitivities can be a big part of helping children on the autism spectrum improve. As always, this assumes that you have found a problem in this area. We all know how varied not only are the children but are the triggers to their conditions. In any event, I have been asked by several parents who do have children with issues relating mostly to IgG food sensitivities about food labels and how to really interpret them. What they really mean. We all know that many times gluten-free may not necessarily be truly gluten free. So here is the page from the FDA explaining what they mean with regard to food allergies and labels. It is also a nice place to begin and further navigate the site if you have other interests.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm079311.htm

One of the major findings with biomedical interventions and functional medicine  as applied to autism spectrum disorders is gluten sensitivity. I found a nice video series Children’s Hospital in Boston that explains how to create a gluten-free home. In addition, this is only one of a series of videos which relates to things such as gluten-free cooking and gluten-free shopping. So check out this video and feel free to check out the entire series. I think the series will be very informative even to those of you who are experienced with the gluten-free diet. For those who are brand-new to the diet this is a wealth of information in a nice concise and easy to learn format. Just watch and learn.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ChildrensHospital#p/u/48/neqJJy-2INg

It is common in the office to test patients with autism spectrum disorder for a leaky gut syndrome. Part of the protocol to address leaky gut syndrome is to eliminate irritants such as food sensitivities. Acquiring this information regarding which foods you are sensitive to can be determined by the elimination diet and/or IgG food sensitivity testing. The most famous foods for  IgG/food sensitivity is our gluten and casein. This however does not mean that other food sensitivities may be present and affecting the patient who is on the spectrum. IgG testing can be relatively inexpensive especially when the benefit of eliminating foods causing an IgG reaction can be identified and eliminated from the diet. Most of the specialty labs will test for approximately 90 foods in categories such as dairy, fish, fruits, nuts, grains, meat, and vegetables. The amount of foods tested can be expanded for a greater expense. Just as important as finding out what the person with autism spectrum disorder is reacting to is adapting the diet in order to avoid those foods. Below is a link to a website in which you can look up a particular food and  see what are good substitutes in your recipes for that food. This is in hopes  of course that the recipes taste is not altered and therefore life is not altered too much. The website has many many foods on it, not just gluten and casein substitutes. I hope it helps especially with your holiday recipes. Happy holidays!

http://www.switcheroo.com/

In the autism community, vaccinations are a huge issue. This is due to potential heavy metal toxicity such as those relating to mercury and/or aluminum. Thus, as a functional medicine practitioner and one who does biomedical interventions for autism spectrum disorders, many times parents present to the office wanting to have their child tested for heavy metals and perhaps even to undergo chelation. In reality, many parents want to have their child undergo chelation many times without even having tested for heavy metals. That is, they assume that since their child worsened after vaccinations, mercury and/or aluminum toxicity is the key. Using this reasoning they want to chelate immediately. However, chelation is not something that can be entered into lightly. Chelation as defined by Wikipedia  “is the administration of chelating agents to remove heavy metals from the body. For the most common forms of heavy metal intoxication — those involving lead, arsenic or mercury — the standard of care in the USA dictates the use of dimercaptosuccinic acid DMSA” or other chelating agents depending on which metal you are trying to remove. This article is to point out some preparatory steps and contraindications to chelation. When heavy-metals are chelated from the body many minerals are also removed from the body. Therefore, a period of remineralization has to be implemented. Thus, if the patient has a leaky gut syndrome and therefore possible malabsorption, it will be difficult to remineralize the patient in order to bring him back to optimal health and not cause further damage to the patient. The removal of toxins in the body takes place through the liver, the kidneys and the skin. Therefore, in any type of detoxification procedure including heavy-metal detoxification test involving liver function and kidney function should be performed prior to engaging in chelation. There is also the question of whether the lab work is being interpreted on a functional basis or a normal basis. That is the reference ranges used to interpret some of the testing on a functional basis are usually more stringent in order to verify optimal organ function as opposed to acceptable organ function. Clearly, if you’re going to engage in a detoxification process in which you’re going to strain the organs of detoxification you would want them to be functioning optimally rather than just functioning acceptably prior to engaging in the chelation. Much of the waste and toxins are eliminated through the urine and feces. The feces are eliminated through the colon. If the patient suffers from constipation then he more than likely has an increase in absorption of toxins in the colon. Therefore, it would make little sense to increase that toxic load with chelation in a patient who is constipated. In functional medicine, we are always describing a term called “total load”. That is the total sum of all the stresses on the body. That could be things such as heavy-metals, oxidative stress, dysbiois and yeast infection as well as malabsorption and malnutrition. In the case of a child with autism we know that something decompensated the system or increased that total load beyond capacity. As such, we would not want to do anything to increase the load further by creating a greater release of toxins in the body of which it is not able to process and eliminate. Thus, even if your child has tested positive for heavy metals, chelation is not something that can be rushed into. There are other processes which should be evaluated prior to engaging in chelation. Things such as leaky gut, liver and kidney function as well as general gastrointestinal health should be evaluated. From a parent standpoint, if your child suffers from constipation I would be concerned with proceeding with chelation. If you suspect your child has the leaky gut or has tested positive for leaky gut I would also be concerned with proceeding with chelation. As always this is general information for parents and patients and I always recommend that you seek out a qualified functional medicine practitioner who should be aware of these issues prior to engaging in any type of heavy-metal detoxification and/or chelation.

Many in the Autism community are concerned with mercury toxicity especially with regard to vaccinations. In functional medicine we are always concerned with total load on the body. The concept of total load deals with the sum  total of all the stressors placed on the of body, which may at some point decompensated the bodies homeostatic mechanisms. Total load on the body with regard to biomedical interventions and Autism Spectrum Disorders may relate to things such as dysbiosis and yeast infections, oxidative stress and heavy metal toxicity. With regard to a mercury toxicity, those that feel this is an issue may want to consider mercury related to dental work and having that mercury removed. This will not eliminate the mercury received from a vaccine however will decrease the potential total mercury toxicity and the potential total load on the body. Below is a link to a website which lists biological dentist. I hope this is helpful

http://www.talkinternational.com/directories/dentists-global.html

One of the most common biomedical interventions for autism spectrum disorders is the gluten free diet. The following link takes you to a website that allows you to plug-in zip code and/or city, the application will then provide a list and a map of all the gluten free restaurants in the selected area. There are links to the individual restaurant websites. I thought this might help in the event that you are in a pinch and need to find somewhere to eat quickly. It also may be helpful if you are planning a trip out of town. In any case, it is a nice application for someone that is relatively Internet savvy. Since this a website that is on the Internet, I assume that you are fairly Internet savvy and that this may be able to help those of you on the gluten free diet sometime in the future.  The link is preset to Tampa as an example as this where we are based. But you can easily select any way that you would like.  Http://www.specialgourmets.com/index/show-results-list/requester/list/searchType/3/searchCity/Tampa%2C+Florida%2C+USA/searchDiet/0,1,3,2,4,5,6/searchEstType/0,1,2,3,4/searchChains/0/advanced/

You all know that I am always a stickler for clearing up any intestinal hyper permeability before addressing other biomedical issues. It is most important that you deal with the leaky gut and any dysbiosis and/or yeast as a primary focus when addressing autism spectrum disorders from a functional medicine perspective. There are many diets that are commonly used in order to treat children with autism spectrum disorders. The most common of course being the gluten free/casein free diet. Other types of diets such as the elimination diet, Feingold diet and specific carbohydrate diet among others have been found to provide beneficial results for autistic children. The specific carbohydrate diet is one that is modeled to address dysbiosi(bad bacterial overgrowth in the gastrointestinal system) and yeast overgrowth. At times, I write articles to explain areas of treatment for autistic children that I feel have not been well addressed. I also like to write and comment about newer research that has been published. But many times, I find somewhat has written on a particular subject in such a clear way that to write a new article would be redundant. For this reason, I just provide the link, when I find such a situation. In this case, I found a beautiful explanation between the interplay between leaky gut, dysbiosis, yeast and the specific carbohydrate diet. In general, the specific carbohydrate diet attempts to combat bacterial overgrowth by limiting their food source. For a child that has had recurrent yeast infections and/or is constantly on antifungal medication, this may be a good tool to consider when developing a treatment plan  along with natural antifungals and probiotics. Remember to space out the natural antimicrobials and the probiotics when using both tools to treat the yeast and bacteria.I will try to write about this in more detail perhaps in combination with a particular patient case. Here is a the link  http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/autism/autism_and_gi_problems.htm

Intestinal hyper permeability syndrome or as it is commonly known Leaky gut syndrome is something that is very commonly found in children on the autism spectrum. I have previously addressed how to tests for leaky gut syndrome and here I will briefly touch on one of the important components in treating a leaky gut syndrome. Dealing with leaky gut involves removing any dysbiosis (growth of bad bacteria,, parasites or yeast ) in the intestinal tract , controlling blood sugar levels, and taking specific supplementation to repair lining. Stress is a factor which can also influence your attempts to repair the lining of your gut. One of the most important parts of a program to repair intestinal hyper permeability is to remove irritants. This is done through the elimination diet. Here is a nice link giving you the basics of the elimination diet.  This information is not from in autism web site but the basics of the diet are the same. http://www.curezone.org/faq/q.asp?a=4,99,699&q=54