As many of you have recently heard, wheat and yeast has been questioned as a trigger for autistism or autistic characteristics in children. My son was very sick with asthma, high fevers and migraines for his first 2 years of life. Since I have had allergy shots in the past and am allergic to pollen and dust mites, the doctor suggested an allergy test. The results boggled my mind. My son had allergies to wheat and milk! I was feeding him wheat bread, wheat crackers and milk! Let me also mention that my son was exhibiting autistic characteristics at the time although very mild. He would line up all his toys perfectly by colors, obsessed over learning the alphabet. He would spend hours alone in his room at 18 months of age just playing with the alphabet toy that would tell you names of the letters when you touched them. Also, he would not go outside without shoes on, he would scream and cry until we put on his shoes.

Okay, after we altered his diet his whole world seemed to change. Our son slowly went from having such bad asthma he could not go anywhere to being fine and gradually his high fevers and migraines subsided also. I believe it took almost 6 months of diet change to see a difference in him.

I would have never believed that changing a child's diet could make such a great improvement physically and mentally until it happened to my son. He is now very active in sports and school with no more issues. Please take the advice of others if you are having similar problems and either get your child tested or, if you don't have the ability or means to do that, just experiment with their diet and keep a journal. Maybe eliminate one food at a time while you document the changes in their health or behavior. Good luck!

Learn more about this author, Deborah Fossum.
Click here to send author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Coping with food intolerance and allergies?
We want to hear your view. Write now!