Gastrointernonsense

So I'm off on the interwebs debating people on the new Mayo clinic study that found no connection between autism and GI problems. It's exactly like LBRB says. The argument is "That can't be, my kid has a gluten allergy! This study is wrong!"

Ok, let's take this one step at a time.

People can have autism AND allergies or food intolerance. However, having autism doesn't make you any more likely to have them than the general population. It just means you got two challenges for the price of one.

It means tinkering around with GFCF diets as a matter of course is not necessarily helpful unless you're noticing physical symptoms like rashes, hives, diarrhea, vomiting, etc . And by "not necessarily helpful" I'll say that making complicated, time consuming, and expensive changes to your child's diet, especially when they may already have feeding issues? Probably not wise.

Also, Wakefield = Full of shit. But that one was pretty much a given. Special GI symptom causing autism? Uh, no. Special colonoscopy causing researcher, more like.

Now there's another study on GFCF diet specifically and whether or not it helps improve problem behavior. I'm expecting it to have the same results as a smaller scale study, in that GFCF diets didn't help, but parents thought they did.