Barrie Silberberg - The Autism & ADHD Diet

A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO HOPE AND HEALING BY LIVING GLUTEN FREE AND CASEIN FREE (GFCF) AND OTHER INTERVENTIONS

Barrie Silberberg

Foreward by Donna Williams

Copyright 2009 by Barrie Silberberg

Cover and internal design 2009 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover Design by Sourcebooks

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

Storage and Use Chart (on page 64) from the book The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread by Bette Hagman. Copyright 1999 by Bette Hagman. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewswithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

This book is not intended as a substitute for medical advice from a qualified physician. The intent of this book is to provide accurate general information in regard to the subject matter covered. If medical advice or other expert help is needed, the services of an appropriate medical professional should be sought.

Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900

Fax: (630) 961-2168

www.sourcebooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Silberberg, Barrie.

The autism & ADHD diet : a step-by-step guide to hope and healing by living gluten free and casein free (GFCF) and other interventions / Barrie Silberberg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Autism in children--Diet therapy. 2. Autistic children--Care. 3. Gluten-free diet.

4. Casein-free diet. 5. Parents of autistic children. I. Title.

RJ506.A9S545 2009

618.9285882--dc22

2008046040

Printed and bound in the United States of America
BG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

This book is dedicated to my beautiful,
wonderful, and amazing son, Noah.
Because of you and your success with the GFCF diet,
together we are able to make a difference in the lives of
so many children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

I would like to thank my parents, Blanche and Arthur Silberberg, who always believed that I could do anything that I wanted to do.To my beautiful, bright, precious, and very special daughter, Annsley Bella, whose smile, love, and encouragement always give me strength and provide me with joy. To my incredible, bright son, Noah, for just being yourself, and always shining and soaring above and beyond our expectations.

To my dear friend Mary Parker for showing me the inspiring magazine article, so many years ago, that helped me to help Noah receive his diagnosis, thus beginning our journey. To my uncle, Samuel Kohn, for reading my manuscript and helping me to edit it. To my wonderful agent, Neil Salkind, who believed in my passion and my message, who put up with my millions of questions so happily, and who quickly found me a publisher for this book.

To Julie, Melinda, Rachelle, Natalie, Joyce, Petra and Alex, Phyllis, Saswati, and Emma for taking the time to put your wonderful success stories into words for this book. To Alan Friedman, PhD, for your help and guidance with information about your peptide research. To Heather Gilliam, MPH, RD, for your dietary wisdom and words.

To Dave Morrison, PsyD; Gilit Gat, MA, ATR; Benjamin Kohn, OD; and Diane Mautner, MA, CCC-SLP (author of Draw Me a Story), for critiquing and assisting me with the therapy segments. To Shula Edelkind and Jane Hersey of the Feingold Association for assisting me in appropriately wording details of the Feingold Diet.

Thanks to Dave Morrison; Karima Hirani, MD, MPH; and all the others whove written endorsements for my book. Thanks to Donna Williams for writing the foreword and sharing with my readers about your success with the GFCF diet. Thanks to my editor, Peter Lynch, for all of his assistance and patience every step of the way. Thanks to Stephen ORear,my production editor,for seeing my manuscript through its journey.

Finally, to all of my friends who encouraged me, supported me, and had faith in me, who knew that I could do it!

At six months old, my immune deficiencies began to manifest themselves through persistent infections and jaundice. By age two, in 1965, I drank bottles of (high salicylate) honey, cans of sweetened condensed milk, ate orange jelly and white bread with colored sprinkles, appeared deaf, showed no response to pain, and had self-injurious behaviors. A three-day hospital observation resulted in the label psychotic. By the 70s, I ate boxes full of chocolate cookies and colored popcorn and ate flavored fluoride toothpaste (which strips the lining of the gut) from the tube. I was then labeled disturbed. By the 90s I was diagnosed as autistic with a language processing disorder.

Around age ten, in 1973, I was introduced to complete meals and my three-year-old younger brother and I were put on zinc, vitamin C, and a multivitamin-mineral. He went from having six poorly pronounced words only understood at home to speaking in sentences two years later. I went from having around 10 percent receptive language to understanding half of most simple sentences and acquiring challenged-but-functional speech by age eleven. At first, I went and vomited my familys sociallyinvasive food, but then they hung a mirror on the living room wall and pushed me away from the dreaded table so I came to eat real meals with my reflection and the invasion factor was gone.

By my teens, Id reverted to binge diets of doughnuts, chocolate bars, (high salicylate) nectarines and grapes, ice cream, and white bread, to the exclusion of all elseemotional blackmail of self starvation worked like a charm in controlling those around me so I could binge addictively on the foods which gave me drug-like effects.

By adulthood, my gut, immune, and metabolic disorders were all diagnosedsevere reactive hypoglycemia, B12 deficiency, white cell deficiency, no secretory IgA, gluten and casein intolerance, milk allergy (quickly followed by soy allergy), salicylate and phenol intolerance, a range of nutrient deficiencies,and food and chemical allergies.Next came what I called The Dietary Wheelchair: a life of GFCF, low salicylate, low sugar diet in gaining and retaining as much language processing, visual processing, and management of mood, anxiety, compulsive, and attention disorders as I could.

I am often asked what degree health interventions played in the functioning Ive achieved today. Certainly many of the often cost free or low cost interventions which helped me were not dietary, but dietary interventions contributed to around 50 percent of my improvements in information processing, communication, behavior, and relationships. As a result of these interventions, I didnt become non-autistic. I didnt lose my quirky, somewhat autistic personality. But I became less extreme, and that also meant I became less autistic.

Not all people on the autism spectrum or with ADD/ADHD will have gut, immune, or metabolic disorders requiring a special diet, and even those who do may do so for quite different reasons. Just because we may share a diagnosis doesnt mean the underlying autism fruit salads are the same. There will be those for whom no dietary interventions work, those for whom GFCF doesnt work but low salicylate/low phenol does or who require both, those who only require dropping a particular allergenic food or who cope best off fried food or on complex carbs or even low carb diets. We are not all the same.