Gluten free and casein free diet

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I've read that the GF CF diet can help some AS people with anxiety and other negative feelings. Anyone try it with any success? It would be a huge dramatic change for my AS family members but I'll do it for them if it might help.

Yes, it helped me more than anything else I ever did. Having been on this diet for several years, what I have noticed is that I can tolerated small amounts of gluten, though I try to avoid it. But even very small amounts of casein have a very bad effect on me.

If you try this diet, also expect to lose weight. I dropped fifty pounds, and I wasn't that fat to begin with.

I usually do the paleo diet which is gluten free and casein free although I do consume goats dairy (different type of casein to cows dairy). I find it helps with things like sleep issues and stomach upsets meaning I feel physically fitter all round and experience less low mood/anxiety than before.

However, I am not strict with it...I sometimes still eat wheat or cows dairy as treats. I could be stricter and see what happens.

Either way the diet gets the thumbs up from me..! 5 Stars.

Thanks for your input! I'm encouraged... problem is though that both my hubby and son LOVE bread & cheese. Asking them to go GF/CF might be a bit unnerving to them. I'll need to be very creative with the recipes... and try not to turn them off with anything too weird for them.

I used to love not only bread and cheese, but all sorts of junk food too. Once I tried this diet, I felt so much better that I haven't even been tempted to cheat; it's not worth it, at least for me.

Good luck to you.

when I have managed this diet were the only times in my life I felt really great. But I find it impossible to stick to it I need a wife

I had severe IBS for 10 years until I stopped eating gluten. Took six months but it mostly went away. No cravings for bread or pasta at all even when people eat it in front of me.

Well, I'm a diagnosed celiac ~22 months ago, and I went dairy/casein free not long into the gluten free aspect of the diet.
The symptoms of celiac disease are too numerous to list, seriously. All sorts of mental disturbances/disorders, fatigue, rashes, every digestion issue possible...you name it, it's probably a symptom.

Celiac disease itself, an autoimmune disorder that gluten ingestion sets off, affects almost 1/100 people, but I've read studies showing less than 50% of celiacs are actually diagnosed. I've also read that people on the ASD are more likely to have celiac disease, 10% more likely or something.

There are blood tests to diagnose celiac disease as well as a biopsy of the jejunum, the upper part of the small intestine. They can only be positive if you are ingesting gluten however. Classically, celiac disease is strictly known to damage the villi lining the small intestine, destroying your ability to absorb food/nutrients properly. This is, unfortunately, the only information most doctors seem to know about the disease off-hand. However, as it's an autoimmune disorder, there are other areas of the body that it can affect too. I have peripheral neuropathy that's highly likely to be caused by my celiac disease (damage to my peripheral nerves), and a skin rash called dermatitis herpetiformis is autoimmune damage to the skin.
I believe I have mental problems that have been ameliorated greatly when I went gluten free also. I'm not emotionally volatile as much, I can concentrate more (not as well as I used to be able to, but it can take years for celiac damage to heal fully), I am no longer severely depressed...many things have improved for me.

Celiac disease is a genetic disorder, such that ~99% of people who have it have genes for it. However, the genes necessary for it exist in something like 70% of the population, and I don't think this differs much from continent to continent either. This, along with the fact that you can develop it at any point in your life clearly show there's some sort of environmental factor at play too.

It runs in families beyond just genetics; at any given point in time there's a 1/10 chance for immediate relatives of someone with celiac disease, will also have celiac disease.

To complicate matters even more, one can have a non-celiac gluten intolerance. This is where the person will have symptoms of celiac disease that will go away on a gluten free diet and will come back upon eating gluten, yet their blood tests and jejunal biopsy will come back negative. This is now recognized as an actual medical diagnosis, however there's no way to know that this could apply to you unless you successfully go gluten free for a fairly long period of time and see improvement. Non-celiac gluten intolerance runs in celiac families too...I personally think it's just celiac disease where IgA antibodies aren't damaging the intestines, but as it's generally defined, that automatically makes it not celiac disease. I don't know how common this is, but I've heard unauthoritative people say it's far more common than celiac disease itself. *shrug* who knows?

For me, being gluten free enough to knowingly avoid setting off an immune reaction is something I never, ever would have done without being a full-blown, diagnosed celiac. Sadly. I didn't have the immediate 'I feel so much better!' when I went gluten free...I recently don't quite know what I ate but it's made me not great for over a month now }:-( But beyond that, food that has more than 5ppm (parts per million) of gluten likely triggers reactions in me. There are many foods labelled gluten free that I have come to realize I simply can't eat. I don't eat out at restaurants anymore (I would eat out at a dedicated gluten free restaurant, not that there are any nearby), my house, which includes my husband, is gluten free, as I do not trust ourselves enough to be fastidious enough to avoid cross contamination of gluten-containing foods. I don't eat at other people's houses anymore, hoping I can eat at my mom's at some point, she tries very hard to accommodate me, but it wasn't enough in the past so I'm not optimistic about it. Eg: Last time I had coffee from Tim Horton's drive thru, brought my own mug from home, had it black. I got nerve pain for 2-3 weeks from it. It could have been that the ground coffee itself, straight from the package, wasn't safe enough (that s**t happens for reals), or slight dusting of flour somehow got into the coffee pot, or the worker's hands touching my mug, then my own hands on it which I didn't wash when I got home (a lesson I'm really bad at learning to do, grrrr)...such small amounts of gluten can cause serious health problems.

Anyways, that last paragraph was just trying to emphasize how important it could be to follow your diet strictly if you actually have noticed improvement of whatever being gluten free, because it likely IS some sort of autoimmune response that is likely highly sensitive.

Last and least, there are multiple different caseins in all dairy. IIRC only one of the more common caseins in cow's milk is near non-existent in goat's milk, the alpha or beta casein I think. I haven't felt healed/good enough to bother trying even goat's milk to see if that's the one I think I react to.

It was only on accident, because of me having for weeks trouble with my teeth, and so was forbidden to drink any milk products (bad for antibiotics and bad for wounds healing) or crumbly stuff, that could have get caught in the wound, but after almost 5 weeks eating like that, I feel very positive, less tired and more relaxed. I had a big hunger for milk at the beginning, but could overdo that when realizing, that I can use certain soja-products instead.

I will not totally avoid it in future, but will care to have it further reduced.

gluten intolerance is fairly common as is dairy intolerance except most of us are conditioned to live with this because ..well..

the weird fact is that wheat is the worst possible grain to add to human diet, it's processing is far too expensive for the nutritional value gained. However, it is the most adaptable grain to grow and therefore the cheapest and the high gluten content allows for soft bouncy quality of processed wheat (flour) which is highly desirable for the experience of eating, even though this same self quality causes digestive distress.


Here's an article on wheat: Wheat Article

^^ yeah, is why I said wheat is cheap to grow ..um??

I was diagnosed as having a dairy intolerence (casein, not lactose) when I was a teenager and was diagnosed as gluten intolerant - probably celiac - this year.

I decided against the whole gluten challenge, scope down throat thing to see if I am truly celiac as I'm happy to eat gluten free based on how much better I feel. I had been so sick this year and it looks like GI issues may have been a big part of it (really low iron - and I'm a guy, so shouldn't have low iron).

I do eat a bit of cheese but find goat cheese better to digest than cow cheese (something about goat casein being a lot more like human casien and therefore easier to digest).

There is a lot of discussion about autism / leaky gut / gluten and casein. As well, all the GMO stuff they've done to wheat is scary (check out The Wheat Belly book).

Thankfully there are lots of healthy gluten and casein free choices, including pizza.

Well, celiac disease has been documented since a couple hundred years BC. It's not the 10,000 years that grain's been being eaten, but it's not exactly recent either. Nor does that mean celiac disease hasn't existed for 10,000 years either. Eating wheat can be beneficial for the majority of the population and still have a significant negative affect for a minority. It's even possible that it can still be beneficial in keeping someone alive (if it's their only source of food) while making that same person miserable or malfunctioning.

Celiac disease is on the rise though, like most auto-immune disorders.

i was diagnosed with celiac's disease. even if i suddenly could eat gluten without the horrendous pain, i wouldn't. it took months for me to notice a difference but the anxiety has decreased some. there was no drastic change (other than the pain). it is just small things. i seem to be a little less sensitive to sounds, smells, textures, etc. i will never be able to tolerate loud or high pitch sounds but i don't have an immediate meltdown. i can now hold it together long enough to get out of the situation. i seem to be able to processes auditory information a little better. i'm still autistic but i seem to be a little more resilient.