Kaelyn | Biomedical Intervention of Kaelyn

As some of you know… Kaelyn has many symptoms of Autism. She does strange hand gestures, arm flapping, has an obsession with “sameness”, lack of eye contact and limited affection, decreased sensitivty to pain.  The biggest is that she is 2 and a half and was only able to speak about 8 words on a regular basis.(mamma, daddy, cup, juice, shit (I KNOW) and she could count 1-4, with YEAH being 5)  Most of these symptoms she had only to a limited extent, but they were present.  She has not been diagnosed with Autism, though her doctor has told us that she needs the testing and will be in speech therapy…

and then she recommended we try the gluten and casein free diet.

To those of you who don’t know what that is- gluten is in pretty much EVERYTHING. Everything that has wheat, rye, barley and most oats is full of gluten. Casein is in all things dairy- milk, cheese, eggs, whey (whey is hidden is lots of things you wouldn’t expect)

So we checked it out… it seemed pricey and we are like ghetto poor right now.  But as I read success story after success story and told my parents about it…we all decided that whatever the cost… it would be worth it. Jenny McCarthy (we all know her as the hot chick on MTV who smelled her pits and farted) has a son with Autism and she went the GFCF route and within 3 weeks, her son had doubled his vocabulary. And this was only ONE of the MANY success stories I read that afternoon. This was last Friday, the 14th.

Kaelyn went GFCF on Friday afternoon. I swear on all things holy… by the next evening… she had already showed signs that this was right for her.  Shortly after waking Saturday morning… she selected a shirt from a pile and attempted to put it on. She’d never done this before.  Minutes later, she was doing everything she could to squeeze her feet into her little shoes. never done that, never even tried.  A couple hours later, she approached us and said “Chip”.. and pointed to her veggie chips. She saw a baby on TV and said “baby”. Then it got REALLY fun… she walked up to Buddy and said “Hungry”… so he started to make her GFCF pasta- she went and tapped her tray and said “eating” and waited for him patiently until he was done. She used to stand there and scream at us…  So he brought her plate and she said “dishes”.  She even slept better that night after NOT fighting like hell to stay up….

And that was just day one.

Today is Day 7 and my daughter has almost completly changed. She is still KAELYN…. but she has grown in one week what most children do in months.

She now says 20 new words regularly- “WOW” and ofcourse “NO” being her favorties. “What’s that”, “Chip”. “Baby”, “green” ,”yellow” ,”orange” .”hungry” “eating” .”love you”, she counts to 10 now, even saying 5, “HI!!” and today she walked up to Buddy and said “HELP” and then led him to her juice, just out of her reach.  She changes her video games in her vsmile with almost no help from us, we just have to give it that extra PUSH to get it working and she feeds herself with a fork… something we have tried for a YEAR to get her to do, but she just couldn’t do it.  She hates us helping her without her asking for it.  I love her new independance.  As far as affection and eye contact- she is a WHOLE new little girl.   She even climbs up for a snuggle for no reason now.

Tonight she had her first interactive phone call with Grammy and Grampie.  Carol said “A,B,C,D….” and Kaelyn yelled “EEEEE!!!!!!!!!!”… she was kissing the phone and laughing at them… she used to ignore the phone or push it away.

In my opinion, this diet is a MIRACLE.  Even isthe only progress she makes is what she already has, this is unbelievble. In 7 days she more than doubled her vocabulary, shows affection and makes WICKED eye contact and her motor skills are amazing…. all in 7 DAYS!!.  And you know what… it hasn’t been that expensive.  Every friggan penny has been worth it.  Just to see Kaelyn, to REALLY SEE HER in her eyes… has been worth everything.  We wory about losing the little girl we already know and love to this strange new child that is emerging… but we both know that she will ALWAYS be Kaelyn, always be our strange little one who flaps her arms at passing cars like its the most AMAZING thing ever… but she needs this, she needs to grow into the person she was meant to be. And boy does she WANT it… she wants out of the box of her mind so badly… we can see it in her eyes. And how proud she looks with that fork….

So that’s it for now… as if it wasn’t enough. Not every day has such miracles, but every day she does something new and exciting to make us so proud of her, fighting her way back from where ever she went…

A lot of the kids responding well to this diet progressed “normally” until about 12-15 months and then stopped progressing and ever regressed. Right about the time glutens are introduced to the diet in the form of “grown up food”.

FROM  http://www.glutensolutions.com/autism.htm

“Connection between gluten-free, casein-free diets (gfcf) and autism.

Briefly, gluten is a protein, and so is casein. Gluten is a protein fraction found in all wheat, rye, barley, and most oat products. Casein is a protein fraction found in all dairy products. To most Autistic children, gluten and casein are the equivalent of poison. They leak into the gut, undigested, and attach to the opiate receptors of the autistic’s brain. Essentially, many autistic children are “drugged” on wheat and milk products, as if they were on a morphine drip.

Although parents have been reporting a connection between autism and diet for decades, there is now a growing body of research that shows that certain foods seem to be affecting the developing brains of some children and causing autistic behaviors. This is not because of allergies, but because many of these children are unable to properly break down certain proteins.

Researchers in England, Norway, and at the University of Florida had previously found peptides (breakdown products of proteins) with opiate activity in the urine of a high percentage of autistic children. Opiates are drugs, like morphine, which affect brain function. These findings have recently been confirmed by researchers at Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. The two main offenders seem to be gluten (the protein in wheat, oats, rye and barley) and casein (milk protein.) ”

Another awesome site full of AMAZING success stories….

THE GFCF OFFICIAL WEBSITE

http://www.gfcfdiet.com/Successstories.htm

Please… if you love someone with Autism or know someone who does… check these sites out. It’s worth your time.