How would you start????

[Luvourlives]

I have a 9 year old son with high functioning autism. I KNOW he has a food allergy. We had him tested a year ago and the lab totally screwed up the testing by lumping all the tests together so we know his is positive for nuts OR eggs OR wheat OR dairy OR shellfish. Our ped tried to get them to retest with the blood they already drew but there wasn't enough. We have procrastinated on addressing this issue due to other life stresses but it really is unfair to my son to continue ignoring this. I am fairly certain that he is ok with nuts and shellfish...at any rate he is certainly not anaphylactic. He thinks he is allergic to wheat as he has noticed he bloats alot when he has wheat, though we have noticed that he has a greater "reaction" when eating processed foods that have white flour as opposed to whole wheat. His symptoms are the bloating and gas, also possibly related he has sebborheic dermatitis and of course behavioral issues that go along with autism, though these are truly very very very mild.

Eggs is a possibility but our guts say wheat or dairy or possibly both. We would like to determine the route via elmination diet but I am not sure how best to go about this. Would we be best off eliminating both wheat and dairy and for several weeks and then add one, check for reactions, elminate again and try the other?? Also what on earth would he eat???? My biggest concerns for how to apply this diet are breakfast (as we are currently cereal dependent) and lunch...what to put in place of a sandwich. He is a very picky eater, but he knows there is an issue with the foods he eats so perhaps we can get him to be receptive to change. He thankfully has expanded his diet recently to include some more fruits and veggies.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!!!!

[cat19]

My niece and many other children on the spectrum find they do better on a diet free of gluten and casein (i.e dairy and wheat and other forms of gluten.

There are a LOT of great books out there exploring how to do such a diet with a kid on the spectrum, as well as some support groups. (I'm sure other posters can point you to particular ones; I'm blank today)

[tallanvor]

Well, I personally would start with wheat simply because it doesn't take as long for it to get out of your system. If you are talking just going wheat free, there are a lot of options, even for cereal. A lot of mainstream cereals are wheat free (notice I didn't say gluten free) -- honey nut cheerios, for instance, and Kix. Just read the ingredients. My daughter has a wheat sensitivity and we do a lot of cereal, too, but have found quite a few that are wheat and/or gluten free and the organic ones are really about the same price as the regular.

You could start doing your own baking, too, if you don't already -- spelt flour, oat flour, and more. It really is not as hard as it seems to go wheat free.

Crystal