PecanBread.com - Treating Autism with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet

Imagine yourself in a foreign country where the food is contaminated. You have no choice about being there, no going "home". The local people have developed a resistance to the contaminated food but your family has not. Eating this contaminated food, which looks delicious, makes you very sick, but the local doctors do not understand why your family members are sick because the contamination does not bother them.

However some foods are not contaminated. Naturally, you eat the safe foods and avoid the contaminated foods. You do your best to avoid the damaging food and you only feed the safe food to your children, no matter how much they protest that the local food looks more appealing. Faced with such a problem, any parent would do this. You know that if you stick to your guns your children will eat the safe food. You will do this every single day that you are in this foreign country.

There is some good news and some bad news for you.

The bad news is that your country, no matter where you live, is a foreign country for your children. The food that others eat is destroying them. Your child's digestive system cannot break down the carbohydrates. These undigested starches and sugars are, instead, being eaten by bacteria in the digestive tract. These gut pathogens are destroying your child's intestinal tract. The pathogens also emit toxins which can affect the mind. Only by feeding food without these indigestible carbohydrates will your child be able to get well. That is what the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is all about.

The good news is that SCD food tastes good. SCD baked goods are delicious, satisfying, and some are easy to make. Foods allowed on the SCD include fruits, most vegetables, meat, nuts and honey. Some children are able to tolerate properly prepared goat yogurt as well. The SCD is not a diet that limits simple carbohydrate intake. Creative SCDers have come up with an incredible array of delicious, easy-to-cook recipes.

Recent research shows that 80% of autistic patients met the criteria for malabsorption (B. Walsh). Also, the majority had low intestinal carbohydrate digestion (K. Horvath). Carbohydrates are categorized into monosaccharides (single sugars), disaccharides (double sugars), and polysaccharides (long strands of sugars).

When the intestinal wall is damaged and/or carbohydrate digestion is impaired, the body loses its ability to absorb disaccharides and polysaccharides. Since they are not broken down and absorbed in the small intestine, they are available to the yeast and bacteria in the large intestine Toxic by-products of the yeast and bacteria can further damage the intestinal tract worsening the problem and creating a vicious cycle.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet, explained in detail in the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall, is the only diet that is designed specifically to stop the damage and allow the intestinal tract to heal. The diet also works to eliminate the overgrowth of the yeast and bacteria in the colon by cutting off the source of food for the pathogens.

So, starve the gut bugs and heal your child. Starve the pathogens that are destroying your child's digestive system and brain. Join the pecanbread yahoo listserv where parents of autistic children are reclaiming those children by repairing their intestines. Read the stories of how their children, who had been lost to autism, have been restored to health.

My children's intestines were destroyed by the wrong carbohydrates. I had cognitively rehabilitated my son, but he was still lost. He was very robot-like and emotionally flat, despite 9 years of following the GFCF diet. He is so much more alive now. He jokes and shows emotion. He went from a two-dimensional world to a three-dimensional world. His awakening from a semi-coma-like state is a true miracle. I am now meeting a new person that I never knew existed.

Save your child from the gut pathogens that are destroying him from the inside. You might just find your true child as other parents have. Please join us on this journey and follow the SCD to heal your child.