Tuesday, February 23, 2010

A new drug ...

There is a new drug being tested for autism, according to this. It is supposed to supply some sort of enzyme to help digest proteins. The first article I read said the inventor/found claims that studies have shown that some autistic children can't digest protein. This was news to me.

Well, apparently, they are talking about the whole gluten-free, casein-free (i.e., gfcf, to those in the know)(and for some, soy-free) diet thing. But I was unaware of any studies that showed that any autistic children really were not capable of digesting these or any other proteins.

We're not GFCF, by the way. I tried it for a few months at first. It did turn out that T's twin brother really was having serious issues with dairy, because boy did he react when I did the challenge part of the elimination test (i.e., gave them dairy for the first time after weeks of no dairy), but T -- results were less clear. I had T tested for gluten allergy, and although I know those tests are not determinative, they were negative. I hated being gluten free. Turns out, I really really love gluten. who knew?

We went back on gluten. I couldn't tell any difference, honestly.

But I have continued to wonder. There sure are a lot of true believers in this diet. Can they all be wrong? Maybe I've made a mistake? I don't know.

Also, I have been struck lately by an amazing fact: our paleolithic ancestors did not eat any grains or dairy (or beans, either, by the way), at least accordong to the experts I've been reading.

In case you didn't know, supposedly we are still genetically identical to those ancestors, who turned eventually to the ways of agriculture when their meat supplies ran low. Before that, we didn't grow food or raise cattle.

And boy did they eat a lot of meat. It was about 50% of the diet, apparently.

And when we started eating all those grains etc., you know what? we got shorter as a species. we got some other diseases, too.

Pretty interesting.

So ... more to think about.

1 comment:

  1. my sone is dairy free since he was very little he had such bad reflux he had to be on a sleep apnea monitor and as soon as we took out any kind of dairy he was fine and that was at maybe a year so its been a while but at 2 and ahlf we did gluten free and it took at least 2 weeks to see the differences but
    the things he cna do now are amazing he is so allergic that if he has some i can tell the difference he gets a rash that we just thought was him before and those puffy eyes
    he just looks sick
    how long did you try gluten free
    it doesnt work for at least 40 % of kids i read but it has worked in helping symptoms for at least 60% of autistic kids i read it somewhere and cant remember where but i went to an autism meeting and i wasnt the only one who had read that this woman said yea i was the 40% and i felt so bad cuz its changed my sons life