I just received an email newsletter from the Mayo Clinic and I had to write about it. Here’s the article:

Ask a Children’s Health Specialist: Autism treatment: Can special diets help?

I wrote to them after reading this and wanted to share my response. If you are moved to do the same, click here to contact them.

I just unsubscribed from your housecall mailing list and wanted to let you know why.

I no longer have any respect for Pediatricians who continue to tow the party line when it comes to autism, nor do I have any respect for organizations who continue to allow it. The gluten/casein free diet has been an effective diet for many children with autism helping to alleviate many symptoms of autism. There is a huge body of evidence and yet organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics just continue to turn their heads instead of investigating this further. I used to believe that these organizations main objectives were people’s health, but I am baffled on a daily basis when a simple thing such a dietary change is referred to as an alternative autism treatment. However, drugs such as risperdal are prescribed by these same doctors at the same rate in which Halloween candy is handed out every October 31st. Diet changes are alternative and drugs for children are mainstream.

Many parents who have removed gluten and casein from their child’s diet have done more research on nutrition than parents who feed their children food loaded with high fructose corn syrup, msg and the like. Those same parents are also working closely with their child’s physicians to monitor nutritional levels, unlike those parents who have no regard to the food their children eat on a daily basis.

Those same parents have blood work results showing food allergies to gluten, casein and a plethora of other foods. You certainly would not continue to feed a child peanuts if testing revealed an allergy. So why wouldn’t the same logic be applied to foods which are triggering a reaction in a particular child?

It is disappointing that instead of answering this parent’s question with information that may have been useful to his/her child, such as suggesting the pediatrician have a food allergen profile run to rule out an allergy, he responded with the same useless answer which has been given time and time again.

More and more parents are moving away from taking their children to mainstream pediatricians and this doctor’s terrible answer is just one reason as to why.