Gluten and casein free diet - reduced autism symptoms?

[sapo2000]

Hi everyone! Has anyone tried the gluten and casein free diet to help with the reduction of certain autism symptoms? Did it help ? Thanks!

Hi, My ASD DS is gluten and casein free. He does it because otherwise his adenoids swell to the point where he can't breathe through his nose. We don't know what effect gluten and casein would have on his behaviour, because physical things go wrong first if he tries them.

Thanks! My son had his adenoids removed.

I tried this for years and I don’t believe it made the slightest difference to my child’s symptoms at all. At the time I figured it might help, and wouldn’t do any harm.

But looking back, it cost money, made meals much harder, socially isolated him as he often couldn’t eat what others could, and therefore caused him a lot of unnecessary grief. I came to accept that there was no sensible scientific basis for limiting his diet in the way I did, and I really regret doing so.

DS is now 22 and went gluten and dairy free when he was 4. It definitely helped with sleep - he hadn’t ever slept through the night before this - and his eczema and bowel issues improved. As to improving core autistic symptoms - no, I don’t think so. And I agree with a previous poster that the ‘cons’ are significant. For us it was probably worth it - just -because of the improvements in physical health. Nowadays he can occasionally have gluten and be ok - it seems to be a build up that’s problematic. Dairy is ok in very small doses, but again, the effects seem to build up. The thing that has had the greatest effect in reducing challenging behaviours has been limiting sugar. I wish we’d done that from very early on.