by Marni Goltsman



Do you need a gluten-free lactose-free cookbook to cure autism? That question spawns many others: Do gluten free diets for autism lead to a cure? Is autism something that even can be cured, or is it a lifelong condition? Will fewer wheat-heavy chicken nuggets really lead to more language for a speech-delayed autistic toddler? For our family, the time and energy to ponder these questions was non-existent. Our little boy was not developing language, and we were desperate.


Shortly after my son was diagnosed with mild autism at 18-months-old, my mom called me from Canada with the name of a book: Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder: A Mother's Story of Research & Recovery by Karyn Seroussi. Although my mom was too far away to help in the hands-on babysitting department, she was one of my most trusted researchers, especially while my husband and I were still dealing with the shock of our little boy's delays. She told me a little bit about this diet that had really helped some kids, and that it had something to do with wheat intolerance and dairy intolerance and a brain gut connection. I was already tripping over the piles of books that we had gathered since the diagnosis—did we really need one more? I told her I loved her, hung up the phone, and bought the book.

Although my husband and I have a healthy dose of skepticism about miracle cures, we try diligently to remain open to all possibilities: helping our son has, for better or worse, become the most important thing in our lives. Seroussi talks a lot in the book about receptors in the brain and other scientific things that were over my head, but in the final analysis, she was a mom, and this diet helped her child—maybe it would help mine. There were many good reasons for us to try the diet: it was healthy (lots of fresh fruits and vegetables!), we could buy a lot of it online (glutenfree.com), and, most importantly, it would be easy: my son only ate 3 or 4 foods, some of which were already on the diet. So we decided that any new foods we introduced would also be on the diet, and within a few months, he was officially gluten-free and casein-free.

Did it work? There is no simple answer to that question. My son was also getting 20 plus hours of traditional therapy a week, not to mention the yeast and fish oil supplements and therapeutic listening program, so there's no real way to credit a certain intervention for a certain milestone: in our experience, they all contributed to his progress. The traditional therapies were easier to believe in because there was more tangible proof that they were working: a therapist worked on the "b" sound, and our son learned how to say it. You could argue that the diet allowed his brain to pronounce that sound, and you might be right. But you might not.

For us, the diet was not a cure-all: our non-verbal toddler did not begin speaking in sentences the next day, or the next week, or even within the next few months. We took him off the diet when we decided, together with our team of therapists, that it was more important to try to expand his palette than to continue with the limitations. But there are parents who legitimately claim that the diet made all the difference, and we're thrilled for those families (and a little jealous). From our research and experience, it's a very successful intervention for a small percentage of kids on the spectrum, and certainly worth a try.

My son will be in kindergarten next year, and my husband and I are practically giddy with pride in his accomplishments—he was completely non-verbal and anti-social at 3, and now he is a chatty, thriving preschooler. He still has significant delays, but we are hopeful that he will catch up in the next few years. The truth is that no matter how well he does, I can't escape being haunted by the interventions we choose not to try. "Perhaps the B-12 shots would have cured him;" "maybe Glutithione would have propelled him off the spectrum." At least I don't have to add: "why didn't we try the diet?"