Tics: There and Back Again {Part III}

If I were to thank anyone or any organization for the beginning of the end of our journey with tics {and I do believe we are almost done with them around here–at least the majorly distracting ones that seem to be sensitive to foods}, it would be a tie between Generation Rescue and Dr. Amy Yasko. I have never contacted either one, but just reading the information on their websites helped me further my own research in ways I never thought possible.

My hunch has always been that the cause of much modern disease lies in the gut. I know this sounds overly simplistic, and yet one must admit that there are a lot of strange, seemingly unconnected sets of symptoms that respond well to improved nutrition, tweaking the diet, and so on. Why, if the disease begins, in the instance of autism, in the brain and is essentially neurological in nature, does it seem to respond well to a basic gluten-free-casien-free {GFCF} diet? Why do some women with a problem that is seemingly psychological in nature, in the instance of post-partum depression, respond well to an increase in their intake of the B vitamins?

These were the sorts of questions I was asking myself, and all the while I was trying to follow my hunch, not for the purposes of developing any philosophy of disease, but for saving my son not just from tics, but from any additional neurological damage. I was more afraid of what I couldn’t see than what was obvious.

It was in reading Lenny’s Story, an article that appeared in Latitudes magazine, that I first considered a wheat-free diet. Lenny was a child officially diagnosed with autism that is now officially diagnosed as normal. This is the paragraph that got me:

I worked in a hospital and started networking with physicians about autism. Soon, I received a call from a doctor who had an autistic son. I told him all about Lenny. His response was, “Your son has a leaky gut from a vaccine injury and you should immediately take him off wheat and milk.” He explained that proteins from gluten {in some grains} and casein {in milk products} were leaking through the intestinal wall undigested and were acting like an opiate in my son’s brain. I dismissively thanked the good doctor for calling.

Shortly before I read this, my friend Kim had shared with me about her nephew, who had been diagnosed with autism and then, after being on a strict GFCF diet, was now merely Asperger’s. I, like the wife in Lenny’s Story, began to wonder what harm could come from abstaining from wheat for a short time…

_____________________
Read Part I
Read Part II
You are reading Part III
Read Part IV
Read Part V