April is Autism Awareness Month

Celebrate the unique qualities of your child!!

There was a really good article in one of the Marlene's newsletter this month. If I could find the article I would reference who wrote it, but it's lost in my mess of a house somewhere.

Since starting on this journey of GFCF foods, I have come across many articles and information linking the GFCF diet and autism recovery and have "met" many wonderful and caring parents struggling to help their child(ren) interact with this world. It truly takes a dedicated parent to partake of this journey of healing, but finally meeting your child and seeing who they are on the inside is the biggest blessing.

While my recipes on this site deal mainly with gluten and dairy, many of these parents eliminate soy as well. Soy seems to cause many of the same issues for children as dairy would. I haven't noticed with my son, but we are now 95% soy free as well, just to be on the safe side. I realized our intake of soy increased ten-fold since that is the ingredient that replaces dairy.

Another option is the Feingold diet. I don't know much about it since you need to be a member, but I do know that cutting out certain fruits and artificial colors and flavors is a big part. I have learned apples and bananas can be serious behaviour triggers, but I haven't properly tested them in our house yet. We have cut out the artificial colors and flavors, including high-fructose corn syrup. I realized how easily most of this is taken out of our diets once you get into a more natural state with your foods. (i.e. no boxed foods)

I decided to set up a list of good sites to check out if you are on this journey or if you might want to read more on it. (there are many more options for healing-- enzymes, chelation, detox, heavy metal testing, vitamin testing, and several more that parents have tried--do remember that each child is different and may respond differently)

~DAN! doctors (defeat autism now) are the best source of information regarding a lot of these treatments and testing. I highly recommend finding one in your area.
http://www.autismwebsite.com/ari/dan/dan.htm

~Talk About Curing Autism-great site on starting the diet, resources, recipes, books, new parents, support, etc...A really great site!!

~The GFCF Diet

~The Feingold Diet

~Dana's View-a wealth of information regarding Dana's story of her children and what she did to heal them. Lot's of good ideas and links to other sites.

~GFCFRecipes from Yahoo Group-over 1100 tried and true recipes from parents of autistic children and continues to grow

~Woggle-Bug-this is another really great site done by a parent of an Asperger's child. I like the philosophy behind what they are striving for. Good recipes, including a cookbook you can purchase, some more information of things I have posted here, and a really great sense of humor.

~Food Allergy Kitchen-mainly about food allergies, but hey, since we are on this diet, every little bit helps!!

I will add more sites as I come across them. There are several blogs that I like that are already listed on my side bar. Most are only gluten-free though, but good to read and great ideas for converting recipes.
Hopefully this may give some a good starting point and others, well, my hope is to help spread the word. If I can take some of the knowledge that I have aquired over this past year and help just one family see their child smile and say "I love you," then it's all worth it!!